That album is mega. It's like the perfect fusion of futurism and antique sounds (without sounding like the present)

tender buttons is a GREAT album.

it is very good yes. i listened to haha sound every day for about 6 months when it came out.

..oh i miss you..

i was in love with the noise made by people for a goodly while

have had tender buttons on my PC for more than a year now without listening to it

this thread has inspired me

thanks thread

My favourite will always be Ha-Ha Sound. One of my favourite bands in the world and I believe top of my list on last.fm. I'll tell you another thing - their B-sides are incredible, the somewhat obscure Microtronics record one of my favourite slices of out-sound ever, and their remixes (eg. of the Sea and Cake) are totally sublime.

If you like Broadcast, you'll probably like records on the Ghost Box label. Ghost Box is Jim Jupp and Julian House. Jim Jupp releases music as Belbury Poly, while Julian House releases as The Focus Group. When I spoke to James Cargill (Broadcast) a couple of years ago, he said he was working on some stuff with Julian. Julian is a designer who has done almost all of Broadcast's album covers, plus others by Stereolab, Primal Scream and so on.

Ghost Box re-released one of my very favourite CDs ever - Mount Vernon Arts Lab's Seance at Hobbs Lane. That recording taught me how to listen to all kinds of bad sounds. I'm thinking about buying it again just because the new artwork is so awesome - Julian House's work for that label gets me where I live.

I really enjoyed Jim Jupp's Ouroborinda CD that he released under the name Eric Zann.

I like this band

noise made by people is brilliant. i think they nailed something pretty unique there.

carbar had a theory they ghost-produced 'beautiful stranger' by madonna. listening to it, i reckon he could be right!

If you like Broadcast, you'll probably like records on the Ghost Box label. Ghost Box is Jim Jupp and Julian House. Jim Jupp releases music as Belbury Poly, while Julian House releases as The Focus Group.

I'm not sure Broadcast sounds similar to Belbury Poly. I think the closest connection is that one of the guys from Ghost Box designed some Broadcast album covers.

Broadcast is awesome though.

Ha-Ha Sound is my favourite too, socks. Snap!

Thanks for the info socks. One of the things I love about this band is their album covers so thanks for telling me that.

Each of their albums has at least one song that I fall in love with.

Winter Now
Tears in the Typing Pool
Unchanging Window / Chord Simple

Broadcast fans should also check out 60's band The United States of America who are a clear influence on the groop.

Amazing groop, have loved all thier records. My fave would still be the first single book lovers and thier long player, work and non work.
would love to see them out here

Yep - Cargill has often said The United States of America were the reason Broadcast got together in the first place.

And yes shaun, you're right, Belbury Poly does not sound particularly similar to Broadcast, but in my mind they're very much aligned - 60s library music / analogue synthesiser tones, that kind of thing. Like the quiet cousin.

I adore that Broadcast song on the Morvan Callar soundtrack 'You can Fall' - but haven't really found anything on par with that yet on an album- that said, I haven't fully investigated.

And yes shaun, you're right, Belbury Poly does not sound particularly similar to Broadcast, but in my mind they're very much aligned - 60s library music / analogue synthesiser tones, that kind of thing. Like the quiet cousin.

Yeah, I see what you mean. For the same reasons I've been completely addicted to Boards of Canada's Music Has The Right to Children this week. Every so often I revisit this and am amazed. It's nearly 10 years old! gasps

the groop

It's a bit long, but here's an interview I did with James in 2005. Evidently they haven't made it out here just yet.

They may have a nostalgic sound, but you couldn't accuse Broadcast of being mired in the past. For all their retro-futurist chic, they're refreshingly free of kitsch - and, most hearteningly, of those worn-out, ‘wacky’ samples and horn stabs which we're so used to hearing from acts inspired by the ‘60s and ‘70s. They are also a group who make music that is often realised electronically, and that is released on Warp - arguably the world’s most prominent leftfield electronica label, though they insist on performing with ‘real instruments’.

Originally the brainchild of James Cargill and Trish Keenan, the band formed around 1995 as a quintet dedicated to pushing intelligent pop beyond its apparent limits. Having lost their drummer, then keyboardist, before the release of 2003's , HaHa Sound, the group have again diminished to Cargill and Keenan.

I spoke to Cargill, fresh from the release of Broadcast's third album proper, Tender Buttons. A decade after the group's inception, how had things changed? ‘Tim [Felton – guitarist] was the last guy to leave. He left towards the end of this album, and I think for him, he just wanted to write his own songs, and I think when we were making the album we'd probably gotten enough songs that Trish had written. I think he wanted to do his songs,’ Cargill explains. ‘It didn't end brilliantly. But it's not too bad. I understand why he went, you know?’

Cargill has a manner which is perhaps surprisingly casual and down-to-earth in contrast to the oft-extravagant flourishes of the group's music – which at times conjures a dreamy mass wedding between ‘60s girl groups and ‘70s krautrockers. Tender Buttons is a little different sounding, however – it has a decidedly more electronic focus, largely owing to the absence of a drummer. This is particularly conspicuous in light of the amazing drums that graced HaHa Sound, particularly on ‘Man is not a Bird’, and has earned the group some harsh words from the fickle British music press. Cargill is keenly aware of the criticisms. His response is simply that ‘…the papers that criticised it in the UK were the ones like Q magazine, like the kind of “quality rock” papers. I could see why it wouldn't be up their street… The other people in there are, like, Eric Clapton, you know what I mean?’

If there's anything certain about popular music consumption, it would seem that listeners are conservative – they expect a band to choose a sound and stick with it. Predictability is important in the mind of a consumer, lost in the flurry of endless albums and singles, live shows and videos. And while Broadcast have hardly strayed from their roots, they are equally innocent of resting on their laurels, with each release marking a turn in their sound - from The Noise Made By People's clean, bookish innocence to the darker atmospherics of HaHa Sound (and the mild sarcasm of its title). And now, to the brighter, simpler synth strains of Tender Buttons.

Cargill suggests that the constant thread throughout Broadcast's music is simply a desire to innovate the pop paradigm, through use of a creative sonic palette, and a conscious shunning of more ‘commercial’ decisions in the studio. ‘I think the thing that I'm quite glad about is when we started the band, it was based on the idea to produce pop songs, but to colour them differently, to try to create more interest in the sound around them. Like the United States of America did, who were our favourite band when we started. That goal is still what we try to do today.’

While the group's sound exudes focus, Cargill himself readily admits the haphazard approach that accompanied the recording of their newest album, perhaps accentuated by the uncertainty surrounding the impending departure of a bandmate. ‘We got to the point where we were just going to have to call it finished. The way the record sounds is pretty much how we demo-ed it. The plan after that was to put drums on it and make it more elaborate sounding, like the old record.

‘When we tried to do that, it just didn't work. It just didn't sound right,’ he explains, adding that it was difficult to settle upon the sonic character of the record given the expectations surrounding it, but in the end, the songs had to sound that way.

Tender Buttons is also different for the level of technological labour put into it. While previous outings have seen layer upon layer heaped onto a skeletal song structure, Tender Buttons is at times dense and unrelentingly digital. ‘ Tender Buttons was quite intuitive,’ Cargill offers. ‘There's nothing really laboured on, as far as sequencing or fiddling with electronics goes.’ Surely, though, without a drummer there would be more left to the computers?

‘Maybe it was the mixing. But we definitely did that more when there were more of us in the band, because when you're doing that as a group, it's more enjoyable, you know. You're sort of talking to people as you're doing it. But as there are less of you, the technical aspect becomes less enjoyable.’

Keenan originally performed vocals for the group, and wrote songs, while Cargill was bass player. I was curious; now that it's just the two of them, who does what? ‘Well, there are two types of songs we do. There's one where Trish will write on a guitar pretty conventionally, and then we'll try and put the sound to it. Or there're the little demos that I do that Trish will write the songs on top of. So Trish won't play too much, you know, won't do too much of the instrumentation afterwards, but she might write it initially.’

A pretty good state of affairs, then, as far as collaborative relationships go? Cargill agrees: ‘It sort of works quite well now. But it's taken this long for that to happen. It never worked like that when there were more than two of us.’ Indeed, it's easy to imagine creative tensions – especially with a pair like Keenan and Cargill, who are a couple outside of songwriting. Clearly, that might nurture a strange group dynamic.

‘There are things to be said about being in a group, and with just the two of us on this record it was hard for us to judge what we were doing, whether it was good or bad a lot of the time, because it's good to just have ideas bouncing around a group of people. I miss that. But the pros are that you can be more focussed, and get more focussed on your ideas, which are less compromised.’

Cargill tells me the band are looking to develop the visual element of their music through abstract video, particularly in a live context. Despite having a sound that is so often lazily described as 'cinematic', Broadcast only have two soundtrack credits to date – and neither in the conventional sense. 'You can Fall' was featured prominently in arthouse film Morvern Callar, but was not recorded especially for the film. And 'The Book Lovers' was included on the CD soundtrack for Austin Powers, but not in the film itself. ‘It's very odd!’ Cargill agrees.

Musically, Cargill has plans outside of Broadcast, though the band will remain his primary focus. He has plans to work with Julian House, who works for London's Intro design company, runs fledgling label Ghost Box, and also designs Broadcast's album covers. ‘I want to do this thing with him, because I really like what he does, and I've got so much in common with him.’ House has been busy lately, with Ghost Box releases drawing increased interest of late. It is easy to see why Cargill admires House so much – many of Ghost Box's releases resemble library music, and boast curious moods and production techniques. The plan is for Cargill to work with House while Keenan pens songs for Broadcast's next effort.

Funnily enough, for all the band's interception of commerciality in their recordings, they seem largely confused about their level of success in the world of pop music. When I suggest that the band is well regarded worldwide, Cargill seems surprised: ‘That's great! I didn't know anything about that.’ He confesses that people find Broadcast difficult to deal with, or to understand, without clear genre cues and definitions – particularly for people who aren't music fans. ‘You need to fill in a lot of the blanks. But because we don't fill in a lot of the blanks, I think that restricts our success,’ he admits.

Arguably, it's difficult for Cargill to understand the perception of a successful, popular indie group that surrounds Broadcast, when he equates the band's income to that of the dole. He is also candid about how the group's changing situation has affected them financially.

‘Warp gave us a lot more money when, on the first album, we had loads more people. They've cut our advances down and we've had to renegotiate each time. So we got such a small advance on this record that if there was three or four of us now, we would have to get jobs. But that's the thing about having the two of us. We can carry on but save money.’

The band's relationship with Warp is a sensitive subject, and Cargill freely admits that Rob Mitchell, the label's co-founder, was the one who initially championed and signed the band. Since Mitchell's death (from cancer), the band have been attended by Steve Beckett, the label's other co-founder. However, Beckett has recently broadened and refocussed Warp, notably signing bands such as Maxïmo Park and Battles, both of which – while great bands – are guitar-based groups have somewhat baffled Warp's long-term followers.

‘Rob was the one who signed us, and I felt was the one who really understood us,’ Cargill says. ‘I think it's just Steve’s more … you know, he wants success with [Maxïmo Park], he's put a lot of money into them. But when Rob signed us, I think he just really liked us, you know, he didn't see a commercial side to it. He just really loved it.’

On stage, Broadcast now appear as a four-piece – with a drummer and a guitarist whom Cargill describes as ‘just two local guys who we found’. He explains that, having tried playing with a drum machine, he and Keenan much preferred having a band. ‘We try and do it with a drum machine, with Trish and sparse electronics, but because we've always been working with a band live, up until this point, it felt weird going for a more electronic sound live. That's why we got a drummer. It seems to work so much better when you're working with a real drummer, playing live.’

Naturally, the question is asked: when can we expect to finally see Broadcast's debut upon our shores? The timing seems ripe, with Tender Buttons their most prominent release here to date. ‘We haven't really got anything definite,’ Cargill says. ‘We want to; so if financially we can make it work, I guess we will be. I'm pretty sure nothing's booked, but we're talking to somebody about it. We want to get there.’

Cargill and Keenan are based in Birmingham in the UK, the home city they share with other Warp artists such as Plone and Pram. Perhaps it's the industrial city which is responsible for the mix of weightless reverie and dark pathos that has come to infuse Broadcast's sound. The pair is clearly reflective about their process, though I am occasionally disturbed by Keenan's admissions that her lyrics are constructed mostly from nonsense phrases. Such a confession undermines the poetic weight of the pop lyric; to consciously acknowledge that a song's words are not constructed with some grand logic behind them is, in some ways, to force the listener to resist the urge to attach a fixed meaning to them. But perhaps that's part of Broadcast's clever plan of pop subversion.

As a point of interest, I query Cargill on his parents' response to Broadcast. They seem a potentially perfect example of people with a strong sense of the pop music that their progeny is seeking to disrupt. Do they listen to Broadcast? ‘Well, they say they do, but I think they don't. They'll support you, but they'll sit there going, “I don't understand what you're doing, you know, it needs more nice melodies” and things like that. What do parents know?’

Ghost Box / Trunk / Broadcast / Portishead even - all revisiting and reinterpreting the unique background sounds of a UK childhood in the late 1960s/early 1970s. Time travel.

I would suggest that the current revival of Doctor Who and the series Life on Mars are both broad manifestations of the same urge to revisit and reinterpret one's childhood years.

I'm also interested in the fact that for Australian listeners, many of these reference points are familiar (music from BBC science docos, the Tomorrow People theme, etc etc) due to the ABC - but yet another step removed and magical due to their ''second hand'' nature. Certainly in my childhood I was aware of UK/US television having a different ''texture'' to homegrown stuff, although obviously I was too young to understand the nuances.

TransientRandom - that clip is fine to watch at work, I think. It's very bubbly and upbeat and he just talks about the kind of 60s/70s British TV influences on their aesthetic, as well as some of the Focus Group collaboration.

Haha, cheers u/a.

I'm generally on the verge of an extended crying jag most Mondays.

...Wanna hug?

I'm generally on the verge of an extended crying jag most Mondays

Why only Mondays?

Because, er, it's a Monday. I was being facetious, sorry. It's a hard mode for me to snap out of sometimes.

Fantastic Obituary in the Guardian

Apparently she and James did not have any children:

She is survived by Cargill, and by her mother, Zena, brothers Malcolm and John, and sisters Maxine and Barbara.

From another MSG board...

Some details on her death - she was having chest pains on New Year's Eve and her mom took her to the hospital, but they couldn't find anything wrong with her so they sent her home. Apparently it got worse and she went back the next day, they found she had swine flu, she lost consciousness that same day and never woke up. Died after a two week coma.

if anyones interested, here's a tracklist for the mindbending motorway mix;

1) Emerald Web – “Flight of the Raven”
2) Harumi – “What a Day For Me”
3) Truck – “Earth Song”
4) Mandy More – “If Not By Fire”
5) Tages – “You’re Too Incomprehensible”
6) Twice as Much – “The Spinning Wheel”
7) Tangerine Peel – “Trapped”
8) Twice as Much – “Playing with Fire”
9) Catharsis – “Masq”
10) Victor Jara – “El Aparecido”
11) Natty Bumpo – “Theme from the Valley of Dolls”
12) Koji Ueno – “Professor Parsec”
13) Fuat Saka – “Atladm Girdim Baa”
14) Carl Erdmann – “Devil Worship”
15) The Vampires of Dartmoore – “Tanz der Vampire”
16) Rock Revival – “Venus 2038″
17) Mark Charron – “The Girls and the Boys”

I was just sent a link to an interview with James Cargill.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHtQyvzxtPg

This is a fantastic interview - really interesting insight into their music and influences. I'd really only heard them in passing before watching it, but it's got me seeking out more of Broadcast's stuff.

Has anybody heard that ''Broadcast Meets Atlas Sound'' thing? I reckon it's the weakest thing Broadcast has ever done.

yeah ive got it. It is pretty average

still mournful

TagoMago - Thanks so much for the tracklisting. I have loved this album since i downloaded and searched for this info with no luck. First 2 songs are amazing.

just got around to listening to the hi fi bootleg - great memories of a great tour

does anyone know the provenance of the track they played in the final (''ritual'') section of the show, with trish playing an odd stringed instrument? it had a refrain that went ''what you want is not what you need''. i hope there is a studio version somewhere.

there is mention here of james cargill being involved in soundtracking an upcoming film, which is excellent news.

Hey __v, did a search for this and could only find a couple of references to that song.

One guy writes: ''one chord Mongolian lute (I’m guessing here) driven Kosmische drone of the final song, whose anti-materialist mantra ‘what you want is not what you need’''

Maybe it was just a song for performance?

err for their live performance.

thanks for the detective work nyx - maybe they were yet to record it - sad sad sad

the a capella version of you and me in time at the hi fi was stunning - listening in retrospect was very emotional, people who saw it live should feel pretty lucky

James Cargill is working on a new album with voice recordings that Trish had already made.

Brilliant news. I'm especially keen to see that film and their soundtrack he mentioned. Peter Strickland's previous film Katalina Varga was excellent. I think they should be used in far more films.

R.I.P Trish - a year ago this morning