Mystical solace: Broadcast’s Spell Blanket reviewed
Broadcast were one of the last great musical mysteries, a band that came to light before social media hit, from unfashionable Birmingham, whose every record was unpredictably brilliant, allowing listeners to project any and all kind of our own fantasies ono them.
I don't think Broadcast were trying to be mysterious. Instead, a certain reticence and sense of mystery was hardwired into their music. As a fan you never knew where Broadcast were going to go. Who would have guessed that their first album, the cinematic but fairly conventional 60s pop of The Noise Made By People, would lead to the psychedelic jewellery box explosion of their second, Haha Sound? Or that they would then abandon this for crude but brilliant drum machine and synth abrasiveness on their third, Tender Buttons.
All of which is to say that Spell Blanket - Collected Demos 2006 - 2009, a collection of four track and mini disc recordings made by Broadcast singer Trish Keenan before her death in 2011, doesn't ultimately give much insight into what the band's fifth album, following the Berberian Sound Studio soundtrack, would have sounded like. That fifth album could have slipped out exactly as the 36 demos here sound; or it could have sounded nothing like them and either path would have been in keeping with the Broadcast modus operandi. We simply don't know. And I suspect the band didn’t either, the shape of that fifth album still beyond even its eventual creators until they actually made it.
You can try to do detective work on Spell Blanket, although the album resists it. The overall sound is minimal, typically just Keenan accompanied by acoustic guitar and / or keyboard pulses, while the recording quality can be quite scratchy. But there are songs that glide like The Noise Made By People (Puzzle), glint like Haha Sound (the driving and very Velvet Underground Hairpin Memories or the fuzzy and dark drum-led Hip Bone To Hip Bone), stride like Tender Buttons (the scrabbling drum machine sketch of Dream Power or the abrasive electronics of Crone Motion) and drift like the ghostly folk of Mother Is The Milky Way (Colour In The Numbers).
(Obsessive Broadcast fans - because what other type are there? - will already be familiar with three Spell Blanket songs - The Song before The Sun Comes Out, Petal Alphabet and Where Are You - which Broadcast co-founder James Cargill posted to Soundcloud to celebrate Trish’s birthday.)
Most intriguingly, a number of Spell Blanket songs sound little like anything Broadcast have released before. Roses Red, for example, has a sloping, brilliantly off, guitar line and drum thump that sounds like Pavement in their early, arty days; A Little Light has a disturbingly chirpy keyboard riff behind it, whose borderline silly, cartoon joie de vivre shouldn't fit but somehow does; and Greater Than Joy is a thick acapella number, Keenan's peerless voice layered over itself in great washes of emotion.
You can also speculate as to how it might all have fit together. Of the 36 tracks on Spell Blanket, a handful are little more than brief musical sketches, like the 33-second, nautical synth skit My Marble Eye. Would this song have evolved into something on its own? Would it have been stitched to another of the songs here? Or would it have been cast aside?
Such speculation is inevitable. But it also risks underselling the joys of this album in itself, which contains a number of songs so utterly perfect in demo form I find it hard to believe that Broadcast could ever have improved on them, like Follow The Light, the kind of hypnotically alluring song I can easily imagine tempting me to throw myself off a cliff, or the haunting I Want To Be Fine. As I say, it’s hard to believe these could have become better or been improved in any way. And yet, I CAN believe because Broadcast were an incredibly special band, a collective of like-minded adventurers at whose heart lay the endless imagination of James Cargill and the raw humanity of Trish Keenan.
Spell Blanket isn’t quite the final word on Broadcast. In September Warp is releasing Distant Call - Collected Demos 2000-2006, which rounds up early demos that were later worked into finished productions, as well as two songs that Cargill only discovered after Keenan’s death. After that, Broadcast will be gone forever, the vault closed and our hearts left a-spin.
Even without hearing Distant Call, Spell Blanket feels like the more substantial work. Weighing in at 36 songs and 65 minutes it’s the longest Broadcast album to date (minus compilations), a significant cultural moment that will take a while to fully reveal its lingering charms.
Spell Blanket is a binding tribute to a band who constantly asked questions, whose work never finished and whose influence will never die; rough around the edges but smooth as as black cat’s tail. Spell Blanket is perfectly imperfect, not so much a full stop on Broadcast’s career as a question mark of perpetual intrigue.
Some listening
The Pet Shop Boys’ magnificently named new album Nonetheless is a brilliant piece of work, its disgracefully maturing mixture of pumping beats and cinematic strings perfect for those of us just about young enough to enjoy a night out but definitely old enough to feel it in the morning. The strings-and-beats mixture produces loads of great songs but the epically mournful orchestration on Feel - think Mahler on Mars - wins it for me, producing a feeling somewhere between manning the barricades and going home to cry.
When I interviewed Speed Dealer Moms recently - see below - they recommended the music of Maryanne Amacher, who I had never heard of but later discovered was an American composer and installation artist, who used psychoacoustic effects to mess with our heads over a long and pioneering career. Naturally, I investigated and Pt. 1, taken from her 2008 album Sound Characters 2 (Making Sonic Spaces), is a fearsomely drone-y beast, with scratchy electronic curlicues that pop up like bed springs in a knackered old mattress. I’m not sure it is the best introduction to her vast catalogue but you have to start somewhere.
Mike Paradinas is on a mission to put the “dance” back into IDM and I can think of few people better suited to the task. His new album as µ-Ziq, Grush, has some towering melodic moments, with Hyper Daddy rushing along on (at least) three different and very live sounding drum lines and a sumptuous key change about two minutes in. Look out for Reticulum B and Metaphonk when the album comes out in June for some mountainous Smokebelch vibes and IDM reggaeton, respectively.
Things I’ve done
Line Noise - With Speed Dealer Moms
Speed Dealer Moms are John Frusciante, probably best known as the guitar player from the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and Aaron Funk, aka Venetian Snares, a producer who defies your 4/4 time signatures in the name of brilliantly experimental electronic sounds. In what was their first ever joint interview, I spoke to John and Aaron about listening to music differently, 16-hour jams, friendship in music, actual speed dealer moms, jungle, Bangface and so much more. I think this interview is a bit special so I do hope you enjoy it.
The playlists
Updated pretty much daily, my two playlists bring you all the best new music as rated by moi. This one is long, with 1,763 songs dating back to 2020; this one is short, from 2024 only. You don’t need to follow both. But, please, do follow one.