Curiouser and Curiouser…
Broadcast @ The Music Hall of Williamsburg, Wednesday 21st October.
I arrived just as The Selmanaires were rapping their set up. Shame, as they sounded pretty good – thudding, purposeful dance-rock with some interesting harmonies. But it was Broadcast I came to see, a band who have been producing cerebral electronic, in various formations, since 1995.
It’s been a while since I’d heard anything from them. 2005’s Tender Buttons was the last full length they released, an album I listened to avidly, so I was curious to see what they’d been up to. They’re touring again to get some exposure for their latest LP, a collaborative mini-album called ‘Broadcast and the Focus Group Investigate Witch Cults of the Radio Age’.
I must say, I was apprehensive in coming to this; a friend of mine had been to the show they’d done the previous night, at Le Poisson Rouge, and had commented that a lot of the songs were very “experimental”, a polite way of saying, “unlistenable”. It’s frightfully un-indie of me, but I kind of like songs to contain something that can be at least vaguely discernible as a structure. Had Broadcast – purveyors of delicate, haunting electronica in the mode of Grizzly Bear or Beach House – descended into some kind of Merzbow-esque, blip and glitch, stuttering drum beat drone chaos?
In the changeover between the first and second bands a couple of techies started erecting a huge projection screen. Curious, I think. But Broadcast are a band who like to massage all the senses of the listener, meaning for the entirety of the set the band’s far out sound is accompanied by projections of stark, barren countryside, undulating, kaleidoscopic patterns as well as more bizarre imagery such as specimens of igneous rock and microscope slides of proteins and synapses.
Unfortunately, my fears about the band’s new musical bent were realised: the first 25 minutes of the set seem to merge into one obscure piece of noise; Keenan’s dulcet tones hardly feature while both musicians hunker down over their synths and macs, knocking out irregular drum beats and bass lines so heavy I feel nauseous. But suddenly, like the proverbial ray of sunshine, Broadcast break into a thundering, electronic waltz, and that surreal, dreamlike sound that they produce so well is recognizable again.
The rest of their set follows in this vein, which – for me at least – is a great relief. You can see the crowd immediately start to respond when Cargill and Keenan fire into ‘Corporeal’, from album Tender Buttons, swaying gently to the swirling sound emanating from the stage. Broadcast at their best have an ethereal quality, songs that – with Keenan’s wonderfully haunting, Niko-esque voice – sound like electronic lullabies. Their sound doesn’t seem to derive too far from 60s psychadelia, (one of their songs was featured on an Austin Powers soundtrack) with a touch of Victorian surrealism. The Cheshire Cat should have had Alice sing ‘Black Cat’, also from Tender Buttons, when she stumbled across him whilst venturing through Wonderland.
Overall, a quality set. I leave feeling as if I’ve just woken from a dream, startled to find myself in a music venue in Brooklyn; I look around, bleary eyed and suspicious, and see a man wearing a tabard with a haircut like a Norman conqueror. Another gentleman next to the bar is wearing a silver dress.
Curious indeed…
