Search - Broadcast & The Focus Group :: Broadcast & The Focus Group Investigate Witch Cults of the Radio Age

The most experimental of '66

echoes of empires | San Francisco, CA USA | 11/05/2009

(2 out of 5 stars)

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As much as I hate to say it, I've found myself disappointed with this ep despite my wishes to like it. From their first singles to now, Broadcast has consistently moved toward this sound, but this record leaves behind anything at all that could be considered winsome or pretty, descriptions that definitely fit their earliest work. It's a full-on barrage of psychedelia, in the 'bad trip' sense of the word; I've heard others compare their more recent far with The United States of America/Joe Byrd and the Field Hippies, which makes sense; but here, it's as if Broadcast has discarded all semblence of friendliness, taking the harshest examples of those bands' sound and running them end over end to the very last note. The dissonance and 'treated' quality of the music, the vocals especially, is taken to the breaking point, and sadly, I find it very alienating. On a blog somewhere a fan wrote about seeing them (on their recent tour) and said he was glad he wasn't on any mind-expanding drugs, because the music has become so wholly dissonant and claustrophobic - and I agree; it's like a sound collage for a bad trip. Take the darkest moments of early Pink Floyd and make that your bread and butter, and you'll get the idea. Yes, it's brilliant in its way; and yes, they're excellent at creating that sound and making something unique from the remnants of the darkest of psychedelia. But no, I don't care for it, wishing, really, that they'd hark back to the feel of their earlier work, where, though chill, there was human warmth in the music, musically and lyrically.











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A Complete Experience.

Shep | Bay Area, cali | 11/06/2009

(5 out of 5 stars)

"First I would say this album is not to be listened to in pieces, or by favorite track. It's almost a modern rebirth of concept full albums as we're starting to see everywhere, even with the Flaming Lips newest release "Embryonic." This Broadcast collaboration is a selection of sounds and voice to fit a time when your willing to completely shut up and experience.



The shift between tracks that contain a memorable melody, beat and tracks that are an imagination of ambience plays almost as a reflection of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band at times and definetely has futuristic interpretations of a beatelesque sound, especially in "The Be Colony."



The drums pull from acid jazz, jazz, and hip-hop as is typical in Broadcast releases, giving it that trip-hop feel at times, but just when you think they've played what will be a looped clip for the next four minutes of a song, the sound is forgotten and goes away.

I understand the fear of experiencing this while under the influence of something, but the human element really is there, it isn't machine at all, both in it's continuity and it's refusal to repeat. It's like a completely organic sound expressed through the tissue of what seems as inanimate things. Half of modern music has the ability to produce a bad trip if someone is doing drugs, so that's really not a fair method of review...that being said the sound does get a bit over the top at times. In the psychadelic light of the music, the pull from a general flow to a climax of sound, leaves an incredible amount of suspence, such as in "Ritual / Looking In" which can be uncomfortable at times. The sound of animals also adds a strange factor, and could really trip a tripper out..kind of like a coco rosie's album. This factor though adds to the complete feel this album gives, sometimes you're left flying, drowning, in a forest, in the snow and all in sound.



This review might seem a bit metaphoric in its description but it's rather necessary to get it's undestanding across. The mixing is beautifully done, and sometimes carries with it a bit of poking fun at the elements used in echo and ambience to remind the listener that they are in complete control of their technique.



This album is warm, wise, sarcastic and pretty genius if you understand the genre..capable of surprising even the most avid Broadcast fan."

Excellent and a half

William R. Nicholas | Mahwah, NJ USA | 12/17/2009

(4 out of 5 stars)

"You know all that wierd, merky music you hear in Europian films, say from 1966, 67: you know what I mean--its music but its not. A bunch of cloudy keyboard scribblings, covert sounds, formelss but highly intreguing little tone bursts? Its there, than its gone? Did you really hear it?



That is what this whole album is. Broadcast takes all those wonderful smeared-fingerpaint sounds that never made the soundtrack and spread them over 45 minutes. There are harpichords, the female singer's voice running through a P.A. system, echhos, and little jump cuts. Sounds float without rhythm, overlapping other sounds.



This is truely one of the creepiest albums I have heard in a long time, and I am saying that as a lifelong collector of "out" music. It is hard to scare a 40-year-old who had Hawkwind albums at age ten, but Witch Cults Of The Radio Age genuinely freaked me. I get that feeling you get when you are a kid, when something scares you, so you keep looking at it



Plain and simple, this may be the closest a sober person will get to an acid trip. The Underground named In the Court of the Crimson King "the acid album of 1970." That was then, this is now. That was their's. this is ours.



There are songs here. Great Ones. If you ever doubt Broadcast's ability as songwriters, go back to The Noise Made by People from 2000.



But that is not what Radio Age is about. It is about those textures and acidy little trips on the back pages of albums and films all over the 60s. Broadcast are so good, they can perfectly bring off what may SEEM formless and have the disciplne to make it work over an entire album. Everything segues well and works over the long haul here.



Turn off your mind, relax, and BUY THIS CD."