Transmission Tests
Entrancing compilation of Trish Keenan’s unreleased demos and dry runs. By Chris Roberts
Broadcast
Spell Blanket – Collected Demos 2006-2009 ★★★
Warp WARPLP 372 (CD, 2LP)
Transition, transmission. Between the late 90s and their last full studio album, 2005’s Tender Buttons, Broadcast finessed an enigmatic mix of electronica, 60s psychedelic tropes and often eerie samples, earning them an obligatory mention every time somebody discussed hauntology. Which for a brief while everybody did. Hauntology involved retrofuturism – an uncertain sense of a half-lost past and a sporadically glimpsed future. Broadcast’s best music still haunts, whether on 2003’s Ha Ha Sound or the soundtrack for the 2012 film Berberian Sound Studio. It was subtly spooky, rather than full-on gawdy giallo. In a shrugging, shy, averting-its-gaze way, it could also be playful, fun.
Trish Keenan’s untimely death in 2011 effectively ended their output, and for over a decade Broadcast’s surviving member James Cargill has spoken of compiling the work-in-progress demos she left. “Trish left a lot of tapes, four-tracks and stuff, and I’ve been going through those”, he told Under The Radar, months after her passing. “It’s difficult, but I’m connected to it at the same time.
It’s wonderful, but I’m also feeling a sense of loss.” These tapes might one day make “a monument, or a tribute” to her, he added.
Finally formulated, Spell Blanket is that item.
The mass of material here – 36 tracks in all, though many are blink-and-you’ll-miss-it short – was sketched out from 2006 to 2009 as groundwork for what would have been the album to follow Tender Buttons. It would be a lovely story if we could say it’s a grab-bag of unmitigated genius. In truth, it’s never expansive enough to dazzle neutral listeners, nor was it ever meant to be. It’s less an album per se, more a document purely for the fascination of Broadcast buffs, who will be able to overlook the undercooked, underfed nature of the majority of the snippets. And as an insight into Keenan’s creative process, it’s illuminating and intriguing.
It’s a lo-fi scrapbook, where occasionally a shaft of light lands on a page pregnant with true inspiration. Take for example I Want To Be Fine, the longest piece here at nearly four minutes, and one of the more fully realised. It’s an acoustic folk number with Keenan’s voice switching between spoken word and Steeleye Span-style singing. It’s only creepy because we now reflexively associate this timbre with sinister films. Perceived from other
As an insight into Keenan’s creative process, it’s illuminating and intriguing
angles, it’s fresh-faced and sweet. Petal Alphabet, too, taps into that feel – “one by one, the gods fall asleep” – as she harmonises committedly with herself. By contrast, the folk is forsaken on more electronic-based rough workings like Hip Bone To
Hip Bone, which successfully evokes an anxious, distracted Sandie Shaw at her breathiest.
March Of The Fleas gravitates closer to shoegaze, with ominous treated guitars signifying torment.
Most of this collection, however, offers fleeting impressions rather than signed-off, finished portraits. That’s it’s raison d’etre, as the opening “song” exemplifies: it’s 42 seconds of Keenan seemingly singing to herself while walking in the rain, perhaps just so she’d remember a melody that had popped into her head. It’s intimate, and very poignant now, naturally. As are many of the biro marks, brushstrokes and try-outs here. For Broadcast’s true believers, this is an essential and edifying experience, casting its own spells.