Pre-Release
- SEP 28, 2024
- 14 Songs
- The Noise Made By People · 2000
- Tender Buttons · 2005
- The Noise Made By People · 1999
- Spell Blanket - Collected Demos 2006 - 2009 · 2024
- Haha Sound · 2003
- Tender Buttons · 2005
- Tender Buttons · 2005
- Haha Sound · 2003
- Tender Buttons · 2005
- Work and Non Work · 1997
Essential Albums
- Whittled down from the full-band ensemble of Haha Sound, only Broadcast’s core duo of Trish Keenan and James Cargill appear on Tender Buttons. Fittingly, the album takes its inspiration from Neu! and early Kraftwerk, two-person outfits that helped define the influential Krautrock sound. The motorik pulse of those seminal German groups is the recurring theme of Tender Buttons, especially on “Black Cat” and “Bit 35,” the last of which is a hypnotic recreation of early Kraftwerk. The buzzing synths that have always been Broadcast’s stock-in-trade are here more prickly and cold than ever before, yet the icy sheen obscures some of the band’s most gentle moments to date. “Tears In the Typing Pool” eschews the band’s usual sonic tapestry for a simple duet between Keenan and an acoustic guitar, while the album winds down with “You and Me In Time,” a music-box lullaby that nonetheless refuses to completely abandon Broadcast’s taste for unsettling tone clusters.
- The '60s meet the distant future on the bewitching debut album from these Stereolab protégés. While their analog electronics and quavering sound effects suggest the avant-garde output of Delia Derbyshire and The BBC Radiophonic Workshop, their songwriting evokes classic Brill Building pop. The result is an unusually gentle take on psychedelia, where medieval madrigals meet Mellotron ("Echo's Answer"), and harpsichords punctuate vintage synthesizers ("Come On Let's Go”). Trish Keenan's flawless vocals provide the irresistible through line—and a cool, calming presence even when the music's at its most abstracted.
Music Videos
- 2000
- 2000
Artist Playlists
- Dig into their spooky, post-rock sound from the inside out.
Singles & EPs
Compilations
- 2006
About Broadcast
Led by James Cargill and Trish Keenan, Broadcast blended early electronic music, psychedelia, and '60s pop into retro-futuristic, innovative, and often deeply moving music. Though their inspirations spanned obscure film soundtracks, library music, and the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, Cargill and Keenan's artistic vision was unmistakable -- as was Keenan's voice, which flickered effortlessly between detachment and vulnerability. On 2000's debut album, The Noise Made by People, they contrasted sci-fi atmospheres and pop melodies with a jazzy elegance, but the influence of Czech film scores heightened the mysterious beauty of 2003's Haha Sound. With 2005's Tender Buttons, Broadcast pared down to the duo of Keenan and Cargill and honed their music to its essence, and shifted gears again on 2009's trippy, sample-heavy EP Broadcast and the Focus Group Investigate Witch Cults of the Radio Age. Keenan's untimely 2011 death effectively ended Broadcast, with 2013's soundtrack Berberian Sound Studio providing a bittersweet epilogue.
- ORIGIN
- Birmingham, England
- FORMED
- 1995
- GENRE
- Alternative