Broadcast

Broadcast

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SOUND ENGINEERS

Broadcast Dig Deep into the Past for the Futurist Pop of Haha Sound
In a nondescript flat in Birmingham, England, Broadcast recorded the follow-up to their acclaimed debut, The Noise Made by People, with the equally mesmerizing Haha Sound. Drawing on the sounds of the past -- from experimental psychedelia to old sound effects records -- James Cargill, Trish Keenan, and Tim Felton are pushing the boundaries of a rock band's sound, flooding it with eerie synthesizers and icing it with Keenan's sweet coos. Cargill spoke with Barnes & Noble.com's Lydia Vanderloo about the building blocks of Broadcast's sound.

Barnes & Noble.com: What are some of the influences that play into your sound?

James Cargill: Well, initially when the band started, there was this band called the United States of America that we all listened to a lot. They were a really great-sounding band because of the instrumentation. They suggested that you could have a lot of color in your music instead of playing just straight-up rock music.

B&N.com: They were really experimenting with synthesizers at a time, in the late '60s, when they were brand new.

JC: That's right, yeah. In the same way the Velvet Underground did, they put avant-garde with a dynamic group, and I still find that really exciting. I think that was the foundation for our band, and it still is important to us today.

B&N.com: Are there any other bands that have been an influence?

JC: It's funny, because as a band I don't think we latch on to artists. You know how some groups will just sort of listen to Pet Sounds to do an album, and just have one influence. For me, I like to take in as much as I can. Lately, I've been listening to a lot of library production music from Europe, from the early '70s -- from France, particularly.

B&N.com: Like sound effects records?

JC: Yeah. They'll do a theme of "industry" or something, and then it'll be a band playing sounds. There's this one great album called Sound Industrial, where it's a guy in a studio trying to make mechanical-sounding tunes, obviously to go behind an industrial film. And it's just so imaginative and inventive, his use of effects and stuff.

B&N.com: And it's definitely not intended for a pop audience.

JC: Well, it was never commercially released. It was just sold to TV studios so they could use it as background music. But it's amazing because it is so inventive -- almost more inventive than most of the music that you would've heard around that time. I find that kind of thing fascinating. And also that it's pretty anonymous. There is no hero worship involved; it's just a bunch of studio guys.

B&N.com: There's no "cult of personality."

JC: Exactly, it's totally the opposite of that, which I find really exciting, actually.

B&N.com: What about films? I understand you guys are big film buffs.

JC: Yeah. We've got a really great video shop just down the road from us where they stock all kind of European film and experimental film, so we watch a lot of those while we're making a record. And it did sort of worm its way into the album, I think.

B&N.com: How do you think it manifested itself?

JC: I'm not really sure. You kind of get a mood. Some of the songs on our album, the more sort of haunting, nursery rhyme sort of thing, that comes from watching European films like [the Czech horror-psychological fantasy] Valerie and Her Week of Wonders, which have got these very strange folk elements to the story. They're quite haunting films with bouts of surrealism in the footage.

B&N.com: Are you trying to capture the same feel in a different medium?

JC: Exactly. I think that's what it is. It's the atmosphere of the film that you can put in your own music.

B&N.com: And what about the visuals connected with the band. When you play live, you tend to have sort of kaleidoscopic light shows and run film footage behind the band.

JC: Well, it's funny because that footage is like stock film -- much like the library music. It's stock footage that we found in car boot sales on 16-millimeter film. We ended up [using that] because it looked really great to us.

B&N.com: And you usually play in the dark, right?

JC: Yeah, I really like to play in the darkness, with just the 16-millimeter films projected on us to light us up. It looks quite good. I always like to watch gigs when they're dark. Maybe it's a mood thing. It makes it slightly more intimate as well.

B&N.com: I know you've been compared to Stereolab a lot over the years, probably because you have the synths-plus-rock sound happening, a female singer, and maybe some similar reference points. Are there any other contemporary bands that you feel kinship with?

JC: Yeah, there's a few small things. There's a new band called the Projects here that we really like. It's Morgana from Stereolab -- it's her new band. They've only done one single. There's a band called Circle from Finland that I really like. I like Asa-Chang and Junray as well -- it's a Japanese guy. It's on the Leaf label; it's more electronic sounding.

B&N.com: Any American bands?

JC: Yeah. It's funny because over here the indie press is really lapping up a lot of American bands at the moment. Well, they have been for the last couple of years, with the Strokes and all that. I think some of it was very good music.

B&N.com: What of it did you like?

JC: I love the Yeah Yeah Yeahs; I think they're really good. There's this band called Bablicon from Chicago. I think they're brilliant.

B&N.com: Do you listen to British folk music at all?

JC: Trish [Keenan] does.

B&N.com: Sandy Denny?

JC: Yeah, Sandy Denny and Vashti Bunyon and Anne Briggs. I really love that sort of sound. It's funny because you have that weirdness but you have this childlike, haunting, simple song. There's no reason for it to be disturbing.

B&N.com: It's sort of like, here's what it is up front, but there's this undercurrent behind telling the back story. Things aren't always what they seem. Fairy stories can also be scary as well.

JC: And nursery rhymes. "Ring Around the Roses" is about the Black Death.

B&N.com: Why did you call the album Haha Sound?

JC: I don't know specifically. I thought it kind of resonated for us on a few different levels. One was that it was almost an ironic stab, because it was quite difficult making the album; there were some pretty bad moments. And we thought, Well, nobody's really going to know about that, so let's call it [Haha Sound]. And then also, "haha" means "mother" in Japanese, so we liked that.

August 2003