In a recent interview for The Wire magazine Trish Keenan of the enigmatic Midlands based duo Broadcast said of their 2009 album : Broadcast and The Focus Group Investigate Witch Cults of the Radio Age’ : “I’d like people to enjoy the album as a Hammer horror dream collage where Broadcast play the role of the guest band at the mansion drug party by night, and a science worshipping Eloi possessed by 3/4 rhythms by day”.
I was intrigued to see how such a trippy atmosphere could be recreated live so I went along to see Trish and musical partner James Cargill in the flesh at the Rocca Brancalone as part of this year’s Ravenna Festiival, the second in a series of four individual audio-visual shows under the title ‘Musica & Visioni – Weird Tales’ (other performers being Austria’s Fennesz, Mexico’s Murcof & Italy’s own Massimo Volume)
For around an hour, the duo play what Trish Keenan shyly introduces as “improvised sounds and vocal ruminations” to three short films by Ghost Box kingpin Julian House (aka Focus Group). These films (each labelled on introductory slides as being part of a series of ”audio visual modules’) are respectively entitled ‘ Winter Sun Wavelengths’, ‘Songform And Story’ & ‘Dream/Ritual’.
The first and third films are the black & white, while the second is in colour. The images are a collage of distorted nature and the sort of rapidly mutating geometrical forms that might cause problems if you have a pacemaker fitted.
For the first movie the soundtrack is more atonal a with wordless moans from Trish as James cranks out some earthy electronic beats. My video gives a flavour of this :
The other pieces are less harsh and feature slightly more conventional song structures within the floaty ambience. At one point they weave in Corporeal’ from their album ‘Tender Buttons’ ‘which features the slightly disconcerting repeated line “do that to me, do that to my anatomy” (Robert Plant is unlikely to do a cover!).
For this section, Trish poses theatrically while bathed in the images with her shadow looming onto the screen behind her. It’s all nostalgically psychedelic in a Syd Barrett kind of way.
The effect is more eccentric and magical rather than dark or mysterious, more Wicker Man than Blair Witch.
Well worth the trip.
