The Artist: Public Service Broadcasting
Public Service Broadcasting are not a band. They're a synth séance. Founded by J. Willgoose, Esq. (I kid you not) the group uses vintage public information films, forgotten radio broadcasts and mid-century optimism as raw material - cutting, splicing, looping and layering them into something unique, haunting, captivating.
They wear tweed.
They use typewriters as instruments.
They sound like hope, static, memory and existential panic.
What's not to love?
The Record: The Race for Space (2015)
Instead of lyrics, you get crackling transmissions, grainy narrators and the steady pulse of human curiosity hurtling into the void.
It shouldn’t work. But by God, it does.
The Race for Space is less a concept album and more a time machine built from tape hiss and electronica. It opens with JFK’s voice, slow and cinematic, declaring the intention to go to the Moon - not because it is easy, but because it is hard. Then the drums hit.
What follows is a journey through triumph and tragedy:
Fire in the Cockpit doesn’t dramatise the Apollo 1 disaster - it mourns it, with slow piano and looping static like a funeral in orbit.
The Other Side builds unbearable tension from a real-time Apollo 8 mission feed. No lyrics. Just strings, pulse and silence - as three astronauts vanish behind the moon.
Gagarin flips the mood entirely - a horn-drenched funk explosion celebrating the first man in space. A literal space jam.
The emotional range is ridiculous. One track feels like archival grief; the next like Soviet disco propaganda. Yet it’s all held together by tone, texture and an unshakable sense of awe - not just at spaceflight, but at the very idea of human effort.
It’s not nostalgic. It’s reverent.
It’s not post-rock. It’s post-everything.
Start With:
- The Other Side - Houston holds its breath
- Go! - Pure propulsion
- Gagarin - Zero gravity funk