The Artist: Broadcast
Broadcast formed in Birmingham in the mid-90s. Led by vocalist Trish Keenan and multi-instrumentalist James Cargill, they were retro-futurists, obsessed with radiophonic textures, 60s library music and forgotten frequencies.
Their sound was precise but dreamlike. Clean lines, messy feelings.
Trish’s voice, part nursery rhyme, part cosmic signal, held everything in place. When she died in 2011 from pneumonia, everything stopped. Broadcast became a frozen archive. A ghost.
But the records still shimmer. Still pulse with strange energy. Still feel like transmissions from some parallel place.
The Record: Haha Sound (2003)
Haha Sound is Broadcast's most complete vision. Experimental but melodic. Dissolving but defined. Like a radio searching through channels in another dimension.
It opens with Colour Me In. Soft, dizzy, off-centre. A welcome note from a world that doesn’t fully exist.
Before We Begin is warmer, almost pop, but blurred at the edges. Tears in the Typing Pool slows things down to a whisper. The melody is delicate, the production even more so. It sounds like someone falling asleep in a childhood memory.
Pendulum and Black Umbrellas strike a darker note. Rhythm-heavy, clanging, hypnotic. The percussion stumbles and loops like a broken toy. The bass pulses like it’s warning you. But there’s beauty in the chaos - shape within the noise.
Valerie is haunting. A spoken sample, disembodied and strange, floats through tape hiss and drifting tones. It’s part story, part signal.
Winter Now might be the emotional core of the record. It builds and falls, fragile and exhausted.
And through it all, her voice. Unaffected, measured, slightly detached.
Haha Sound feels like a dream you only half-remember.
Start With:
- Colour Me In - An off-kilter lullaby
- Before We Begin - Swirling sadness and sweetness
- Pendulum - Disjointed unease
