I can almost pinpoint the exact moment I knew it was going to be love for Broadcast and I. It was somewhere between pressing play on ‘Tender Buttons’, and watching Trish Keenan entrance her audience at Matt Groening’s All Tomorrow’s Parties. That show took place 10 years after they’d released their debut album, The Noise Made By People. I vaguely remember trying to keep it together, as the 4th gin slush puppy slowly melted in my hand and the excesses of the weekend kicked in. As I pieced together my memories of a weekend brimming with performances in the hazy days that followed, I knew that Broadcast had been one of the special ones. I fully intended to figure out why.
The asthmatic stalling of those machine-made songs have come to embody everything I still can’t explain about Warp Records: how oddness can grow from calculation, and how recycled structures can sound so vivid. It’s the very thing that’s kept me hooked on music, franky. That there are people making it for the love of weirdness. That curveball – let’s call it a passion for the outré – is the variable that makes it bearable that Kid Rock has made more money than anyone on Warp probably, sadly, ever will.
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A few weeks after we’d got back from that gig at Butlin’s, I came across a CD copy of The Noise Made By People. Aside from being the first time I’d heard earlier Broadcast material, it was also the first time I’d realised they’d found their home at Warp. I was baffled when I first saw the little logo on the back cover. All I really knew about Warp at the time was Aphex Twin and LFO – and I’d heard that they’d signed a band local to me by the name of Gravenhurst – but beyond that they were still the guys who’d made their mark putting out all those “weird IDM” artists.
Here were a band, from that churning factory town of Birmingham, who were making a nebulous, lo-fi sound that was both nauseatingly cool, and completely nervous. Broadcast were – in Keenan’s labyrinthine, lyrics, in Roj Stevens evolving synth work and in James Cargill’s fuzzy, baroque basslines – a very smart band. The Noise Made By People is a robotic, pensive record that straddles postrock and pop with the greatest of ease, eerily trouncing gushes of emotion with composed swathes of machinery.
I later found out that Warp had released Broadcast’s earlier outtakes compilation; Work and Non Work as well as Stereolab’s Aluminium Tapes and some of the early Red Snapper material, too. Learning that, it started to make sense. Humans tend to root for the underdog, and that’s part of what has made Warp the enduring beast that it’s become: a gateway for norms like me to discover weird music that confronts and confuses, yet without isolating them. The Noise Made By People remains everything that Warp represents: the trendy outsider, unashamedly different and yet still familiar.
From where I’m standing, The Noise Made By People was also a turning point for Warp. It marked the beginning of a subtler approach to their increasingly eclectic signing policy, and paved the way for a slew of releases that would go on to define the modern history of accessible experimental music. The first single – the lounge-y, bouncing ‘Come On, Let’s Go’ was followed by ‘Echo’s Answer’, a sombre ballad-sans-beats that chirps and wobbles beneath Keenan’s soft vocals.
It wasn’t a hit. It never charted, and it made no sense as a single, yet in its simplicity and restraint, it remains a work in progress that never wanted to be anything more. Broadcast weren’t punching for the mainstream because they didn’t want to. Whether they were the glowing mellow pop band or the saw-toothed kraut-rockers, they remained true to their own and Warp’s ethos: pushing boundaries whilst remaining inherently listenable.
In many ways, Broadcast were the antidote to the glossy, laid back shimmer of Moloko and the chic, dull dinner party soundtracks of Zero 7. They screamed restraint without conceit, remaining resolutely warm – aided by quivering synths, theremin hums and Mellotron strings – and natural throughout. It also preceded a lot of the Moloko’s and Zero 7’s of this world, which says a lot about the arena that they and Warp occupy. It’s that philosophy that’s ensured the legacy of this album, even after Keenan’s tragic, early passing.
Duly, Broadcast aren’t the same band anymore. They couldn’t be. Their legacy lives on in the Berberian Sound Studio soundtrack, and in some ways through the label they stayed loyal to throughout most of their career. I’m sure that loyalty has everything to do with Warp’s commitment to artistic freedom, and to championing music that interests them, regardless of genre. In their mutual complete refusal to cooperate with the mainstream, neither Warp nor Broadcast showed a desire to be understood. With shaken ear drums, comforting distortion and soft, often silly sentiments. The Noise Made By People is a record that embodies everything I love about Warp: that untouchable otherness.
You can follow Billy Black on Twitter here: @billybillyblack
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