Broadcast – Maida Vale Sessions / Mother Is The Milky Way / Microtronics Volumes 1 and 2

Warp

Thankfully for fans of Broadcast, their cups runneth over with three simultaneous releases of hard-to-find goodness.

Warp are giving official releases to a compilation of BBC Sessions, as well as two smaller but in some respects far more fascinating insights into what made the group tick when pursuing their more outré musical experiments. As much as it is great to hear nascent versions of tracks like “The Book Lovers” and “Look Outside” and the lovely “Forget Every Time” on the Maida Vale Sessions and it captures the vibrancy of their live setting, the other two releases hold more charm.

Truthfully, the Maida Vale Sessions is a great way to plot the slow growth of the group from the beginnings of the early EP work stretching through to the Haha Sound era and, although mention is always made of Stereolab, for me they had more in common with Pram in their very British love of experimentation, library music and esoterica in general.

The other thing that made them stand out was that in Trish Keenan they had an exceptional vocalist whose progression you can’t help but notice over the six years of session recordings. It is an essential for any Broadcast fan, but also for any self-respecting fan of British experimental pop.

On the other hand, the other two releases here, originally put out as tour-only mini-CDs, find the group letting loose in all ways, coming on as if they were starting their own library music company. Clad in op-art sleeves, the Microtronics mini-albums are a series of adventurous vignettes capturing the group at their most playful.

This release compiles the two volumes, giving us twenty-one tracks in thirty-odd minutes and literally nothing clocks in over two and a half minutes, with most around a minute and a half. Vocal free, it moves from splashy marching drums, the ominous sound of piano keys being disturbed and dubby bass to a perverted Latin rhythm with insouciant charm. Two and a half minutes and all bets are off!

It is the work of a group in love with sound and their idea of how it interacts with the listener and the world at all junctures. They manipulate the instruments to cause an emotional response, but sometimes it is just the noise of typewriter keys and variable monotony. There is no real precedent for bands of their era, and fleetingly covers shimmering stellar drone, insistent staccato keys with jazzy rhythm and space echo travelling through to glitchy, weird dropped-out and oddly looped paranoia.

It is impossible to tell who is involved as at times, it feels like a one-person rhythm workout with subtitles the listener can invent; “heavy polyrhythmic beat with echoing bass drum”, anyone? There is a lovely synthetic groove that they manage to mess up with oddly discordant textures, while in other places their sense of repetition and just how much is needed is perfect.

The pieces travel underwater, through time, particularly the ’60s and ’70s, but still manage to wind up just ahead of you while you are still looking over your shoulder. It is an excellent selection of ideas, some of which feel like sketches for something longer, but hang together really well in this context.

As to the other release, Mother Is The Milky Way, this is another tour-only CD that originally saw the light of day in 2009, and also squeezes a lot of ideas into a short running time.

Trish’s vocals and a copious use of flute give this a whole other feel to Microtronics, and if anything to my ear almost comes on like a missing His Name Is Alive EP, but refracted through a contemporary weird folk prism.

It is a grab-bag, magpie-like collection that veers from birdsong and child’s flute to cut-up voice experiments and tape tomfoolery. Across the whole thing there is a pastoral feel and they always have one ear on the voice complementing the settin,g even if it is only a thirty-second Children Of The Corn music box extravaganza. I am reminded unsurprisingly of Pram, but also of some of the more esoteric of Danielle Dax‘s experiments and it follows that kind of lineage.

The voice is never ruffled, regardless of whatever mayhem might be unleashed, and with titles like “Milling Around The Village” (it sounds exactly like that) and “Never Trust A Rusty Bolt”, you just know that. I’d love to know if there is more of this kind of thing hidden away somewhere, because it just goes to further the already high regard in which the band is held.

Full marks to Warp for putting these out there, but even more to the group itself for having the audacity to record these extraordinary items. Essential.

-Mr Olivetti-