Broadcast

They are the operators of their laptop calculators

‘The songwriting trio of the UK’s Broadcast is lost – somewhere between being misunderstood geniuses and living out the childhood desire to bang, kick and press buttons that make noise for the sake of making noise. During experimental art pop points on their albums, they are like an Old Navy commercial – trying so hard to be hip. When they hit the nail on the head, they make Kraftwerk look like pussies.

The band is a contradiction in terms, left to be decided from that often-forgiving subjective point of view. There’s always a sympathizer somewhere. The problem is that it’s difficult at times to tell which side of the love/hate relationship you are on.

Trish Kennan, James (Jam) Cargill, and Tim Felton make ’60s electro-swingers Brit-pop music with quirky twists and turns of the pots-and-pans variety. They’re pretty damn good at what they do, but the question of why they do it remains.

Without trying to sound self-important, they do what they do because they feel a general dissatisfaction with the music around them. They want to create something different, something fresh and new. They want to transform traditional music, melding disparate elements into a wholly distinct sound that they are excited to put under the Broadcast moniker.

“There are records that we wanted to find that we just couldn’t find,” said Broadcast guitarist Tim Felton. “So, we wanted to make those records. We wanted to be that missing link, so to speak.”

Felton credits the “sound of (the band member’s) personalities” and their “motivation to fuse thrashing and contrasting things and make them work together” as what helps the band distinguish themselves from other groups.

Broadcast is based out of Birmingham, England, a scene they claim has improved drastically over the course of the past decade since new clubs and new bands have populated the area. It’s an area they are glad to align themselves with since, in London, garage rock has become the popular fad again. They cant’ be compared to the Strokes and the White Stripes – and that’s a compliment.

As a band, they have no set roles and do not let their egos get in the way. The members of the band fill in parts and trade instruments when and where it’s necessary. To them, the songs are more important than the roles they play in the band. Everything they do seems to be non-traditional, including the music that motivates them and how they come across it.

“We’re inspired by a crossover of folk, film music and weird things we find in record shops and pass between us,” said Felton. “Sometimes, we’ll be watching a movie and tape the soundtrack directly off the TV.”

The process of recording a soundtrack off of a television has become increasingly simple for the band, since they finished building their own studio at the Custard Factory. Having a personal home studio at a moment’s disposal has become a necessity for experimental bands. To accomplish these same tasks in a commercial studio would be too costly.

This studio made the writing and recording of “Ha Ha Sound,” the band’s second full-length album which is set for release in November, a much easier process than their freshman release, “The Noises Made By People.” The first record saw what Felton described as “many months of false starts.” Their drummer quit. They couldn’t keep a producer. The band also suffered the loss of Robert Mitchell, a close friend and the person responsible for signing them to Warp Records, who died of cancer.

“It was a really devastating loss, you know?” said Felton. “It really hit us all hard. It took us a while but eventually we got back on track and were able to pull ourselves back together.”

“Ha Ha Sound,” destined to be the band’s best effort to date, is dedicated to the memory of Mitchell. It bears the burden of his loss but proves that, even in death, there can be new life.