Broadcast with Harry Tafoya

Yasi is joined by art and music writer Harry Tafoya to shed some light on the mysterious and enchanting cult favorite Broadcast. They dive into the band’s Birmingham roots, the inspiration that led to their hypnotizing signature sound, vocalist Trish Keenan’s enigmatic delivery and lyricism, and their lasting legacy. Subscribe on YouTube. CREDITS:Host: Yasi SalekGuest: Harry Tafoya @harrytafoyaProducer: Rob SundermannEditor: Adrian BridgesAdditional Production Supervision: Justin SaylesTheme Song: Bethany CosentinoLearn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:05Speaker 00

  What's with this band anyway? I don't get it. Can you please explain? Wait, like Bandplain? Never heard this band in my life. Oh, you haven't? I'd love that. Really? Why? Yeah, I love this song. Oh, I don't know that one. Bandplain, Bandplain, Bandplain. I really like this band!

• 0:32Yasi Salek?

  Whatever. I'm their biggest fan.

• 0:34Speaker 00

  Bandplain, Bandplain, Bandplain, Bandplain.

• 0:45Yasi Salek?

  Hello and welcome to Bandplain. I am your host, Yasi Salek. This is a show where I invite an expert guest on to help me explain a cult band or iconic artist. Today's episode is about the band Broadcast. My guest today is art and music writer and my online friend, come to life, Harry Tafoya. Welcome to the program, Harry.

• 1:04Speaker 02

  Thank you so much for having me.

• 1:05Yasi Salek?

  I love calling it a program.

• 1:07Speaker 02

  It is a program.

• 1:08Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, is it not?

• 1:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:09Yasi Salek?

  Technically, you're a writer, you know.

• 1:11Speaker 02

  This is, this is, this is an award-winning series.

• 1:13Yasi Salek?

  Well...

• 1:13Speaker 02

  That's what my agent told me.

• 1:14Yasi Salek?

  Sure, yeah. I'm sure we've won like some online award.

• 1:17Speaker 02

  I'm sure. BAFTAs are next, or...

• 1:20Yasi Salek?

  Um, let me read you something. Cold, clarion, and remote in its beauty. Keenan's contralto is a singular instrument. An echo that never stops reverberating. Do you know who said that? It was Harry Tafoya.

• 1:36Speaker 02

  It was Harry Tafoya.

• 1:37Yasi Salek?

  That's right, that's right. Do you, can you tell me what, um, clarion means? Is it like clear?

• 1:43Speaker 02

  It means clear like a bell.

• 1:44Yasi Salek?

  It's like a fancy word.

• 1:45Speaker 02

  It's, yeah, it's a word for, for clear like a bell.

• 1:48Yasi Salek?

  Okay, gorgeous.

• 1:49Speaker 02

  I remember hearing that word used somewhere in the wild and thinking to myself, ooh.

• 1:53Yasi Salek?

  You're like, I'm gonna put that in my back pocket for later.

• 1:55Speaker 02

  It's a fun flavor of a word, too.

• 1:56Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, and it's not annoying like Chantus. Like, I don't think it's overused.

• 2:02Speaker 02

  No.

• 2:02Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:02Speaker 02

  No.

• 2:03Yasi Salek?

  It will be no.

• 2:04Speaker 02

  I, what did you say? Claire in French? It's the same root.

• 2:08Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 2:08Speaker 02

  You know, there we go.

• 2:10Yasi Salek?

  So you're just being French as usual.

• 2:11Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 2:12Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, as you love to be. Um, Harry, can you talk to me about your relationship with the band Broadcast?

• 2:19Speaker 02

  I'm obsessed with this band.

• 2:21Yasi Salek?

  I, I had a feeling.

• 2:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm obsessed with this band. I am also somebody, I have to say, who like does not obsess very easily.

• 2:28Yasi Salek?

  Okay, you don't even have some pop star that you're like feuding around?

• 2:32Speaker 02

  Honestly, no.

• 2:33Yasi Salek?

  Interesting.

• 2:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, and I think that like that actually served me quite well as a writer.

• 2:37Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 2:37Speaker 02

  But then, as a human being, it does...

• 2:39Yasi Salek?

  Definitely not as a gay guy.

• 2:41Speaker 02

  Definitely not as a gay guy.

• 2:42Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:42Speaker 02

  I, I kind of struggle.

• 2:43Yasi Salek?

  It ostracizes you.

• 2:44Speaker 02

  Majorly. I don't have like a kind of like terrifying parasocial relationship that I could kind of use as kind of common ground with other people.

• 2:50Yasi Salek?

  Totally, totally.

• 2:52Speaker 02

  I heard this definition for the difference between millennial and Gen Z, which is that, I think it's really good. Millennials were hyperlink, Gen Z was algorithm.

• 3:04Yasi Salek?

  Oh, yeah, okay.

• 3:05Speaker 02

  And I think that my experience with Broadcast was a kind of gradual, self-directed obsession where I got breadcrumbs and then kind of followed them down this like very particular rabbit hole where my mind kind of blew up in the process. And I don't think I've had that with really anyone else.

• 3:29Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 3:29Speaker 02

  You know, even musicians I love, I just don't have that kind of relationship where like I am following them to places I don't really know where. And the kind of mystery of where it's gonna go is a thing that like really drives me in that direction and, and never stops being fascinating, too.

• 3:48Yasi Salek?

  Broadcast, I think, is really one of those bands that super lends itself to that experience. Cause they aren't very huge in any, by any metric. But like, it's like an if you know, you know situation. And nobody's kind of like, well, honestly, except for myself, so I'm gonna get into this. Like, I feel like nobody's like, oh, I like that band, you know? Which is how I was.

• 4:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:11Yasi Salek?

  Cause I, you know, I'll, I'll be honest, I don't like to lie to my beloved listeners.

• 4:18Speaker 02

  Of course.

• 4:19Yasi Salek?

  I, I like but don't love, and I don't wanna pair the, or like group them together, but I think other people have, so it's like kind of okay.

• 4:25Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 4:26Yasi Salek?

  There's like kind of world of music that like is like the Stereo Lab, Broadcast.

• 4:32Speaker 02

  Record collector.

• 4:33Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, it's, there's just something about it that I love, but don't ever seek out. There, I really love Tender Buttons.

• 4:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:41Yasi Salek?

  I, I just, it's the only album I ever had experience with. And for whatever reason, I never was like, let me go further, which, until today, um, the last few weeks. But I totally, I totally get what you're saying.

• 4:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:53Yasi Salek?

  I don't love to like, well, I do love to, which is why I'm trying to avoid it, old man yelling at the clouds. But it really is true that we used to be a proper country.

• 5:02Speaker 02

  It's true.

• 5:02Yasi Salek?

  And have to, uh, earn our information about a band and kind of makes you love them more. Even with this one, though, it was quite difficult. Like, I was in the subreddit for like kind of rooting around and there was a lot of good information in there. But that's mostly where it lives, you know? Okay, so we'll take it from the top, Harry. And the top is Patricia M. Keenan. Born September 28th, 1968, a Libra. Sadly, died in January 14th, 2011, very young. She was born in Winston Green, a multicultural inner-city area in west Birmingham. Um, home, Birmingham almost, also famously home to Black Sabbath and Judas Priest.

• 5:43Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 5:44Yasi Salek?

  Um, not similar.

• 5:46Speaker 02

  No, not in the least.

• 5:47Yasi Salek?

  No, not. Um, she said, "I was born into a Cathy come home England." I don't know what that means. Do you know what that means?

• 5:53Speaker 02

  I believe it's a, like a...

• 5:55Yasi Salek?

  A TV show?

• 5:56Speaker 02

  Um, I believe it's a TV show, but it's a, like a kitchen sink.

• 6:00Yasi Salek?

  Oh, drama kind of thing, totally. Morrissey core.

• 6:02Speaker 02

  Morrissey core.

• 6:03Yasi Salek?

  Um, oh yeah, it is kitchen, a television play about homelessness. Fascinating.

• 6:09Speaker 02

  Fascinating.

• 6:10Yasi Salek?

  Okay, she did this interview, um, later in her career, but it was, they do the parts about her upbringing. They said, "Were you musical as a child?" And she said, "I don't think I stood out particularly. I didn't really apply myself in any way, and I wasn't pushed into it from my parents, though they were really into music." And the interviewer's like, "What kind?" And she said, "I grew up with Bob Dylan, Neil Diamond. We had a Ponton's Holiday in the seventies, and there was a talent competition. And my mom and dad said, 'You've got to get something ready for that talent competition.' They were like, 'Go on, get up on stage.' My mom used to do a bit of singing in clubs when she was younger. She didn't really take it seriously. For the talent competition, my dad said, 'Why don't you learn 'Love is in the Air' on your recorder? He taught me all the notes and I wrote them all down. We had our auditions and my mom didn't get into the final thing.

• 6:53Yasi Salek?

  I got in with my recorder. She must have been terrible. A strange thing happened. We were in the chalet. I must have been getting worried about going on stage to play my recorder. My mom said, 'Come on, it's 7:30. They want us all backstage and getting ready.' I wouldn't go. Like a seven-year-old kid, I was like, 'No, mom.' I must have been nervous, though. I didn't feel nervous. My eyes were all red from crying, so I didn't wanna go, but I got up and I did it. That was it. That was my Ponton's Holiday. It's funny, the second time I would go to Ponton's, it would be for music as well." So, musical parents.

• 7:22Speaker 02

  Musical parents.

• 7:23Yasi Salek?

  There is a tiny, uh, kind of, I'd say unsubstantiated piece of information that her mother was a sex worker.

• 7:34Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 7:34Yasi Salek?

  But that is, that's not true. Or maybe it is, we don't know.

• 7:37Speaker 02

  I don't know, she said it.

• 7:38Yasi Salek?

  She did say it, but she only ever said it once.

• 7:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 7:42Yasi Salek?

  And it feels like it could have been a joke.

• 7:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 7:45Yasi Salek?

  Nothing wrong, I'm just, I'm simply, I could not find, like, come hell or high water in all my searching, I could not find anything else to sort of back that up. And also, I'm like, it doesn't really like gel with me with like the mom that takes, goes on family vacation with her dad and has you sing on a recorder.

• 8:02Speaker 02

  Sure, but I mean, it's funny because like in the context of that particular thing where she's saying it, she's talking about the blankness of her mother, too.

• 8:11Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 8:11Speaker 02

  So, I mean, I...

• 8:13Yasi Salek?

  Maybe it was a metaphor?

• 8:14Speaker 02

  Maybe it was a metaphor.

• 8:15Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 8:15Speaker 02

  But it is just a kind of interesting early note that there's already a kind of disassociation with the mother.

• 8:23Yasi Salek?

  Totally.

• 8:24Speaker 02

  For sure.

• 8:24Yasi Salek?

  Totally.

• 8:25Speaker 02

  And I don't know, I think that kind of one thing I love about her so much as a singer is that she's a very emotional singer in a very weird way. The emotions come in a very roundabout way. Um, and I would almost...

• 8:40Yasi Salek?

  Can you say more about that?

• 8:41Speaker 02

  I mean, the voice itself can do, it's limited, right? It's got, it's a limited voice. It can kind of, um, make really, really cool sounds.

• 8:52Yasi Salek?

  Like she's not a belter.

• 8:53Speaker 02

  She's not a belter.

• 8:54Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 8:54Speaker 02

  But what is cool about it, though, I mean, the thing that I've kind of have been thinking about is that it almost kind of sounds like she's able to, with her very clear voice, get to a place in between certain emotions. So she's not inhabiting like sorrow or love or something.

• 9:12Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 9:13Speaker 02

  It's this weird in-between place where it has like tinges of it.

• 9:16Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 9:17Speaker 02

  But it's never quite a fully embodied emotion the way that you would get from like a traditional belter.

• 9:23Yasi Salek?

  Totally. Yeah, I think what I would feel when I was listening to it is it's almost like she holds back in a way that leaves more space for you to sort of fill in your emotional response to the songs.

• 9:34Speaker 02

  Totally.

• 9:34Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 9:35Speaker 02

  And she is, I mean, like, so much about her is a projection screen.

• 9:39Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 9:39Speaker 02

  You know, like, down to the fact that she would wear all the time these like very, like starch white tunics that you could kind of project onto, like, I mean, the live shows all had super intense amounts of projections onto them. That she was a blank slate is a very kind of big early part of

• 9:55Yasi Salek?

  Totally.

• 9:55Speaker 02

  this lady's life.

• 9:56Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, that's so interesting. While her mother, Xena, who may or may not have been a sex worker, her father, Jonah, do not know the name, could not find. She had two brothers, Malcolm and John, and two sisters, Maxine and Barbara, so kind of a big family.

• 10:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:09Yasi Salek?

  This is the, uh, the blankness quote you were referring to. She told this to the journalist Ben Cardu in 2005. "I've got no problem with people knowing me or any personal details about myself. I've had a crazy life. I was brought up by a prostitute." I imagine what it's like to be a prostitute, what you have to turn off inside to do it. To a certain degree, it's a description of my mom. She's talking about the song Goodbye Girls.

• 10:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:32Yasi Salek?

  She has a blankness to her sometimes. There's a reason she ended up as a prostitute.

• 10:38Yasi Salek?

  Maybe.

• 10:39Speaker 02

  Maybe.

• 10:40Yasi Salek?

  And maybe, maybe prior to family life.

• 10:41Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 10:42Yasi Salek?

  Um.

• 10:43Speaker 02

  I know some vivacious.

• 10:45Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 10:45Speaker 02

  Prostitutes.

• 10:46Yasi Salek?

  Sure, of course. Listen, zero judgment here, but also there apparently her father's identity is like fully private and has like never been released.

• 10:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:56Yasi Salek?

  Um, but he was of Irish descent and loved music. Um, she went to Archbishop Grimshaw Roman Catholic School. Um, that same interviewer was like, were you a fangirl at seventeen, like in high school? And she said, I was probably just getting into the Smiths, coming out of Bowie and all the glam seventies things. I was a big Bowie fan from about thirteen to sixteen. It's the age I was growing up. When I started school, it was nineteen eighty. It was all new romantic stuff as well. I remember throwing myself at Morrissey one time. I got up on stage and tried. I don't know what I tried to do. It's really sweet.

• 11:27Speaker 02

  Relatable, so too. I would a hundred percent do that now.

• 11:30Yasi Salek?

  Throw yourself at Morrissey?

• 11:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 11:31Yasi Salek?

  If he's listening, Harry Tafoya is available. Um, and part Mexican.

• 11:36Speaker 02

  There we go. Absolutely. It sings to my soul.

• 11:39Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 11:39Speaker 02

  Deep play.

• 11:40Yasi Salek?

  Um, it's interesting, the new romantic stuff. That's like so opposite broadcast.

• 11:45Speaker 02

  It makes sense to me, though, because like, I think that one thing that all these things have in common, though, from Bowie in particular.

• 11:52Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 11:53Speaker 02

  Through to Morrissey and the new romantics, is they're all like very self-made.

• 11:57Yasi Salek?

  Totally.

• 11:57Speaker 02

  Right? I mean, like, the fun of new romantics is not going out, it's staying in and doing your hair.

• 12:03Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 12:04Speaker 02

  You know?

• 12:04Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 12:05Speaker 02

  So you are kind of doing, it's very make do, like glam isn't really all about like having perfectly like quaffed everything.

• 12:11Yasi Salek?

  Right, right.

• 12:12Speaker 02

  It's actually kind of looking like shit, but like in a very elevated way.

• 12:15Yasi Salek?

  And they're also, I guess there is also like intrinsic to both those things, like a distance from the audience, because

• 12:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 12:21Yasi Salek?

  you are doing artifice in terms of glam and also, I mean, really Morrissey also doing quite a bit of artifice, quite a bit of theater, you know?

• 12:28Speaker 02

  Majorly.

• 12:29Yasi Salek?

  Okay, so she worked a bunch of catering jobs after school and then at twenty-one, she moved to Mosley, um, where she was studying creative writing at Birmingham University while I guess working on music. Um, she formed a band there in nineteen ninety-two called Cobb, K O B.

• 12:48Speaker 02

  Cobb.

• 12:48Yasi Salek?

  Um, with local musicians Jude Owens and Adrian Baker. Um, sometime in nineteen ninety-three, that became a duo, Trish and Jude. It was called Hayward Winters.

• 12:59Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 13:00Yasi Salek?

  Um, couldn't find any music. There is no music. I don't think of this band, but they played, um, a couple of gigs. Apparently, there's, I get so little information.

• 13:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 13:10Yasi Salek?

  They're maybe played an opening slot for Paul Weller. Which is kind of amazing.

• 13:18Speaker 02

  That's rad.

• 13:18Yasi Salek?

  And also a bunch of other bands I've never heard of, except for Ocean Color Scene, which, who I think is also from Birmingham. Does that sound right?

• 13:24Speaker 02

  They're from Birmingham.

• 13:24Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, they're from that same area. I, I, I thought I remembered that.

• 13:27Speaker 02

  There we go.

• 13:27Yasi Salek?

  Um, then in nineteen ninety-three, this duo played some Radio Five Live session. Um, and in that same year, in ninety-three, Trish meets James Cargill.

• 13:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 13:39Yasi Salek?

  At a nineteen sixties psychedelic revival nightclub.

• 13:45Yasi Salek?

  Okay, I want to talk to you about this.

• 13:48Yasi Salek?

  They both were really into these sort of sixties psychedelic. Honestly, I had not heard of this band, the like main band that they always talk about, which is the United States of America. Were you familiar with this band?

• 14:02Speaker 02

  Band.

• 14:02Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, I listened and I was like, how did I never know? But probably because absolutely not friendly to the algorithm with that name.

• 14:08Speaker 02

  It's a crazy band.

• 14:09Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, it's a crazy band.

• 14:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 14:12Yasi Salek?

  You, you couldn't do that now, I don't think, and have any level of success probably.

• 14:16Speaker 02

  Although, I mean, like, one of my favorite albums this year is that band At, and just the At.

• 14:21Yasi Salek?

  Oh, yeah, yeah, really good.

• 14:22Speaker 02

  Which is honestly like, tears it. I love, I love that shit so much. I mean, maybe that's the move, though, also too, like, fuck it, like, let's be.

• 14:28Yasi Salek?

  Let's be ungooglable.

• 14:29Speaker 02

  Come on, like, let's, let's fuck up this SEO. Let's tank our stock.

• 14:33Yasi Salek?

  I need to change my name from Yasi Salek. Unfortunately, eminently googlable. There's one, one, one of one. So Trish said, I discovered psychedelia and it seemed to have self-help properties that allowed me to let go of an immobilizing working-class pride that was cementing a false identity into my psyche, stopping me from transforming.

• 14:51Speaker 02

  It's like, it's incredible.

• 14:54Yasi Salek?

  What? Um, Cargill said about the United States of America band, we were founded on their record. It's got this mix of avant-garde, pop and folk all working together. There's not a great deal like it. It seemed to say there's no limit. You don't have to use the Beatles as a barometer.

• 15:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 15:12Yasi Salek?

  Sick.

• 15:12Speaker 02

  That's cool. That's cool as fuck.

• 15:23Yasi Salek?

  So in my fanfiction, they were like, oh, my God, you like this music too, which is sometimes really all it takes. Um, and then James Cargill started kind of playing with Trish and Jude, played bass on their demos. Apparently, these demo tapes do exist, but Jude has them and she's not willing to share them. From what I read, it's a bit folky.

• 15:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 15:47Yasi Salek?

  Because Trish was so into Joni Mitchell.

• 15:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 15:51Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 15:51Speaker 02

  I also wonder too, so I mean, like, it's a weird thing with broadcasts because they do go full circle back to folk in the end. And I'm also kind of curious to with them, I mean, unless I hit up James Cargill somehow. One, one could.

• 16:06Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 16:06Speaker 02

  I, I, I have like, we do, he has a mutual.

• 16:09Yasi Salek?

  Oh, excuse me.

• 16:11Speaker 02

  But like, I'm also like never gonna like, reach out to him because I love him too much.

• 16:14Yasi Salek?

  Okay, right. You don't, you don't want to meet your heroes. I should have done that. I should have done more boots on the ground research.

• 16:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, or not, who cares?

• 16:22Yasi Salek?

  I know. Part of it is fun to like, just speculate on the fantasy.

• 16:26Speaker 02

  Majorly. I mean, I mean, like, I, he's somebody I care about so much that like, to talk to him, I would like, hyperventilate and like lose my shit.

• 16:34Yasi Salek?

  Do you think he's gonna listen to this?

• 16:36Speaker 02

  James, if you're listening to this.

• 16:37Yasi Salek?

  Harry is.

• 16:38Speaker 02

  Stop right here.

• 16:39Yasi Salek?

  Hyperventilating right now, just thinking about that very, that very possibility. Yeah.

• 16:44Speaker 02

  But, but I, I think that like, they go back to British folk.

• 16:48Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 16:48Speaker 02

  Which is a very different beast. And I think that like, one part of the sixties in the UK that I'm obsessed with also, because it's like, gets really weird and really scary very quickly. It, it's true. It's, it's like, um, that folk revival where they're trying to think about things that are distinctly British, like trying to like bring it back all these like revival songs that like, you know, didn't like have a tainted city life to them, basically.

• 17:13Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 17:14Speaker 02

  It gets very Stonehenge-y very quick.

• 17:15Yasi Salek?

  Hmm, which I, I'm not mad at.

• 17:17Speaker 02

  No. I mean, I mean, the witchiness of that is like incredible.

• 17:20Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 17:21Speaker 02

  You know? Um, and so part of me kind of wonders too, like, was she early Joni Mitchell or like, did she like have rumblings about this other thing? Like, they love this group Pentangle.

• 17:32Yasi Salek?

  Pentangle.

• 17:33Speaker 02

  Which is incredible too.

• 17:35Yasi Salek?

  Is that like witchy? I'm guessing by the name.

• 17:37Speaker 02

  Like, kind of, not really.

• 17:39Yasi Salek?

  Okay.

• 17:39Speaker 02

  You know, like, it's not nearly as witchy as like anything else coming from Birmingham.

• 17:42Yasi Salek?

  Right. I do this, please.

• 17:44Speaker 02

  Is Coven from Birmingham?

• 17:46Yasi Salek?

  Couldn't tell you.

• 17:47Speaker 02

  Couldn't tell you.

• 17:47Yasi Salek?

  Gun to my head.

• 17:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, it's, it's, that's a crazy band too. But it's like another one of those records, um, they have a nineteen sixty-nine album called Witchcraft Destroys Minds and Reap Souls. Like, just look at this.

• 17:58Yasi Salek?

  That's really cool.

• 18:00Speaker 02

  It's really, it's a cool as fuck.

• 18:01Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 18:01Speaker 02

  You know, but that's, it's in the water at the time. It's, it's in the air.

• 18:05Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 18:05Speaker 02

  Ambiently.

• 18:05Yasi Salek?

  It is interesting. I feel like this is like a bit of a tangent, but I do feel like every, like, every couple of like maybe decades, or maybe even every decade, British music like goes back to trying to be more British, you know, or like, because it's like, they are constantly taking from America.

• 18:22Speaker 02

  Totally.

• 18:22Yasi Salek?

  Which, you know, we know who invented rock music. Um, black people in America.

• 18:26Speaker 02

  Of course.

• 18:27Yasi Salek?

  But like everyone's like, oh, we've taken too much. Now we, we need to like reassert our British, you know? It's like with Britpop is a great example.

• 18:35Speaker 02

  Majorly.

• 18:36Yasi Salek?

  So it's very interesting that this is sort of that version is the Stonehenge.

• 18:40Speaker 02

  What's, it's funny though, because like Britpop is also like a folding back on itself in a very big way as well. And it, and it's, it's crazy like how, when you're gonna do that, it's a very conservative move either way.

• 18:52Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 18:52Speaker 02

  But I don't know. I mean, there, there's a, there's a weird blank openness and ambiguity to this particular folk revival, because like, I mean, it syncs up with folk horror so well too, where it's like, you know, what was the purpose of Stonehenge? Like, are they like gonna like do sacrifices on it? Like, what the fuck is going on here?

• 19:11Yasi Salek?

  I went there with my family and I was like, this is fucking sick. This place is sick.

• 19:17Speaker 02

  Metal as fuck.

• 19:18Yasi Salek?

  Metal as fuck.

• 19:19Speaker 02

  They're gonna open a portal. It's incredible.

• 19:21Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, love.

• 19:22Speaker 02

  Love it.

• 19:22Yasi Salek?

  There's cats, there's cats there.

• 19:24Speaker 02

  Beautiful.

• 19:24Yasi Salek?

  Which already, you know what that means.

• 19:26Speaker 02

  Of course.

• 19:26Yasi Salek?

  Blessed.

• 19:27Speaker 02

  Beautiful.

• 19:28Yasi Salek?

  In nineteen ninety-five, Trish meets, Trish Ann James meet Raj Stevens. And then Hayward Winters is no more. The three of them form a band called Pan Am Flight Bag.

• 19:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 19:40Yasi Salek?

  They love the sixties.

• 19:41Speaker 02

  I love it.

• 19:41Yasi Salek?

  Which was more of like, apparently a jam and improv band. I took this from Reddit. Um, this band only performed two gigs. And then in nineteen ninety-six, it's finally time to form Broadcast.

• 19:54Speaker 02

  Beautiful.

• 19:54Yasi Salek?

  Although it's potentially, I could not get a fucking straight answer on this, is possible they started in nineteen ninety-five? I know this is not that important, but I just want to allow for the possibility, because someone on Reddit claims to be in possession of their first demo tape, which has the three songs, Living Room, Lights Out and Every Wish and Dream. His post said this, Broadcast first ever demo tape, he had a picture, produced in nineteen ninety-five when the band were looking to get signed. This tape in particular belonged to the founder of Warlitzer Jukebox Records, Keith Jenkins. It has handwriting from Trish, three unreleased demos and even her phone number. There can't be more than ten of these in existence. Apparently, some of the other tapes have different covers. Their manager, Martin, said he recalls his having a different

• 20:38Yasi Salek?

  cover. At the request of the surviving members, I've been asked not to share a rip of the tape. But it is a very special piece of Broadcast history and I thought some might be interested to see it here. And he said it said nineteen ninety-five.

• 20:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 20:49Yasi Salek?

  So anyways, regardless, they formed, they have these demo tapes and they do get signed to that label.

• 20:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 20:56Yasi Salek?

  Warlitzer Jukebox.

• 20:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 20:59Yasi Salek?

  Um, which by this point, according to Discogs, had put out five other releases, including singles by Apples and Stereo, hell yeah. Um, Stereolab, who we mentioned earlier, that were splits with bands called The Heartworms and The Cat's Meow, who I'm not as familiar with. And that first single is called Accidental. Again, I couldn't get a date on this, but I think it was January nineteen ninety six, top of nineteen ninety six. Um, do you want to talk about the song Accidental?

• 21:27Speaker 02

  I love Accidental. I mean, I, I got like, like a major big chunk of my experience with Broadcast is primarily through.

• 21:37Yasi Salek?

  Tumblr.

• 21:38Speaker 02

  YouTube.

• 21:39Yasi Salek?

  Oh.

• 21:39Speaker 02

  I, I, I was not a Tumblr boy.

• 21:41Yasi Salek?

  Paint the picture. So Harry Tafoya is twelve years old.

• 21:45Speaker 02

  I'm in high school.

• 21:46Yasi Salek?

  Harry Tafoya is fifteen years old.

• 21:48Speaker 02

  I'm in probably sixteen or seventeen years old and I'm into punk.

• 21:53Yasi Salek?

  What is the internet situation? So I understand how old you are.

• 21:56Speaker 02

  I.

• 21:57Yasi Salek?

  Are we dialing up?

• 21:58Speaker 02

  No, it's, it's, it's, it's on my laptop in high school. I've got YouTube.

• 22:02Yasi Salek?

  Oh, you have a laptop and Wi-Fi. Oh, you're much younger than me.

• 22:08Yasi Salek?

  We, we did not have laptop and Wi-Fi for quite some time in the Aussie solid timeline.

• 22:13Speaker 02

  My, my, my work is much worse than.

• 22:17Speaker 02

  Yasi is, is, is preserved and, and, and beautiful. I, I have deteriorated like a crone before.

• 22:22Yasi Salek?

  You look gorgeous. Okay. So you're at your, you're at your little laptop. You're doing your paper for school.

• 22:27Speaker 02

  I'm like, I'm like fucking around being a loser. It's really happening. And it is, I, I, you know, hindsight is everything because like, I was involved in punk music in a way where I liked it because it was pop music.

• 22:40Yasi Salek?

  This is, so this would be what, early two thousands pop punk?

• 22:43Speaker 02

  It would have been.

• 22:44Yasi Salek?

  Link one eighty two?

• 22:45Speaker 02

  No, it would have been a little bit after that. It would have been, I mean, I was, it was right before Burger Records really kicked off.

• 22:54Yasi Salek?

  Oh, yeah, because you're from Orange County.

• 22:55Speaker 02

  I'm from Orange County.

• 22:55Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 22:56Speaker 02

  I could not give a fuck about those bands.

• 22:58Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 22:58Speaker 02

  It wa- it was one of those things. And I think.

• 22:59Yasi Salek?

  This is a delicate subject for me as, um, I have, I dated two Burger Records musicians, so we don't have to get into it.

• 23:05Speaker 02

  It was a time, it was a place.

• 23:07Yasi Salek?

  It was, it was totally the sixties, but what if we do it again?

• 23:10Speaker 02

  Literally.

• 23:11Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 23:11Speaker 02

  And I'm, and you know what? If anyone out there is a Burger Records musician, I'm single. You know, we can, we can do right now.

• 23:16Yasi Salek?

  Hundreds of them because they certainly released whatever came through the door.

• 23:19Speaker 02

  Absolutely, they did. But, you know, I think that what I liked about Burger Records was reverb.

• 23:27Yasi Salek?

  Sure.

• 23:28Speaker 02

  I loved reverb.

• 23:29Yasi Salek?

  Listen, I'm, I make jokes, but there are some incredible, kind of really slept on releases from Burger Records. That to this day, I'm like, surprise, didn't get bigger, that are really cool.

• 23:41Speaker 02

  Majorly.

• 23:41Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 23:42Speaker 02

  But I mean, like, the part of Burger Records that was fun to me is like, people who were obsessed with these pockets of pop culture that were so specific, so niche.

• 23:52Yasi Salek?

  Totally.

• 23:52Speaker 02

  And like, that kind of mirrored what my YouTube engagement was, my music path was.

• 23:57Yasi Salek?

  Got it.

• 23:58Speaker 02

  So I was somebody who was like, looking for like, old ass, like eighties, new wave, one-off weirdo bands.

• 24:05Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 24:06Speaker 02

  Like Japanese punk, I love Japanese punk, like, like, like bands, um, like, like Shonen Knife, but like all the kind of like bands around Shonen Knife.

• 24:14Yasi Salek?

  There was one on Fat Records that I used to listen to.

• 24:17Speaker 02

  That, that was the kind of area that I was going through. And I remember like, there was a time period where basically if you had like a nineteen eighties style DIY collage for an album cover, I was like, I'm gonna fucking turn this on right now. Oh, this is the good shit. Yeah. And I remember finding Broadcast that way. I found Tender Buttons that way.

• 24:37Yasi Salek?

  Amazing.

• 24:37Speaker 02

  Like, looking for this much older strain of music and then Tender Buttons comes up, comes up and I'm obsessed with it.

• 24:43Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. And then you started to pull threads.

• 24:45Speaker 02

  And, and how it leads up to Accidental is I saw Accidental, there's a one YouTube video, I think, where it is smashing up together The Wicker Man, Valerie and Her Week of Wonders and, um, The White Bus.

• 25:01Yasi Salek?

  Okay.

• 25:01Speaker 02

  Which is a really incredible experimental short film about a woman who is like, fuck my job. If I stay here, I'm gonna kill myself. I'm gonna go up north. And it's, it's, you know, and I'm gonna have some, some, some real encounters in the north, you know?

• 25:16Yasi Salek?

  Interesting.

• 25:17Speaker 02

  I remember watching this video with Accidental playing in the background. Um, I don't really know, I don't have the wherewithal musically to know what an Accidental means. It's part of musical notation that indicates an alteration of a given pitch. Which kind of fits with the song in as much as it's like, um, it doesn't sound right.

• 25:37Yasi Salek?

  Right. Yeah, there's something off about it.

• 25:38Speaker 02

  Something very off about it.

• 25:40Yasi Salek?

  I guess the song is written based around a sample from this nineteen sixty seven film called Accident. Which is also why it's called Accidental. It's by Joseph Losi. I don't know this film. I didn't watch it. But the, the score was done by this guy, uh, Sir John Dankworth.

• 25:58Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 25:58Yasi Salek?

  Um, they made this on a Commodore Amiga PC. And someone wrote, there's, there's like, I don't know if you read this, but there was this like, the essential broadcast on Fact Magazine, um, by Mikey IQ Jones. And he wrote about this, Broadcast's first single was a gentle woozy electronic ballad constructed around a sample of Sir John Dankworth's score to the Joseph Losi nineteen sixty seven film Accident. Produced, I just said that. Um, it's one of the band's most beautifully simple tunes, recalling the forlorn rainy day waltzes of Scott Walker's Scott Three album. Thanks to the stark dichotomy between Keenan's icy whisper and the profound poetry she recites.

• 26:38Yasi Salek?

  And he quotes her, "Under the strain, something's gotta break. I don't think this branch can take my weight. I've been at this tree all the time you've been looking for me. And you will not see or try to believe when there's no guarantee."

• 26:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 26:48Yasi Salek?

  Fuck me up, fam.

• 26:49Speaker 02

  I know. I mean, it's crazy because like, that song is a real encapsulation of like, everything that they have going on, going forward too. And I mean, like, her voice is so disembodied on that song.

• 27:01Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 27:01Speaker 02

  It is so drenched in reverb. It is such a cryptic, like, what the fuck are you talking about?

• 27:07Yasi Salek?

  It is very hard to make out their lyrics.

• 27:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 27:09Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 27:09Speaker 02

  Majorly.

• 27:20Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, this song is cool. It is interesting and I want your opinion on it because like, a lot is made of like, how Tender Buttons like, is completely like a different.

• 27:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 27:28Yasi Salek?

  But I, hmm, I kind of feel that they were like, almost fully formed here in Accidental and it doesn't. There's obviously like variants, but I, I don't feel like they're like, all of a sudden like some crazy evolution happens.

• 27:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 27:42Yasi Salek?

  But maybe you feel that way.

• 27:43Speaker 02

  No, I, I, I totally agree. I think it is like this real, I think that that band is so perfectly developed in the round.

• 27:51Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 27:52Speaker 02

  And it's weird because they flash different angles and different kind of paths that they could go or would have gone.

• 27:58Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, I guess we don't know what could have, what could have happened.

• 28:00Speaker 02

  We don't know what could have been, I mean, the direction it was going was folk in the end, which is wild.

• 28:06Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 28:06Speaker 02

  That that all kind of links up together somehow.

• 28:08Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 28:09Speaker 02

  Um, but yeah, I, I, I mean, like, it is, I think, from the very beginning, very pretty, fully formed.

• 28:15Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, it's crazy. Uh, and they're, I mean, they're quite young. Okay, so I, then they send a demo. Or at some point they had sent a demo to, um, Stereolab. And the manager, Martin Pike, was like, I'm into this. Um, he said, "The recordings were rough, but the vocals were entrancing. The beauty and purity of hearing Trish's vocals for the first time is still with me." He decided that Duo Phonic, which was Stereolab's label, um, should record and issue their next single. And that also he would manage the band. And the next single is Living Room with the B-side Phantom. Um, this is also around when John Peel starts playing them.

• 28:59Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 29:00Yasi Salek?

  Which is really major. Also, shout out fucking John Peel, man, like, had his ear to the fucking ground. I mean, I suppose, I didn't do this research and I'd have to kind of go back, but like, I, I'm presuming that Stereolab had like a slightly higher profile. So maybe like, people are checking for what they're putting out.

• 29:19Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 29:19Yasi Salek?

  Um, but yeah, he was really, he was really on top of it.

• 29:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, he's on the ground floor for sure.

• 29:24Yasi Salek?

  I don't actually have a lot to say about, um, Living Room.

• 29:27Speaker 02

  Neither do I.

• 29:28Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Um, it is interesting because so far the Duo Phonic Super Forty Fives, which is Stereolab's label, had put out just some singles by Yolong Tango and Tortoise, which is like incredible taste. Yeah, heard of them. Um, then the Book Lovers EP is next.

• 29:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 29:44Yasi Salek?

  The Book Lovers, what a fucking song, man.

• 29:48Speaker 02

  I don't like it.

• 29:49Yasi Salek?

  You don't like it?

• 29:49Speaker 02

  I don't think I like Book Lovers very much.

• 29:51Yasi Salek?

  I like it.

• 29:52Speaker 02

  I think it's a vibe.

• 29:53Yasi Salek?

  Because it was on Austin Powers International Man of Mystery soundtrack.

• 29:57Speaker 02

  Well, this becomes like a major thing for them though too. Like that, that soundtrack placement is like a very big deal.

• 30:02Yasi Salek?

  I mean, imagine.

• 30:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 30:03Yasi Salek?

  It's nineteen ninety seven. People are still like, absolutely trucking out to the, you know, place to get their soundtrack CDs. Also, there are a lot of really cool songs on here that had the cardigans, that had Strawberry Alarm Clock, had the Lightning Seeds, who I love, Edwin Collins, My King.

• 30:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 30:18Yasi Salek?

  So it was like, it, it wasn't like a very straightforward, like boring, typical pop soundtrack. Like, it was very much like in keeping with kind of like the vibe of Austin Powers being a throwback. Yeah.

• 30:28Speaker 02

  And then eventually we get Madonna. Beautiful stranger.

• 30:32Yasi Salek?

  Fucking god. Thank you, Austin Powers.

• 30:34Speaker 02

  Thank you, Austin Powers, honestly.

• 30:35Yasi Salek?

  Look at what you brought us.

• 30:36Speaker 02

  Yeah. Thinking of a character.

• 30:38Yasi Salek?

  Well, John Peel loved this, so In Your Face, he put on his Best of Fifty at number thirty four.

• 30:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 30:43Yasi Salek?

  Um, but that's okay. What, do you have a more of a preference here for one of these other songs? World Backwards, Message From Home? That's a great song.

• 30:49Speaker 02

  Oh, the Message From Home?

• 30:50Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 30:51Speaker 02

  That's a great song.

• 30:51Yasi Salek?

  It's really good.

• 30:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 30:52Yasi Salek?

  Um, and then the fourth song is According to No Plan. It's a great name.

• 30:56Speaker 02

  Yeah. I, I guess the reason why I don't like the Book Lovers, and I think that this is kind of like a, people love like, that first record in particular.

• 31:05Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 31:05Speaker 02

  Which I have to say, like, it's not my fave.

• 31:07Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 31:07Speaker 02

  And I think it is because when they're kind of getting big initially, they're almost kind of like, perfecting the vibe a little bit too much. You know, it sounds a little bit too much like a pastiche of the sixties.

• 31:19Yasi Salek?

  Right, right. Um, yeah, okay. And that makes sense why it fit on that soundtrack.

• 31:22Speaker 02

  I would love to like, hang out in a room without playing ambiently. But like, would I love to like, return to it and listen to it again, not particularly.

• 31:30Yasi Salek?

  Got it. It doesn't like emotionally grab you.

• 31:32Speaker 02

  No.

• 31:33Yasi Salek?

  Okay. I, I'm open to your, your thoughts and feelings.

• 31:38Speaker 02

  They're valid.

• 31:38Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, message from home. Also, like, thank God for genius.com because you really should know these lyrics because they're so good. Okay, I'll read Mikey IQ Jones here because he said it better than me. And because he is smarter than me probably and understands music better. In many ways, the band's first real breakthrough, the record's four songs were more strident, displaying the confidence and power that was only hinted at on their debut single. With drummer Steve Perkins and guitarist Tim Felton now fleshing out the group's arrangements. Broadcast Sound drew parallels to the cult psych band that initially brought the group together. United States of America. It is a cool thing for that being their first EP. It's like a lot.

• 32:22Yasi Salek?

  Like, we've said it before, but like, very, pretty fully formed.

• 32:26Speaker 02

  Majorly.

• 32:27Yasi Salek?

  Um, okay. Then, I just want to point out, so, the first album, that is not your favorite, um, comes out June 9th, 1997. So this is just like, kind of maybe painting a picture of what's going on in lightly similar music landscape. The second Portishead album also comes out this year. Again, I don't think they sound alike. That's not what I'm saying. But I do think if you were going to like, bifurcate between like, Britpop over here, Britpop and what it rocks. 1997, Britpop's almost over. And then on this side, this other, like, very British, very cool thing that's happening. I would, I would put Broadcast a little more on that side.

• 33:08Speaker 02

  Majorly.

• 33:09Yasi Salek?

  And they're signed to Warp at this point. Rob Mitchell, the co-founder of Warp, has heard them and signed them, which is fucking cool.

• 33:16Speaker 02

  It's major. And also too, like, like, one of the very first signees that is not purely electronic as well.

• 33:23Yasi Salek?

  Totally, yeah.

• 33:23Speaker 02

  Yeah. I think like Red Snapper had been what, like, one of the acts before then, like jazz. But this is like proper instrumental pop for the first time.

• 33:32Yasi Salek?

  There were, there's a lot made of that. Warp signed like a band, like a real band.

• 33:36Speaker 02

  Majorly.

• 33:37Yasi Salek?

  So this work, work not work, non-work, sorry, has a lot of songs we already talked about. So it has the first single, has the Book Lover's EP, and then it has, I guess, Lights Out. Is that new?

• 33:49Speaker 02

  It's a good song, too.

• 33:49Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, it's really good. It's not my favorite either.

• 33:51Speaker 02

  Yeah. Oh, no, sorry. Let me, let me clarify.

• 33:53Yasi Salek?

  So this is not what you mean. You mean that, you mean the, uh...

• 33:56Speaker 02

  The noise you made.

• 33:57Yasi Salek?

  The noise, okay, okay. Because this is, I guess this is a compilation. You wouldn't count it. Yeah, yeah, okay.

• 34:03Speaker 02

  There's bangers on that one, though.

• 34:04Yasi Salek?

  Total bangers.

• 34:09Yasi Salek?

  I, I couldn't find any of this, but Mojo mentioned that when Broadcast first came out, these are some of the, um, criticisms in the music press of them.

• 34:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 34:22Yasi Salek?

  Pram wannabes, that's a band.

• 34:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 34:25Yasi Salek?

  Indie Milkthops, and Poor Man's Stereolab.

• 34:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 34:30Yasi Salek?

  It's pretty mean.

• 34:31Speaker 02

  Pretty mean.

• 34:32Yasi Salek?

  Also, I don't think, even though I said it earlier, I don't think they sound like Stereolab.

• 34:36Speaker 02

  They don't. But I mean, like, it goes back to what...

• 34:38Yasi Salek?

  But I understand, yeah.

• 34:39Speaker 02

  Yeah. It goes back to what you were saying before about like, I think that there's already a kind of tide turning a couple of different ways, right? Britpop is over.

• 34:47Yasi Salek?

  Right. Britpop, like, I think officially dies in 1997. I've said it many times on this podcast when, um, Noel Gallagher wore his fuck-ass blazer to Downing Street.

• 34:57Speaker 02

  Yeah. So like, Britpop is dying.

• 35:00Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 35:00Speaker 02

  And then I think also too, like, there's already kind of a growing backlash to like, that kind of like, twee, record collecting.

• 35:09Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 35:09Speaker 02

  I mean, none of those bands.

• 35:10Yasi Salek?

  Anorak.

• 35:10Speaker 02

  Anorak.

• 35:11Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 35:11Speaker 02

  But like, I don't think of like, Pram or Stereolab as like, being all that twee necessarily.

• 35:17Yasi Salek?

  No, but there's, there's whimsy.

• 35:19Speaker 02

  There's whimsy to it, for sure.

• 35:20Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. And I think maybe that's the through line that the critics are getting at. And again, like, I mentioned Portishead. Portishead's not whimsical.

• 35:26Speaker 02

  No.

• 35:27Yasi Salek?

  Massive Attack is not whimsical. You know, they have, they're doing kind of a whole different thing over there.

• 35:30Speaker 02

  And I think that...

• 35:31Yasi Salek?

  There's no hip-hop in Stereolab or Broadcast.

• 35:33Speaker 02

  No.

• 35:34Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 35:34Speaker 02

  But it's also funny, too, because I mean, like, the menace that I think comes from Broadcast is different from the one that comes from Portishead. You know, I think that Portishead is film lighting. It's very stylized.

• 35:47Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 35:47Speaker 02

  It's very stylish. And I think that Broadcast kind of hints at something and then never really spells out.

• 35:52Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, Broadcast is like blurrier.

• 35:54Speaker 02

  Much, much more blurry.

• 35:55Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 35:56Speaker 02

  The, the picture that, like, the Portis, I mean, to, to Portis' like, great credit, like, like, they are such an exact, specific, perfect vibe.

• 36:06Yasi Salek?

  Oh, yeah.

• 36:07Speaker 02

  You know, like, I have, I'm a James Bond obsessive. I love that so much.

• 36:12Yasi Salek?

  Everything I learn about you is more interesting. Okay.

• 36:14Speaker 02

  But, but, I mean, like, you know, like, you listen to that music and you think to yourself, like, this is John Barry's soundtrack for Goldfinger or something, you know?

• 36:24Yasi Salek?

  Well, I mean, yeah, Jeff Barrow is famously like, so exact, so exacting, you know, like, he was like, oh, this sample doesn't even sound good enough. I need, he would like, make his own samples and then record them on vinyl and then warp the vinyl so it sounded old, and then re-record it as a sample. Yeah, it's really cool.

• 36:39Speaker 02

  It's so, so cool.

• 36:40Yasi Salek?

  I'm not sure, I don't think Broadcast was doing such things.

• 36:43Speaker 02

  I love this Jess Harville quote. Jess Harville, by like, who blocked me? I don't know why Jess Harville.

• 36:50Yasi Salek?

  Call her ass out.

• 36:52Speaker 02

  But Jess Harville has this really wonderful quote, um, kind of summing up how they were similar and different from the kind of rest of their peers. Um, "In the mid 90s, Broadcast were tagged as clever genre mixing, record collecting, retro act. In an era not short on clever genre mixing, record collecting, retro acts. But there's something deeper and odder going on in their music. The Trish Keenan singing was always clear and lovely, in many ways pure indie pop. The band was neither cuddly nor sleek, and they had little to do with the retail-friendly post-Portishead brigade or the soporific, surface-level cool of any lounge pop revivalist. If anything, they were far closer to Warp label mates Boards of Canada, another group using wobbly, sometimes even grimy electronics to evoke the unreality of the everyday,

• 37:36Speaker 02

  the loveliness of supposedly artificial sound, the supernatural qualities of circuit-based music. Broadcast were tapping into older, more obscure, and often darker strains of American, European, but most notably, British music. The psychedelic side of early synth music, the irritability of old electronic TV and film soundtracks, the spooky suburban fairy tale vibe conjured by certain twee and industrial bands. True, there was plenty of Stereolab, crowdedish pulse, and 90s beat culture, and even sunny backerisms, backerakisms."

• 38:04Yasi Salek?

  Backerakisms.

• 38:05Speaker 02

  In their musical, musical DNA. But Broadcast were never so easily reducible to one trend or another.

• 38:10Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. I think that's really good.

• 38:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 38:12Yasi Salek?

  Like, that kind of really nails it. I can, but it also kind of informs what we were just talking about, the criticisms. Like, I think people maybe not, without enough to go off of, which is just this EP.

• 38:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 38:23Yasi Salek?

  They are just kind of like, ugh, another 60s revival. It's like, go away, you know?

• 38:26Speaker 02

  Totally.

• 38:27Yasi Salek?

  Little did they fucking know.

• 38:28Speaker 02

  Little did they fucking know.

• 38:30Yasi Salek?

  We talked about the same thing on text, but this, I can't get over this. Um, so there was a festival that year called the Phoenix Festival. I just want to read you guys the lineup. Um, I just need, I need you guys to understand. It's, I believe it was three days. Okay, day one, we have Black Grape, Fun Lemon Criminals, De La Soul, The Charlatans, The Lightning Seeds, Teenage Fan Club, The Wannadaddies, Wanaddies? Wanaddies. Beth Orton, Morchiba, Jamiroquai, Gabrielle, Us Three, Cantaloupe, which I taught you about the other day. Um, David Bowie, Orbital, Faith No More, Billy Bragg, Catatonia. That's, we're still on day one. That was just one stage.

• 39:12Speaker 02

  It's incredible.

• 39:13Yasi Salek?

  Oh, sorry. Actually, I just read all of one stage for the four days. Okay, we'll go to the next stage. Spiritualized, Strange Love, Gorky's Zygotic Mincy, really good band that you guys should check out. I have seen them live and they're quite good. Um, Matter Rose, Soul Coughing, Rollins Band, Republica, Embrace, Travis, The Low Fidelity All-Stars, Broadcast Mogwai on one stage, Aphex Twin, The Sneaker Pimps, 60 Foot Dolls, Stereophonics, we're fucking love, Sinead O'Connor, Shane McGowan, Luna, 18 Wheeler. Is this not insane? I don't, I'm sorry. The Specials, The Red House Painters. There's, this is one festival.

• 39:56Speaker 02

  Yeah. What did you say before?

• 39:58Yasi Salek?

  That we used to be a proper country.

• 40:00Speaker 02

  Proper fucking country.

• 40:01Yasi Salek?

  In England, used to be a proper country.

• 40:03Speaker 02

  Used to be a proper fucking country.

• 40:05Yasi Salek?

  Um, I guess they're still kind of doing that kind of shit, but we just don't really have bands like this.

• 40:10Speaker 02

  They have a lot of festivals.

• 40:11Yasi Salek?

  They have a festival over there. What would you give to be able to just spend the day?

• 40:16Speaker 02

  Be heaven.

• 40:16Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Anyway, so they played that festival, pretty cool. They are, they have a song on the Warp compilation, We Are Reasonable People in 1998. It's instrumental. It's called Hammer Without a Master.

• 40:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 40:28Yasi Salek?

  I don't know if you remember it.

• 40:29Speaker 02

  I do. This is kind of a early breakthrough for them, too.

• 40:33Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, because it's, why, do you think, because of the synth?

• 40:35Speaker 02

  I think it's because it's, it's funny because I think that that is a song that does kind of justify their presence on Warp.

• 40:42Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 40:43Speaker 02

  You know, it is instrumental. It has that synth. It sounds like really complex electronic music.

• 40:48Yasi Salek?

  Do you think they were kind of like, oh, they asked us for a Warp compilation song, like, let's give them a Warp-y ass song?

• 40:53Speaker 02

  I think so.

• 40:54Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 40:54Speaker 02

  Maybe.

• 41:04Speaker 02

  They did like another one later where they did Niko cover, which I was like, that's cool. It's cool as fuck.

• 41:10Yasi Salek?

  It's really cool. It's like lightly on the nose, but in a cool way.

• 41:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, fuck it.

• 41:15Yasi Salek?

  Now it's 1999. They really take their time, I gotta say.

• 41:19Speaker 02

  Majorly.

• 41:19Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, because, so 1997 is when the compilation EP comes out. 1988, they put out one single the entire year and it's Echo's Answer.

• 41:30Speaker 02

  Love that song.

• 41:31Yasi Salek?

  What a fucking tune, bro. And this is a teaser, because we'll just talk about it within the context of the album. But then in February of the following year, it's, it's kind of crazy because I always forget that Broadcast is such a later band.

• 41:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 41:46Yasi Salek?

  Like they're, like, in my mind, they're a 90s band, which they kind of are.

• 41:49Speaker 02

  Kind of.

• 41:50Yasi Salek?

  But they're kind of not.

• 41:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 41:51Yasi Salek?

  Because their most major work comes out in the 2000s.

• 41:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 41:55Yasi Salek?

  They put out an EP, just called Extended Play, with Paper Cuts, Belly Dance, Where Youth and Laughter Go.

• 42:02Speaker 02

  Such a good song, too.

• 42:04Yasi Salek?

  Girl. The vibraphone?

• 42:07Speaker 02

  Vibraphone.

• 42:08Yasi Salek?

  Let's go. And then Dave's Dream. And then they put out The Noise, made by People on March 20th of 2000. Trish said about the writing of this album, she said, "You don't really think about it as you go along, but you do go back to certain familiar themes." What would you think those themes would be?

• 42:27Speaker 02

  For that record?

• 42:28Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 42:29Speaker 02

  I don't know. I mean, it's a young person's record, it feels like. It feels like it's a kind of like coming of age record in a way.

• 42:36Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 42:38Speaker 02

  It's very film.

• 42:40Yasi Salek?

  Interesting, because it's like, I think at that point, they're like in their 30s.

• 42:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 42:44Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 42:45Speaker 02

  I think that's part of also why I don't like that record.

• 42:47Yasi Salek?

  Interesting.

• 42:48Speaker 02

  You know, I think that it's, you know, the, the songwriting journey that they have is that they go from these kind of bookish character studies.

• 42:58Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 42:58Speaker 02

  You know, where Trish, who already is a very shy person, leans into that shyness in a way that I find insufferable.

• 43:05Yasi Salek?

  Okay, okay.

• 43:06Speaker 02

  Or just, or just like twee, or you know, like, like in, in ways like it just doesn't fully work for me.

• 43:11Yasi Salek?

  It's like two bings. It's too much bings.

• 43:13Speaker 02

  It's, the, the bings are an oppressive force on the music. Now, the bings turn out to be revelatory. You know, the bings lift us all up.

• 43:21Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, bings can go so many different ways.

• 43:24Speaker 02

  Majorly.

• 43:24Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 43:25Speaker 02

  That is the, the bings that, you know, allow, they, they carried me across her back.

• 43:30Yasi Salek?

  Totally. When there was one set of footprints, it was the bings that was carrying, you know. Yeah. Okay, wonderful. You know, I guess, yes. I guess I, I know what you're saying. And this, like, you're saying it's coming of age, and that kind of makes sense.

• 43:47Yasi Salek?

  It also, like, it took so long for them to make this album, so it's possible they were coming of age while the three years that they, and I assume, you know, they're probably sitting on some of these compositions. I have no idea.

• 43:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, forever.

• 43:59Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Part of the reason it took so long to make is because they, like, hated every producer.

• 44:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 44:04Yasi Salek?

  They were beefing with the producers. Trish said, "We had a very clear idea of what we wanted, but engineers have these stock ways of producing sounds. We just weren't into that. We realized we had to find our own path, and that the really great moments can come when you've been struggling for ages on something totally different. But there are no financial benefits to getting it right."

• 44:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 44:21Yasi Salek?

  Like clocked Warps tea there.

• 44:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 44:23Yasi Salek?

  Oh, actually, I think Warp was very supportive.

• 44:25Speaker 02

  No, I think, yeah, totally.

• 44:27Yasi Salek?

  Trish also said, "When you hang around with a group of close friends, you develop a language of your own, wherein a lot of things can go unsaid. Then someone comes in from the outside and you have to spend your whole time explaining things. We'd find ourselves looking at each other over their shoulders, thinking, this guy's gotta go." And that actually makes so much sense to me. Like, I feel like a band like Broadcast is so like, you couldn't hear that they're like cosmically linked.

• 44:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 44:48Yasi Salek?

  In a way that like, this music is coming almost from this like otherworldly connection between these people. And then you have like, some guy who's like, "Let's make it sound like guitar tone," and they're like, "Get the fuck out of my face." They didn't say that, but.

• 45:03Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, it's funny, because like, they also, um, there's, there's, there's this Chick Factor interview where they're talking about why they love the producers that they love.

• 45:14Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 45:16Speaker 02

  "In the 50s and 60s, when producers were the new phenomenon, they had one sound and they weren't worried about what the bands wanted and how they wanted to sound, which is what the producers nowadays seem to be more concerned with. They want the band to be happy, which is good. Back then, you came in as a musician or vocalist to fit in with the producer's sound. That's what made it so interesting. That's what made it one thing. Like, the Spectre Group, and it had so many connections, the building, singer-songwriters, all these fantastic singers could come in and sing their songs. It was almost like a network." I mean, I mean, there's kind of a way in which like the producer's like a dictator who calls the shots on everything. And you're gonna be there to facilitate our vision.

• 45:48Yasi Salek?

  It's very like the Phil Spector model, either times, you know, which did yield some great stuff and some murder.

• 45:54Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, there are other major touchstone influence point that I think is even more crazy is, do you know Joe Meek?

• 46:01Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 46:01Speaker 02

  At all? Yeah.

• 46:01Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 46:02Speaker 02

  So Joe Meek is like their other massive, huge obsession.

• 46:04Yasi Salek?

  Where did they find these things?

• 46:06Speaker 02

  I, I mean, i- in the 50s and 60s, like, if you were a visionary schizophrenic.

• 46:12Yasi Salek?

  Sure.

• 46:13Speaker 02

  Who thought that ghosts were speaking to you over the radio.

• 46:15Yasi Salek?

  You got a record deal, man.

• 46:16Speaker 02

  You got a record deal, and, um.

• 46:18Yasi Salek?

  I just mean more like, how did, how did Broadcast find these things? Because it's like, again, this is not Harry Tafoya with his dial-up internet and his laptop. Like, you really had to fucking hunt to find this stuff.

• 46:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 46:30Yasi Salek?

  It's pretty impressive.

• 46:31Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, like, they were the, but Broadcast is the breadcrumbs for me to find that, though.

• 46:35Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 46:35Speaker 02

  You know, like, like, that is the link where, like, I find 10,000 new movies, I find, I get obsessed with Joe Meek because of Broadcast, you know, like. They really did the late work to develop this very specific, pretty bottomless hole of references, which is narrow on the one hand, because like, you're never gonna like have them, they're never gonna go disco. They're never gonna go dance, right?

• 47:01Yasi Salek?

  No.

• 47:02Speaker 02

  No. Um, but on the other hand, like, there's like pretty like endless combinations of this stuff, endless like kind of rabbit holes of people with really psychedelic ideas of how to like actually work with this material.

• 47:14Yasi Salek?

  Also, I assume like, when you're in Birmingham and you like are into this thing, and like, it was the kind of thing, like, you go to the, the night at the club and you, there's a DJ there, like, we've talked a bunch about record collecting, but it's like, yeah, people were digging in crates and bins and finding these things and being like, I threw on Joe Meek. Or you go to the record store and you're like, I like United States of America. And the guy's like, you heard of Joe Meek?

• 47:37Speaker 02

  Totally. I think part of also why.

• 47:39Yasi Salek?

  The original algorithm, the record store clerk.

• 47:41Speaker 02

  No, majorly. I think that, you know, I'm, I'm a late maturing millennial. And I think that, what about like, I think that the, why that's important, though, is I think that I was the kind of person who so desperately wanted to have a record store clerk.

• 47:56Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 47:56Speaker 02

  So desperately wanted to have.

• 47:58Yasi Salek?

  Totally.

• 47:58Speaker 02

  Like a cool, older friend who I, I could impress with like my kind of increasingly niche finds. And I had to be entirely self-directed.

• 48:06Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 48:07Speaker 02

  To kind of get in that, in that door. I mean, I mean, to have that infrastructure and network in the first place, like, is such an era-specific thing. I really wanted that in a very big way, and this band kind of provided that for me.

• 48:18Yasi Salek?

  So cool. And you're right, what, it's pre-algorithm, so you, you did kind of get to do things that I did, although I had to do them analog. But like, read about or see a band mention some other band and then, you know, go, go on to the gro-

• 48:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 48:34Yasi Salek?

  Almost a grocery store, the record store, and pick up, you know, whatever you could afford.

• 48:39Speaker 02

  Yeah. Just imagining the grocery store where you would go to pick up the.

• 48:43Yasi Salek?

  Could you imagine if the grocery store had like seven inches of the Feelies? That'd be so cool. When I'm president.

• 48:50Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 48:50Yasi Salek?

  That's how it's gonna go. Um, okay, we've, we've strayed a bit. So, this, this album took so long to make that their drummer, Steve Perkins, left and joined Pram. Um, and it was replaced by a guy named Keith York. Um, Rog Stevens, who is the keyboard player, said, "We've never had a specific way of working. A track could begin from a sample, a riff, a vocal. We think the kind of music we've ended up making is very evocative, especially of films or segments of films. And the reverse process applies. You watch a film and start thinking about the sort of music that would suit it. By loosening up and getting everyone more involved in the creative process, being part of Broadcast becomes a lot more enjoyable. It's taken a long time, but we wouldn't have it any other way." I think this was a really interesting quote, because it kind of backs up exactly what you were saying earlier about the Portis, I think.

• 49:34Yasi Salek?

  I just think Portis is a really good counterpoint to them.

• 49:37Speaker 02

  Majorly.

• 49:38Yasi Salek?

  Given the film part of it, like, but what a different thing they do with their obsessions with film and film scores, right? They kind of come at it from some totally different directions. And I loved this idea of like, them getting into some really cool film and being like, "What music would sound good in that film? Let's make that," you know? An amazing, an amazing thought, which obviously we'll get into later with Tender Buns.

• 50:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, I, I mean, like, also too, what's fun about Broadcast, I mean, like, they have a bunch of like, kind of like rarities collections and, um, you know, Microtronics is one of them, and it's kind of a bleep, bloop, library music, stock.

• 50:17Yasi Salek?

  Totally.

• 50:17Speaker 02

  Record. Um, and it is fun just because of like, you know, one kind of through line to them is how obsessed they got with like these individual, like, otherwise pretty anonymous filmmakers, like, musicians and scoremakers who created like such a distinctive, all-encompassing vibe.

• 50:35Yasi Salek?

  Totally.

• 50:35Speaker 02

  Which Ha Ha Sound is also where that really, really pops the fuck off, too.

• 50:38Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, yeah. Oh, my God, totally. Okay, can't wait to talk about that. Well, let's, let's get into the rest of this album. So they produced it themselves. They did get a little help from their label mate, Tom Jenkinson, also known as Square Pusher.

• 50:50Speaker 02

  King.

• 50:51Yasi Salek?

  I know, right? Cargill said, "He was kind of loose and confident, and he left this feeling that you don't have to have such a hard time. You don't have to labor on arrangement. He was really hands-on. While we'd be marking things up with a pencil, we were so rigid about how we would mix, but you learn to accept errors." This album was really well-received by the press.

• 51:08Speaker 02

  Majorly.

• 51:09Yasi Salek?

  They loved it.

• 51:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 51:10Yasi Salek?

  It has an 81 out of 100 Metacritic, which is quite high. Um, let's talk about the songs. Okay, so what are your standout songs on this album? Um, we already talked about Echo's, well, we've mentioned Echo's Answer, but that song. "Let's Absolutely Just Fucking Go."

• 51:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 51:29Yasi Salek?

  Is how I feel. The string samples?

• 51:32Speaker 02

  The string samples are crazy.

• 51:40Speaker 02

  There's a live version of it that happens. There's like a John Peel made of L sessions, where the guitar comes in and it's like super souped up as well, too, which is incredible as well.

• 51:51Yasi Salek?

  It's, yeah, it's really, Trish said about it, "In Echo's answer, I looked at my parents' hangups and how they're supposed to affect me. And I looked at how those hangups are passed down through the generations, how we have this built in memory of our ancestors."

• 52:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 52:04Yasi Salek?

  Trish Keenan said generational trauma.

• 52:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, literally.

• 52:07Yasi Salek?

  Before anyone.

• 52:08Speaker 02

  Literally.

• 52:08Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. And then she wrote a gorgeous song about it, which, a thing that I didn't realize until doing this research, you know this, but I feel like you guys are, if I gave you a thousand guesses, you would never guess who sampled this song. Oh, you don't know either?

• 52:24Speaker 02

  I don't know either.

• 52:25Yasi Salek?

  One Michelle Branch.

• 52:26Speaker 02

  That's incredible.

• 52:28Yasi Salek?

  This song is heavily sampled on the last track of The Spirit Room.

• 52:31Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 52:32Yasi Salek?

  Her platinum album on the song "Drop in the Ocean." And I'm gonna tell you what, it's good.

• 52:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 52:37Yasi Salek?

  And also, "All You Wanted" still goes hard. I don't care what anyone says, it's a fucking banger. But is that not incredible?

• 52:42Speaker 02

  That was amazing.

• 52:42Yasi Salek?

  Michelle Branch.

• 52:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 52:43Yasi Salek?

  I was not familiar with your game.

• 52:45Speaker 02

  Truly.

• 52:45Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 52:46Speaker 02

  I mean, like, that's another, like, weird thing that happens, too, where it's like, I mean, I sent you Slater loving broadcast, and I was like, what the fuck? Those two things don't go together. And it's like, of course they go together. Like, what do you want?

• 52:55Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 52:56Speaker 02

  Pop girlies.

• 52:57Yasi Salek?

  Pop, totally pop girlies.

• 52:58Speaker 02

  Sorry, women of pop, capital W, ladies.

• 53:02Yasi Salek?

  Courtney Love doesn't like when we say pop girlies, so I think we need a new expression.

• 53:07Speaker 02

  Fine. Courtney, you're correct as fuck. I love you so much.

• 53:10Yasi Salek?

  She's always right, so we're gonna say something else.

• 53:12Speaker 02

  Exactly. I'm gonna correct my behavior, the error of my ways. Um, no, but I mean, like, I, it's funny, because I also had not known about that particular interpretation from Trish, because like, I actually took the lyrics to that song very literally.

• 53:25Yasi Salek?

  Did you?

• 53:26Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, it's, it's very elemental, very cryptic lyrics.

• 53:29Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 53:30Speaker 02

  You know?

• 53:31Yasi Salek?

  It's about the, the wind and the echoes in the mountain.

• 53:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, I thought it was more like a Nick Drake kind of thing, where it's like, this is an environmental thing.

• 53:38Yasi Salek?

  Right, it's nature.

• 53:39Speaker 02

  Yeah. It's, it's like some, like, irrevocable environmental thing has happened, and what the fuck is up? You know?

• 53:45Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, I mean, she said that, so I believe her, but yeah, it's not, the only line I can see in is when she says, "I am next in line."

• 53:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 53:52Yasi Salek?

  Which is, you know.

• 53:54Speaker 02

  I mean, I, that, that totally works in the context. I, I love that. That's, that's a beautiful reading to get into it.

• 54:01Yasi Salek?

  This is a very feelings-forward song for me. I love it. I really love it.

• 54:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 54:15Yasi Salek?

  "You Can Fall" is very special to me.

• 54:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 54:17Yasi Salek?

  It's on the soundtrack of one of my favorite films of all time, one of the best films of all time.

• 54:22Speaker 02

  Mortal Kombat.

• 54:22Yasi Salek?

  Lynn Ramsey's, yeah, Mortal Kombat. That soundtrack is fucking crazy.

• 54:26Speaker 02

  It's a stacked soundtrack.

• 54:27Yasi Salek?

  Boards of Canada, Aphex Twin, Stereolab, The Velvet Underground, Cannes, Wien.

• 54:31Speaker 02

  It, it's, it's the first Warp films film.

• 54:35Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 54:35Speaker 02

  You know? But I mean, it's also, so they tend to applaud, right, that like, her, her, is it boyfriend or husband?

• 54:41Yasi Salek?

  Boyfriend.

• 54:41Speaker 02

  Boyfriend leaves the mixtape.

• 54:43Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 54:43Speaker 02

  You know?

• 54:43Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, it's like, it's so.

• 54:45Speaker 02

  So good.

• 54:46Yasi Salek?

  Absolutely Oscar fun.

• 54:47Speaker 02

  Samantha Morton deserves an Oscar for, sorry, for Mortal Kombat.

• 54:51Yasi Salek?

  But let's give it to her in for the Odyssey instead.

• 54:53Speaker 02

  We're gonna give it to her for the Odyssey, but it's like, we know that what the Oscar's really for, it's for Mortal Kombat.

• 54:58Yasi Salek?

  It's just, what an incredible film.

• 55:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 55:00Yasi Salek?

  Who doesn't wanna take on their boyfriend's entire identity?

• 55:05Speaker 02

  It's my entire dream.

• 55:07Yasi Salek?

  And use the, use the proceeds to escape into oblivion.

• 55:12Speaker 02

  Majorly.

• 55:13Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. They asked Chick Factor, which we talked about, again, what a fucking 2000 thing, like, all the, all the interviews with this band are on, like, random blogs.

• 55:22Speaker 02

  Majorly.

• 55:23Yasi Salek?

  They said, "What's your favorite soundtrack?" And Trish said, "I quite like Ravi Shankar's soundtrack stuff. I like Chippaqua and Charlie. I've been playing those albums for six or seven months. I love Kristoff Komet, especially the Knife in the Water soundtrack. Morricone goes without saying, I suppose. I really like the Badlands soundtrack." Amazing. James is really into Ennio Morricone, and that would be his answer.

• 55:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 55:45Yasi Salek?

  Like, bitch, she, she knew a lot.

• 55:49Speaker 02

  She knew a lot.

• 55:49Yasi Salek?

  She was really tapped in. Um, I mean, also, it's, it, by this time, we do have rudimentary internet. So you can kind of tap around a bit.

• 55:58Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 55:59Yasi Salek?

  Tell me why this isn't your favorite.

• 56:02Speaker 02

  It's funny, I like the coldness of this record. I think that, like, it delivers a lot of really chilly, really open-ended songs that are kind of, like, scary to return to in a way.

• 56:15Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 56:15Speaker 02

  You know, like, I think that, um, "Until Then" is a really, really intense song.

• 56:21Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 56:22Speaker 02

  I mean, just also, too, like, as a title, I think that really kind of encapsulates the entire vibe, right?

• 56:26Yasi Salek?

  It's foreboding.

• 56:27Speaker 02

  It's, it's foreboding, but it's also like, until what?

• 56:29Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 56:30Speaker 02

  It's, it's gesturing at this thing that is never fully spelled out.

• 56:33Yasi Salek?

  Totally.

• 56:34Speaker 02

  And I think that that kind of, like, menace to, like, sit and live with, and like, let your imagination go wild is really, really fun.

• 56:40Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. I do think "Come on, let's go" is, like, a kind of uncharacteristically accessible song on here. "Stop looking for answers in everyone's face."

• 56:50Speaker 02

  Totally.

• 56:50Yasi Salek?

  Fucking god-tier lyric.

• 56:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 57:01Yasi Salek?

  Someone wrote that it was like, that, this is like, almost like a classically timeless, like, Sylla Black-esque song. And I was like, I can totally hear that. Obviously, it's made, made weird, because it's broadcast, but like, I do really like this song.

• 57:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 57:14Yasi Salek?

  It's a kind of like, this is like, something I like that they do, is when they, like, kind of bring in that, like, we talked about Phil Spector, but that sort of Phil Spector-esque thing, but then they make it, like, fucking terrifying.

• 57:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 57:29Yasi Salek?

  And like, this song does that.

• 57:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. Very Francois's hard D. It feels very French.

• 57:34Yasi Salek?

  Totally. Yeah, very, very, uh, left, left bank.

• 57:37Speaker 02

  Yeah. "Paper Cuts" is another one of those songs where, like, it's like, so, you know, I, I, I think that's another kind of song where, like, it's doing the kind of, like, chanson style with this, like, really, like, intense synth organ.

• 57:50Yasi Salek?

  There's like, yeah, someone called it foggy noir jazz vibes, and I was like, what's going on?

• 57:55Speaker 02

  Yeah. It, it's not my favorite, but I mean, like, it, it is, it is that same.

• 57:59Yasi Salek?

  But it's notable.

• 58:00Speaker 02

  It's the same recipe, though, right?

• 58:01Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 58:12Yasi Salek?

  I want to point out, 2000 is also the year that radio had put out.

• 58:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 58:17Yasi Salek?

  KDA. Just a lot going on with the evolution of what bands are doing with their music.

• 58:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 58:25Yasi Salek?

  Okay, so, we said, this got really, this got quite a bit of positive, uh, positive feedback.

• 58:35Yasi Salek?

  NME, uh, called it "urbane atmospherics." They mentioned there's some torch-songy moments, which I, actually, that makes sense.

• 58:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 58:46Yasi Salek?

  Eight out of 10. Great, great thing. Um, and The Guardian pointed out a lot of their, their references, the Ennio Morricone, United States of America. I liked this paragraph. They said, "Retro is a tricky word. It hints of a lack of innovation, of under-inspired kitsch. Broadcast intriguing pop evades such criticisms by fusing a love of lustrous 60s music, highlighted rather than disguised by their use of secondhand equipment, with an intelligent approach to experimentation. You can hear them probing at different sounds on their singles, testing out ways of layering a chiming, splintering, or shimmering guitar and keyboard combination, with shuffling rhythms to create songs that aspired to the epic but were a little too fuzzy to achieve it."

• 59:30Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 59:31Yasi Salek?

  I liked that.

• 59:32Speaker 02

  That's incredible.

• 59:33Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Um, Harry Tafoya Corp of music writing. Okay, so this, this is, people are loving it. Everyone's like, yay. Not everyone, I mean, it's not like they're, like, blowing records out the door, but

• 59:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 59:44Yasi Salek?

  critically, they're, they're being loved.

• 59:46Speaker 02

  I think there is actually a quote where it's like, "The critics loved us, they don't buy our music."

• 59:49Yasi Salek?

  They don't buy our music, yeah. I mean, this is a tough, this is a tough sell by any metric, you know?

• 59:56Speaker 02

  Of course.

• 59:57Yasi Salek?

  And especially because they came a bit late. So it's like, I mean, who's to say KDA is so phenomenal, but like, what if radio had didn't come out in 1993 or whatever, you know, and didn't get to build up that audience, so that when, you know, like, KDA could have come and gone, maybe?

• 1:00:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:00:12Yasi Salek?

  You never know, you know?

• 1:00:13Speaker 02

  I mean, like, I, there's one piece, did, did you hear the Taylor Parks thing?

• 1:00:18Yasi Salek?

  I don't know. I don't think so.

• 1:00:19Speaker 02

  There's a, there's a, there's a really, I don't know if it's infamous, to me, it's infamous.

• 1:00:23Yasi Salek?

  Okay.

• 1:00:25Speaker 02

  Take down a Britpop.

• 1:00:26Yasi Salek?

  Oh, no, I don't know what you're talking about.

• 1:00:27Speaker 02

  It's, it's, um.

• 1:00:28Yasi Salek?

  I might have, but I, you know, I did the Britpop season like a year and a half ago. I'm brain addled.

• 1:00:32Speaker 02

  It's in the quietest, and it is this, like, real scorcher of, like, fuck this moment, fuck these bands.

• 1:00:38Yasi Salek?

  Because it calls it, like, jingoistic.

• 1:00:40Speaker 02

  It's like, jingoistic, but I mean, I think that the other part of it, too, is like, in many cases, really complacent about what was going on politically in the UK.

• 1:00:48Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 1:00:48Speaker 02

  Combined with this conservatism about their instruments, and like, a not real, like, intense, you know, you're slapping on the 60s, and they're not really interrogating, like, why was the 60s interesting, actually?

• 1:01:01Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 1:01:01Speaker 02

  The part of the 60s that is actually interesting is opening new neural pathways through LSD.

• 1:01:07Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:08Speaker 02

  Through Eastern thought, through, like, all these different kinds of pathways.

• 1:01:11Yasi Salek?

  To be honest, I think that's sort of an unfair lumping together of every band of Britpop, and then also, like, over-correcting for Oasis.

• 1:01:20Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 1:01:20Yasi Salek?

  Because, like, you could just be talking about Oasis, because, like, Pulp was very, you know?

• 1:01:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:01:25Yasi Salek?

  Pulp was definitely addressing, in their own way, like, small and big class issues, like, there was, I mean, Suede, I think, was doing more interesting stuff.

• 1:01:34Speaker 02

  He makes the point that, like, there's kind of like, two different waves, and it's like, Otter, Suede, Pulp, um, Denim bands, I, I love all those bands.

• 1:01:42Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:43Speaker 02

  But kind of like, talking about, like.

• 1:01:45Yasi Salek?

  The Charlatans.

• 1:01:46Speaker 02

  The Charlatans.

• 1:01:47Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:47Speaker 02

  He, he loves to, like, shit on Sleeper.

• 1:01:49Yasi Salek?

  Okay.

• 1:01:50Speaker 02

  You know, like.

• 1:01:50Yasi Salek?

  A band that nobody has actually heard of.

• 1:01:52Speaker 02

  Since, exactly, right?

• 1:01:55Speaker 02

  But I mean, like, like, like that critique of Britpop.

• 1:01:58Yasi Salek?

  Oh, reminded you of actually what they're doing, which is sort of interrogating what made the sixties.

• 1:02:04Speaker 02

  They're interrogating what the sixties is interesting, but then the other part of that, too, in that essay is that he makes the point that like, the conservatism musically that happens around Britpop means that guitar music is not really letting tons of light into the, you know, it's gotten so big and so massive and there's not really tons of incentive to actually explore what you could do with guitar in relationship to what is also is happening in the culture at the time, right? Which is like dance music, right?

• 1:02:31Yasi Salek?

  Totally.

• 1:02:31Speaker 02

  It is, you know, it, by that sense, like, Radiohead is the best band because, like, they are making an IDM album. They're a rock band that's making an IDM album.

• 1:02:38Yasi Salek?

  I would also say, like, Primal Scream was doing, like, such cool shit, you know?

• 1:02:42Speaker 02

  Totally.

• 1:02:43Yasi Salek?

  I guess that's more a little bit earlier, like, and if you, if you went back, you were probably like Happy Mondays, like,

• 1:02:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:02:48Yasi Salek?

  But there was definitely bands that were sort of on the side of that doing really fucking cool stuff.

• 1:02:52Speaker 02

  Totally. I mean, like, my, one of my favorites is Disco Inferno, which is incredible, right? Like, playing with samples all over the place, like, it's just a dropped thread that could have gotten built out.

• 1:03:02Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 1:03:02Speaker 02

  You know, and I think that, like, today, we definitely have so many rock bands that are like that, which is wonderful.

• 1:03:09Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, it's great. Also, it's like, whatever. It's like, different strokes for different folks. Like, I don't think the Gallagher brothers had any interest in furthering the form, you know? Like, they were like, we're writing, like, like, bangers for eternity that are gonna be sung by drunk people at pubs, you know?

• 1:03:23Speaker 02

  And bless them for that.

• 1:03:24Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:03:25Yasi Salek?

  But also Breast Broadcast for doing this. So they put out another EP that September as a follow-up, Extended Play Two. Um, it has the songs Illumination, Unchanging Window slash Chord Simple, A Man for Atlantis, Poem of Dead Song.

• 1:03:39Speaker 02

  I love that song.

• 1:03:40Yasi Salek?

  It was really good.

• 1:03:41Speaker 02

  It's a really bad, yeah, that's incredible.

• 1:03:42Yasi Salek?

  What a great, what a great title.

• 1:03:45Speaker 02

  Have you heard that, that one? I mean, we might get to this in a bit, but like, there's a Claro song that is basically Poem of the Dead Song Part Two. There's a lot of, there's a lot of Trish Keenan daughters.

• 1:03:57Yasi Salek?

  I mean, Claro is such, you're so, that's such a good one. That really is like, what if broadcast, but more pop?

• 1:04:01Speaker 02

  Totally.

• 1:04:02Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, I love Claro. And she has such a great voice.

• 1:04:05Speaker 02

  I love you, Clara. Clara, come on the show.

• 1:04:06Yasi Salek?

  And she has come on the show, actually. Yeah, she came, when I used to do the interview show, she came on and she was such a delight. I'm a, I'm a huge fan. I think she's like,

• 1:04:13Speaker 02

  She's the shit.

• 1:04:14Yasi Salek?

  I don't want to say underrated, because that's stupid, because she's very, like, well rated, but I do think she's like, incredibly, she makes incredibly intelligent.

• 1:04:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:04:23Yasi Salek?

  And interesting music.

• 1:04:25Speaker 02

  Baby, let's get her more flowers.

• 1:04:26Yasi Salek?

  I love, I love her. And, and also one of the great bangs wearers of our time.

• 1:04:29Speaker 02

  Majorly.

• 1:04:33Speaker 03

  Kayak searches and compares hundreds of travel sites, but unless I repeat the word kayak, Kayak thinks you won't remember that. So Kayak asked me to say kayak as many times as possible. Kayak. Kayak. Kayak. Kayak. Kayak. Kayak. Kai. Ooh. Ak. Kai, Kai, Kai, Kai, kayak. Kayak, kayak, kayak. Search, compare, and save on your trip. Kayak. Got that right.

• 1:05:05Yasi Salek?

  Okay, so they tour a bunch on the back of that first album. During this time, Rog Stevens, the key rist, leaves the band. Um, and they start setting up their own studio to make their next album. One big thing that happens that sort of slows that down, and there's many factors, but is that Rob Mitchell, the Warp co-founder. Yeah, he dies of cancer. They said, the biggest thing that happened during the making of the album was Rob dying. He was really supportive of us and it was a real blow. And Trish said, it was one of the things that made us pack up and come home. We spent most of 2001 setting up our studio, but the acoustics there were crap, so we just thought, let's get out of here. And they got into a bunch of other places. I think they were in a church and some other places.

• 1:05:48Yasi Salek?

  So, and then now we're two more years, 2003. Again, Broadcast takes their time.

• 1:05:55Yasi Salek?

  They put out Pendulum, which is,

• 1:05:57Speaker 02

  That's a good song.

• 1:05:58Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, well, and it's like, I guess, extended, another extended play. There's like five or six songs. Pendulum is a great song. Uh, the one, the song I love on this release is Still Feels Like Tears.

• 1:06:07Speaker 02

  I love that song.

• 1:06:08Yasi Salek?

  I don't, maybe it's the bass, something about it really grabs me. I love it.

• 1:06:22Speaker 02

  I, I love the, um, I think, I think I sent it to you, just, just the, the acoustic version.

• 1:06:28Yasi Salek?

  Incredible. That's how you know. Well, also, this is like a very, like, this is like a lamenting song. This is a, you know, yearning, someone's left you.

• 1:06:37Speaker 02

  Totally.

• 1:06:38Yasi Salek?

  Um, and you can really feel it, even if you can't hear what she's saying, you can really feel it.

• 1:06:42Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, it just speaks to the fact that, like, the skeletons of these songs are so strong. You know, and it's like beneath all that fucking fuzz, like, it's really, really good craft.

• 1:06:52Yasi Salek?

  Which is the greatest proof of that, right? Because like, I think maybe to an untrained ear, they could be like, this is just like a bunch of bells and whistles. It's just a bunch of, like, feedback and, and you, you know, and it's like, no, it's not. There's like a well-crafted melody under there. It's just, we're zhuzh-ing it up.

• 1:07:11Speaker 02

  Totally.

• 1:07:11Yasi Salek?

  Or fuzzing it out a little bit.

• 1:07:22Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, I love, that's, that's, I mean, all the songs on here are pretty good, actually, but Still Feels Like Tears is really the, the jump out. And then, Ha Ha Sound.

• 1:07:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:07:31Yasi Salek?

  What a fucking, they're so good at names.

• 1:07:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:07:33Yasi Salek?

  Um, August of, uh, twenty, 2003. What do you make of Ha Ha Sound? 2003, it's just like, what a weird time for Ha Ha Sound.

• 1:07:43Speaker 02

  I know. It's weird. I mean, so Ha Ha Sound is, I think, probably the most perfect of the records, but like, I think that maybe the perfection is both to its immense credit and also probably why it's not like my soul favorite necessarily. Like, it is like, are we gonna like bust everything the fuck out and make the ultimate sixties record? Hell, yeah, we are.

• 1:08:07Yasi Salek?

  Right, right.

• 1:08:08Speaker 02

  Um, and there are such beautiful, intense moments on this, like, that are some of my favorite songs. I think, like, Man is Not a Bird is my favorite song by them, period.

• 1:08:18Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, it's so good. This is the album that was inspired directly by the film Valerie and Her Week of Wonders, a 1970 Czech vampire film that was directed by Jeremy Dres. I watched it.

• 1:08:36Speaker 02

  Yeah. It's, listen, that movie's a tremendous vibe.

• 1:08:39Yasi Salek?

  It's a tremendous vibe. You, you might, you have to check your discomfort at, uh,

• 1:08:47Yasi Salek?

  pre-teen nudity at the door.

• 1:08:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, yes, it does.

• 1:08:50Yasi Salek?

  So just know that, if that's not your cup of tea, and I hope it's not, um, you will have to steel yourself against that. But what a fucking crazy, weird, beautiful film.

• 1:09:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's an incredible movie.

• 1:09:05Yasi Salek?

  It's so, well, it's fucking bizarre as fuck, but also like, I wish someone had interrogated Trish Keenan more about what this film spoke to in her, in particular, because it's, it's a very female film. It's a, it's really such a film about what it means to become a woman. You know, because it's like, the, the premise, it starts with the day Valerie gets her period.

• 1:09:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:09:29Yasi Salek?

  It's like such a cool, and then all the wonders, if you will, that come are like so psychotic.

• 1:09:36Speaker 02

  Totally. Well, I mean, I think the other part about that movie, too, that's so good is about the danger, you know?

• 1:09:40Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:41Speaker 02

  I, I, people really fetishize Valerie in so many really creepy ways all throughout that movie, where it's like literally vampires and demons.

• 1:09:49Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, it's, it's, it's like so much about the, like, the loss of youth and what kind of, like, demonic, ghoulish adults are waiting to, like, suck you dry.

• 1:09:59Speaker 02

  Totally.

• 1:10:00Yasi Salek?

  And take what, you know, what animates you away from you to, like, further their own agendas.

• 1:10:05Speaker 02

  Majorly. Yeah, no, I mean, I, I love that movie. I used to watch that movie, again, very, very passively. We used to,

• 1:10:12Yasi Salek?

  Parry to foil, what a, what a bizarre building blocks you're putting into your psyche.

• 1:10:17Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, like, when, when, um, my, my best friend Kelsey, um, used to do a thing that I thought was so much fun, which is that she had this apartment in San Francisco, where you, she had an enormous blank white wall.

• 1:10:30Yasi Salek?

  Oh, she did projector.

• 1:10:31Speaker 02

  She had the projector and she, like, would sync up and curate, like, hours and hours and hours of footage and, you know, have it on the background, like, for parties and shit. And it was like, just so much fun. And she was like a deep crate digger type with this kind of movie. Like, she was so into Valerie and Her Week of Wonders through a feminist, like, gender studies kind of angle.

• 1:10:54Yasi Salek?

  Well, I mean, it's really there if you are interested in that. Like, that's all I could think about. Not, again, my pink pussy hat, just droop around the hat, but I was like, oh, this is like, I couldn't stop thinking about it the whole time I was watching.

• 1:11:05Speaker 02

  I mean, it also is made by women, too. I mean, so one of the, one of the, the set designer and I think screenplay writer is Esther Kromachova.

• 1:11:12Yasi Salek?

  Okay, that makes sense.

• 1:11:13Speaker 02

  Who, um, is, she also has a film, too, called Murdering the Devil, which is, um, if you have, like, Canopy, it's available there.

• 1:11:22Yasi Salek?

  Canopy.

• 1:11:22Speaker 02

  Fucking rules.

• 1:11:23Yasi Salek?

  You guys should get Canopy. It's very easy to get.

• 1:11:24Speaker 02

  Canopy.

• 1:11:25Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:25Speaker 02

  Support your libraries.

• 1:11:26Yasi Salek?

  Exactly.

• 1:11:27Speaker 02

  Support your libraries. Um, but yeah, no, I mean, like, like, it's, it's, and she also did Daisies.

• 1:11:32Yasi Salek?

  Right, right, right. Okay, okay.

• 1:11:33Speaker 02

  It's all these same crew of people who are all making this thing together. Trish Keenan wrote about Valerie and Her Week of Wonders.

• 1:11:39Yasi Salek?

  What? Okay, I missed this. This is exactly what I wanted.

• 1:11:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. She, she wrote a thing about it for, I think, like, an insert or like, for like a, because she was obsessed with the soundtrack.

• 1:11:48Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 1:11:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, by Lubos Fischer.

• 1:11:50Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:11:51Speaker 02

  Not since The Wicker Man has a soundtrack occupied my mind like Valerie and Her Week of Wonders. It was like a door had been opened in my subconscious and fragments of memories and dreams rejoiced right there in my living room. I became very possessive over my copied version of a VHS tape, a VHS to cassette copy, which hissed like it had been captured from another world. I would surprise friends with snippets of the theme. It never failed to get curious, who's this? I was continuously asked to make copies, but I had no intention of making copies for anyone. The ritual chanting, the sections of Catholic mass, the Czech hymns were mine. The cog sequence, the acoustic love song, the room of cogs, all mine. I became Valerie, hypnotized by hell's harpsichord, waltzed by the bloodsucker. I had been confirmed by the Church of Lubos Fischer. For me, the power of the score is the reoccurring dissonant bell that accompanies Valerie and her earrings.

• 1:12:36Yasi Salek?

  Totally.

• 1:12:36Speaker 02

  Pitched outside the key of the soundtrack, the bell symbolizes her ultimate power over the ceremonial pomp, over the indoctrinating religious chord movements. The way both sound worlds compete, battle for central focus reflects the war of belief in the film and the bleeding, competing belief systems in Czechoslovakia in the late sixties. And I mean, again, like, to your point, right, it is also Valerie as a character and youth, as a young woman, as a young girl turning into a woman.

• 1:13:01Yasi Salek?

  Right, representing this sort of, like, new,

• 1:13:06Yasi Salek?

  I mean, how do you say it?

• 1:13:07Speaker 02

  She, she, she's, she becomes like this ultimate fraught thing that people

• 1:13:10Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 1:13:11Speaker 02

  want that also is above and beyond what they can comprehend.

• 1:13:14Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 1:13:15Speaker 02

  You know, she's, she's not just a girl. She's something so much more.

• 1:13:19Yasi Salek?

  I, I love what she pointed out about that dissonant like sound. Cause it's so unusual to see a film that like, kind of like spoon feeds that so much. But like, it's awesome because the whole thing is a fairy tale.

• 1:13:31Speaker 02

  Totally.

• 1:13:32Yasi Salek?

  You can really feel it. I also, what the fuck was going on in Czechoslovakia that it created all this art?

• 1:13:37Speaker 02

  Major.

• 1:13:37Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:13:37Yasi Salek?

  Milos Forman, like, what, I gotta do some deep digging on

• 1:13:41Speaker 02

  Totally.

• 1:13:41Yasi Salek?

  the, the, the country formerly, uh, known as Czechoslovakia.

• 1:13:45Speaker 02

  I mean, there's like, just so many fucking good movies from kind of all of Eastern Europe. Um, I'm gonna do, I'm gonna do a transition though, because one such movie that you should also look out for is Man is on a Bird.

• 1:13:55Yasi Salek?

  Okay.

• 1:13:56Speaker 02

  By Dushan Makaveev.

• 1:13:57Yasi Salek?

  Which is the titular. Okay. Very good. Good job.

• 1:14:00Speaker 02

  But I mean, it goes to the thing we were talking about a second ago about like, you take the snippet of the film, you build a whole vibe aura, you're the composer for that moment.

• 1:14:10Yasi Salek?

  I can't wait to watch those.

• 1:14:12Speaker 02

  It's, it's, yeah. I mean, again, like, why I'm obsessed with this band forever is like, you have so many rapid holes.

• 1:14:17Yasi Salek?

  Universe to you. Yeah. It's really cool. I'll say a little bit about what Trish said about how these things came into her world. She said, so someone asked her in an interview, you name a few cinematographic, cinematographic

• 1:14:33Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:14:34Yasi Salek?

  references for this album. Milos Forman's Love of a Blonde, Hans Richter's Dreams That Money Can Buy, obviously Valerie, A Week of Wonders. Has cinema been a big influence and how? And Trish said, I think it's more and more. We're lucky to have a great little video shop in Mosley and lots of friends work there. So you get free videos. They never charge us. It's just a great cult video shop that has a great Eastern European film section, avant garde animations. I just go down, get a lot of videos, tape to tape them and watch them on my own leisure. This is another big thing that we used to do.

• 1:15:06Speaker 02

  That's cool.

• 1:15:07Yasi Salek?

  When I fancy a bit of telly, I don't wanna watch fucking Big Brother or whatever shit they try to push on me next. I'll watch Daisies or Valerie and hearing the soundtrack as well. You'll never see the film released over here. It was released on redemption, but it'll never be released on DVD for the next 20 years, if it ever does. It's a great way to access soundtracks without having to go to some dusty European record shop. Again, we used to be a proper society. Like you used to go to the record store. I mean, broadcast opened it up for you, but like, no algorithm will bring you this.

• 1:15:34Speaker 02

  No, no.

• 1:15:35Yasi Salek?

  Like no algorithm would have brought anyone this. People had to find it on their own.

• 1:15:39Speaker 02

  Totally. One of, one of the, um, one of the other kind of threads that happened forever ago is that they had, I mean, this is slightly ahead, but there's a, um, compilation that comes out around the time that they're touring.

• 1:15:51Yasi Salek?

  Oh, those.

• 1:15:51Speaker 02

  Ha Ha Sound.

• 1:15:51Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:15:52Speaker 02

  Called Mother is the Milky Way.

• 1:15:53Yasi Salek?

  Yes.

• 1:15:54Speaker 02

  And there is, I, I like match an interview that she was talking about with one of the samples, because she recommended a movie and it's like, oh, fuck, you know, like, like you wouldn't know it otherwise, but like, The Witches from the 1960s. What is that fucking movie called? It's The Witches. Um, but it's all over that record though. You know, it's like, it's so many different, like tiny little samples by Cyril Frankel. Fucking bear.

• 1:16:18Yasi Salek?

  It's crazy.

• 1:16:18Speaker 02

  Crazy.

• 1:16:19Yasi Salek?

  It's very cool. I, I have, I need to get more down into the nitty gritty.

• 1:16:24Speaker 02

  You know, the best part is like, it's there if you want to. If you wanna like, go do something else, go do it, you know?

• 1:16:29Yasi Salek?

  Sure. That's, that's so true.

• 1:16:31Speaker 02

  It's, it's a, it's a video shop that you walk around with.

• 1:16:34Yasi Salek?

  I have a delight for you. I think the sound of this record is really cool. And like, I, I was, I was like, okay, well, they obviously left the studio. And what they did was kind of cool and crazy. I mean, I love that their like pursuit of getting exactly the right sound really went to all sorts of weird places. So apparently Trish Keenan recorded a lot of vocal tracks with her head in a cardboard box. Which is kind of cool because what she said is it gives it a closeness and deadness that makes it sit in the mix a bit nicer.

• 1:17:04Speaker 02

  Close back.

• 1:17:05Yasi Salek?

  And it's closeness and deadness is actually exactly what you experience with her vocals, right? It feels at, at once very intimate, but again, at once very far away.

• 1:17:14Speaker 02

  Majorly.

• 1:17:15Yasi Salek?

  And what a cool idea. And then they had a church that they found while they were like at a jumble sale. And that's where the drum tracks were recorded. So they probably, that's why they have that sort of like big, spacey sound. Yeah.

• 1:17:28Speaker 02

  These are also songs that like are so ornately composed, but you also like, listen to some of those songs and like, the freedom that you must have had like as a drummer in particular. What, what's his name? Um.

• 1:17:41Yasi Salek?

  Neil Bullock.

• 1:17:41Speaker 02

  Neil Bullock.

• 1:17:42Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:43Speaker 02

  Like he fucks that shit up so crazy.

• 1:17:45Yasi Salek?

  Cause he was a, he was like a, um, British jazz drummer. He had like done concert and session drumming. So he was like a very, very high level drummer.

• 1:17:53Speaker 02

  Majorly. I mean, the time signatures that he hits are just like.

• 1:17:57Yasi Salek?

  When you say time signatures, I'm nodding, but I don't know what it means. And you don't have to explain it.

• 1:18:01Speaker 02

  No, no, no.

• 1:18:02Yasi Salek?

  There's things that we understand and there's things that we don't understand.

• 1:18:05Speaker 02

  And here's the thing also too, I may totally be using that wrong.

• 1:18:07Yasi Salek?

  No, I think you're right. I wouldn't know. I honestly wouldn't.

• 1:18:11Speaker 02

  Um, no, but I, I.

• 1:18:12Yasi Salek?

  People are like, who gave this woman a music podcast? And the answer is myself.

• 1:18:17Speaker 02

  But you know, like, we come at this from being fans.

• 1:18:20Yasi Salek?

  Exactly.

• 1:18:20Speaker 02

  You know?

• 1:18:20Yasi Salek?

  We don't need to know about time signatures.

• 1:18:22Speaker 02

  I don't need to know about time signatures, but I mean, like, like his arms.

• 1:18:25Yasi Salek?

  Yes.

• 1:18:25Speaker 02

  How do they not fucking fall off?

• 1:18:27Yasi Salek?

  No.

• 1:18:28Speaker 02

  They're so fucking fast, those drums.

• 1:18:30Yasi Salek?

  I think you would presume or assume, and this is a bit of foreshadowing, that there is no drummer. This is a drum machine, right?

• 1:18:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:18:37Yasi Salek?

  Because it would go with the vibe of music they're making, but this one has a live drummer. And the one before, all the songs before have live drummers, um, until we get into the next things, which we will get into soon. So this album did pretty well too. It charted in the United States. It hit number eight on the Dance Electronic Albums Chart.

• 1:18:56Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:18:56Yasi Salek?

  And it also got really great reviews. Um, Entertainment Weekly reviewed this, which is kind of crazy.

• 1:19:03Speaker 02

  That's wild.

• 1:19:03Yasi Salek?

  You have to, Entertainment Weekly was really like doing some cool shit back then.

• 1:19:07Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 1:19:07Yasi Salek?

  Every cool album I come across has an Entertainment Weekly review and you're like, again, we used to be a proper society.

• 1:19:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. Usually, I mean, but like charting eight on Dance Electronic, just imagine the club that plays this record.

• 1:19:18Yasi Salek?

  I know. They're like, they throw on Valerie and they're like, enjoy this.

• 1:19:21Speaker 02

  Evacuate the dance club.

• 1:19:22Yasi Salek?

  I think they probably didn't have anywhere else to put it. Cause they were like, we don't know what this is. Man is on a Bird is a great song that you said, that's your favorite.

• 1:19:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:19:29Yasi Salek?

  I kind of feel like this album I experienced it just like as a whole. It's like not an album, it's not a songs album to me. It's like, it's like, oh, okay. I let it wash over me. Kind of like the movie Valerie and

• 1:19:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:19:40Yasi Salek?

  Week of Wonders. So in that sense, they were effective.

• 1:19:43Speaker 02

  Totally. It's a sweet.

• 1:19:44Yasi Salek?

  It's a sweet, exactly. Um, this, there was a single, which was Before We Begin.

• 1:19:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:19:48Yasi Salek?

  Which is an interesting single choice, but, um, it's a good song.

• 1:19:52Speaker 02

  It's probably, probably the most poppy

• 1:19:54Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:54Speaker 02

  went on there for sure.

• 1:19:55Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:04Yasi Salek?

  Here's what The Guardian said about it. Give it five stars. You get the sense that time matters little in broadcast world. Their music, so exquisitely languid, seems to come from a place where clocks don't exist.

• 1:20:14Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 1:20:14Yasi Salek?

  I love that. She said, of course, the trouble with the Bristol Quintet moving at their own pace is that the gaps between albums are painfully long. Ha Ha Sound's predecessor, The Noise, The Noise Made My People came out three years ago. But listening to the album, you feel they haven't wasted a second. Every note, every lyric is perfect. From the joyful clatter of Color Me In to the shimmering Before We Begin and the sherbet fizz of Lunch Hour Pops. Ha Ha Sound radiates impish pleasure, a bliss that proves entirely infectious. Gorge.

• 1:20:44Speaker 02

  Gorge.

• 1:20:44Yasi Salek?

  Love. Um, so then they start touring again and they put out these mini CDs?

• 1:20:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:20:52Yasi Salek?

  Did you hear about this? Microtronics, like you were saying about it?

• 1:20:55Speaker 02

  Microtronics is kind of their like stab at doing library music.

• 1:20:59Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Like you said, I, I listened and it was good.

• 1:21:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:21:02Yasi Salek?

  It's a vibe.

• 1:21:02Speaker 02

  It's, it's.

• 1:21:03Yasi Salek?

  I would have bought it if I was catching broadcast on tour until I was in three, which I was not.

• 1:21:07Speaker 02

  Do I listen to it often? No. You know?

• 1:21:11Yasi Salek?

  But it's an amazing idea for a thing to just like bring on tour as like a little merch item.

• 1:21:24Speaker 02

  You know, it's funny though too, like there are certain sections of, and like this also goes to your point about like taking it as a whole.

• 1:21:29Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:30Speaker 02

  Where there are certain moments on Ha Ha Sound that like are so like shatteringly gorgeous to me.

• 1:21:36Yasi Salek?

  Totally.

• 1:21:37Speaker 02

  That like, to me, I'm obsessed with in particular the end of winter now.

• 1:21:42Yasi Salek?

  Hmm.

• 1:21:42Speaker 02

  And it has these like broken, uh, sins, you know, the, the kind of, it, it's like just so heavenly and gorgeous.

• 1:21:51Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:00Speaker 02

  It's so stacked with like, just like, perfect little

• 1:22:03Yasi Salek?

  It's

• 1:22:03Speaker 02

  moments like that.

• 1:22:04Yasi Salek?

  I mean, the more I learned about them, the more I'm this can be a dud to people who are already broadcast fans. But again, keep in mind, I was a little bit late to the whole of the game, but like, the whole thing is like, one big cohesive art project.

• 1:22:16Speaker 02

  Majorly.

• 1:22:17Yasi Salek?

  You know, which is not, which is fine, but it's not the case for a lot of other bands.

• 1:22:22Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:22:23Yasi Salek?

  At each place I was struck by that, I was like, wow, you're just build you, you're spinning and spinning a universe.

• 1:22:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:22:29Yasi Salek?

  And everything that you add to it fits perfectly into the universe. It's not evolution, it's expansion.

• 1:22:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:22:37Yasi Salek?

  But not even like, in a way that it is furthering something, it's just building out the structure.

• 1:22:43Speaker 02

  I also

• 1:22:43Yasi Salek?

  A beehive or something.

• 1:22:45Speaker 02

  The thing that like, makes me, like, one of the questions, and I think part of the reason why this band is also like endlessly fascinating to me too, is because, because it was cut short.

• 1:22:55Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 1:22:56Speaker 02

  You can ask so many different what ifs. And I have always, I mean, in a way, it's both an expansion and a contraction at the same time too, because it's also whittling down progressively, I mean, the members.

• 1:23:08Yasi Salek?

  Totally, yeah. A lot of it is, it is, yeah, it is kind of like, it like, went like this, expand and then started to go back down.

• 1:23:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:23:15Yasi Salek?

  And Ha Ha Sound is probably the like,

• 1:23:17Speaker 02

  The whitest.

• 1:23:18Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. But I mean, like, the, the band member turnaround is crazy.

• 1:23:22Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:22Speaker 02

  They used, I mean, like, one of my favorite things ever is when a band uses one artist. You know, and it's always Julian House.

• 1:23:28Yasi Salek?

  Yes, which we haven't talked about, sorry, the, almost like a fifth, well, fourth, third, who knows, depending on how many, like, a silent member of broadcast.

• 1:23:37Speaker 02

  Majorly.

• 1:23:37Yasi Salek?

  And later, kind of an actual member in terms of collaborating, and we'll get to that. Yeah, it's, you're, and that also is part of that world building.

• 1:23:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, but to me, one question that is unresolved is, would they have broken apart eventually? And I mean, not like, as like, a couple, that, that's kind of, leave that to the side. I mean, more so just in terms of like, it is such a narrow point of culture, right? They, they went as far down and deep as you possibly could. And it seems pretty bottomless. But on the other hand, though, too, like, what, what does that mean when you're not watching Big Brother, anything, any Spears of shit? Like, this is a lady who, you know, was incredible and who listened to all different kinds of new music. But on the other hand, also had a very limited, you know, palette of touchstones.

• 1:24:28Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 1:24:30Speaker 02

  She would have been cool stuck there all the time, though. She's bad.

• 1:24:33Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, I get the sense, and I don't want to jump ahead too much, but like, and I think it is important, and we'll talk about it at length when we get there, which is to the end, Spellblanket.

• 1:24:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:24:41Yasi Salek?

  Which is our only insight into maybe what was coming.

• 1:24:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:24:45Yasi Salek?

  As much as she didn't have, like, such a broad palette of influences, you get the sense that she had, like, such an incredibly bottomless inner world.

• 1:24:56Speaker 02

  Majorly.

• 1:24:56Yasi Salek?

  And I feel like there was probably a lot left to explore within there, you know? So, I mean, and we'll talk about when we get to Spellblanket.

• 1:25:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:25:04Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Um, okay, so, we, we discussed Ha Ha Sound, talked about Micra-tronics. So then, 2005 is when Tender Buttons comes out. This is technically, is this technically their final studio album?

• 1:25:19Speaker 02

  Yes, it is.

• 1:25:20Yasi Salek?

  Okay. Um, by this point, it's only Trish Keenan and James Cargill.

• 1:25:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:25:27Yasi Salek?

  They have shed the last of their remaining, uh, other people. They had a lot of trouble, I think, getting drummers, so they just gave up. The title is a reference to Gertrude Stein's 1914 poem, which is a whole book of abstract verse.

• 1:25:50Yasi Salek?

  Listen, how is she gonna run out of?

• 1:25:52Speaker 02

  No, it's true.

• 1:25:53Yasi Salek?

  Touchpoints when she's like, digging deep like this?

• 1:25:57Speaker 02

  I mean, that, that, this was like, was another thing too, that kind of blew my mind, just like, how many titles are fragments of other poems? I mean, Where Youth and Laughter Go is a secret feed Zassun poem.

• 1:26:10Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:10Speaker 02

  And if you put the two together, I mean, the, the, the actual poem is called, I think, Suicide in the Trenches.

• 1:26:16Yasi Salek?

  Wonderful.

• 1:26:17Speaker 02

  You know, we, we just like, it's just like,

• 1:26:18Yasi Salek?

  They're just, they're gesturing towards it.

• 1:26:20Speaker 02

  They're gesturing to, I mean, but like, it, it's such a crazy, like, that poem is all about, like, how, you know, um, you look at the hell where youth and laughter have gone, after like, you take a bright young thing and make them want to kill themselves. And it's such a crazy thing that, like, what if we're gonna do the expanse of other half of that? So, I mean, to your point there, right? I mean, like, these fragments that they take, they can like, absolutely make gleam and panoramic, and there's, they're so infinitely renewable too. Um, but Tender Buttons, I mean, Tender Buttons is, I, I am thinking so hard on it, but like, it's about associations with sound?

• 1:26:52Yasi Salek?

  Yes, exactly. So, basically, what Trish Keenan said is, I got obsessed with, well, really appreciated the fact that Gertrude Stein wasn't hung up on making sense at all. It didn't really inspire the writing as such, but the technique of automatic writing, which I think is what Gertrude Stein used to write, uh, Tender Buttons.

• 1:27:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:27:11Yasi Salek?

  Um, is used all over the LP. That's how I generate the lyrics. It's good to put conditions on automatic writing, otherwise it can get a bit too obscure. You know what I kept thinking about when I was reading that is Life Without Buildings?

• 1:27:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:27:23Yasi Salek?

  Very different, obviously.

• 1:27:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:27:25Yasi Salek?

  But thinking about the way that Sue Tomkins writes lyrics, and how cool and interesting, and sort of cut up, but like, precise.

• 1:27:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:27:36Yasi Salek?

  I don't know, I just like, I was like, oh, wow, like, there's sort of like, a, like a highly artistic through line to the way these women crafted their lyrics.

• 1:27:46Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, I, I interviewed Sue Tomkins earlier this year, and I was so

• 1:27:51Yasi Salek?

  Excuse me?

• 1:27:53Speaker 02

  Well, no, no, no, but, but, but, but like, but like, to your point there, I mean, like, one thing that came out, that kind of blew my mind, was like,

• 1:27:59Speaker 02

  the process that she does to make those lyrics is so gradual, it creates, you know, it, it, she lives with it, she has very exacting standards for how these things are gonna sound. You know, i- i- it is such intense, um, abstract craft that I, I could never get my head around.

• 1:28:18Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, it's a true, like, it's a true art practice.

• 1:28:20Speaker 02

  Totally.

• 1:28:20Yasi Salek?

  Much like, I think, automatic writing is a true art practice. It's, not that lyric writing isn't, but y- you get what I'm saying.

• 1:28:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. I mean, one thing that I do think, I mean, this is, I'm gonna say this out loud, and you're, you're gonna hate me. One thing that does kind of make me

• 1:28:35Yasi Salek?

  I can, you can never make me.

• 1:28:38Speaker 02

  I, AI, technically, is a form of automatic writing.

• 1:28:44Yasi Salek?

  Okay.

• 1:28:45Speaker 02

  Right?

• 1:28:45Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:45Speaker 02

  It is, it is taking from a data set, and this big old, enormous, like, stew of words, and how they relate to one another.

• 1:28:55Yasi Salek?

  You know what the difference is? And this is always kind of my, like, take on AI, and I'm, I'm not a lot, I, I've talked about on the show, I'm not anti-AI. But the, it is taking from the whole, the general population. Whereas, automatic writing, as a person does it, is taking from one universe, which is you. So, that's, you know, you can, you can definitely have AI do it, but it's, what is it gonna take from? You know, like, the, the, the lowest common denominator often, right?

• 1:29:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:29:26Yasi Salek?

  Um, I once, this is a side story, but long, like, maybe a couple of years ago, I was like, let's just see, AI, who is Yassir Salek?

• 1:29:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:29:34Yasi Salek?

  And it was like, Yassir Salek has a very popular wellness newsletter called The Bintuation Room. And I was like,

• 1:29:42Yasi Salek?

  Do I?

• 1:29:44Yasi Salek?

  Also, like, incredible name, The Bintuation Room?

• 1:29:48Speaker 02

  I mean,

• 1:29:48Yasi Salek?

  Phenomenal stuff.

• 1:29:49Speaker 02

  Maybe, I mean, you said that there's only one Yassir Salek, and it's like, maybe there isn't.

• 1:29:53Yasi Salek?

  Maybe, maybe AI accessed, like, a parallel universe, like, another dimension? And the other dimension, Yassir Salek is happily sitting, tapping away at her wellness newsletter, The Bintuation Room. Welcome back to The Bintuation Room. Today, we're talking about peptides.

• 1:30:09Speaker 02

  Oh, my god.

• 1:30:10Yasi Salek?

  Something to think about.

• 1:30:11Speaker 02

  But, but I mean, like, yes, right? You're, you're taking from the collective unconscious.

• 1:30:15Yasi Salek?

  Right, that's generous. The collective unconscious and the general population who posts online are not the same.

• 1:30:19Speaker 02

  You, but I mean, you're, you're taking the entirety of all words.

• 1:30:22Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:23Speaker 02

  Versus your own inner world, right?

• 1:30:27Speaker 02

  And I think that, I mean, like, what you're missing in that process is like, the kind of active discernment that Sue Tomkins uses, right? And I do think, I do think that Trish Keenan would have slayed that shit down because like, she-

• 1:30:39Yasi Salek?

  She would have slayed the house down boots.

• 1:30:42Speaker 02

  She would have gagged that automaton, you know? But I mean, like, you know, that is a woman who knew what she was operating with. Like, she, this is a woman who, like, understood the kind of doorways to perception.

• 1:30:55Yasi Salek?

  Totally.

• 1:30:56Speaker 02

  You know, and, and how this is kind of a automaton that is spitting out things. And she could have crafted it into something very distinct and human, I would think.

• 1:31:03Yasi Salek?

  So what you're saying, in short, is, R.I.P. Trish Keenan, you would have loved AI. R.I.P. Trish Keenan, you would have loved claw. Is what you're saying.

• 1:31:13Speaker 02

  Oh, my god.

• 1:31:14Yasi Salek?

  Okay, that's, that is a take.

• 1:31:15Speaker 02

  That is a take, unfortunately.

• 1:31:17Yasi Salek?

  You have, you have one take, and this will be the clip, and what you will be known for from here on out.

• 1:31:22Speaker 02

  Please don't do this to me. Please don't do this to me.

• 1:31:27Yasi Salek?

  I just want to put you online with only that, with no context.

• 1:31:30Speaker 02

  Oh, my god, it's gonna be a nightmare.

• 1:31:31Yasi Salek?

  Um, she might have. I mean, listen. I'm not a luddite. I'm open. I'm listening. My heart is open.

• 1:31:38Speaker 02

  It's like, in the-

• 1:31:39Yasi Salek?

  So far, I've had no positive interactions.

• 1:31:43Speaker 02

  I, the one thing that I have liked, I don't know if this is like, how long it's gonna happen, though. I did type in, like, type this in the style of Harry Tafoya.

• 1:31:51Yasi Salek?

  How'd it go?

• 1:31:51Speaker 02

  Couldn't fucking do it.

• 1:31:53Yasi Salek?

  I would love it to try to replicate the absolutely unhinged shit I say on here.

• 1:31:59Speaker 02

  I love that.

• 1:32:01Yasi Salek?

  And when I say I love it, I say, please don't do that.

• 1:32:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:32:04Yasi Salek?

  Um, yeah, couldn't do it.

• 1:32:06Speaker 02

  The vitiation room.

• 1:32:07Yasi Salek?

  It can't, can it possess our whimsy?

• 1:32:10Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:32:11Yasi Salek?

  Can it possess our-

• 1:32:12Speaker 02

  Our numina? Our, our abstract.

• 1:32:15Yasi Salek?

  Exactly. It doesn't know what mean words the kids in seventh grade said to me that are fueling my desire to achieve.

• 1:32:25Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 1:32:25Yasi Salek?

  It can never know that.

• 1:32:27Speaker 02

  It can never know.

• 1:32:27Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. You know what else it couldn't know? Please list all the Madonna movies in order.

• 1:32:33Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 1:32:34Yasi Salek?

  Missed a few. I was like, you have one job. And you can't even do that job, right? So, we'll move on.

• 1:32:38Speaker 02

  We need to make an AI model that has child trauma.

• 1:32:41Yasi Salek?

  That, yeah. I mean, I'm sure it's coming.

• 1:32:45Speaker 02

  God damn it.

• 1:32:46Yasi Salek?

  Okay, so back to Tender Butts, Tender Buttons. They asked them, the two remaining, uh, members, can you describe how your sound has developed since the release of Ha Ha Sound? Trish said, I think it's the opposite of developed. What is the opposite? And James said, regressed. And she said, yes, I think we've regressed. And James said, I think it's more focused. Before, we really wanted to create quite deep and detailed textures. I still think that was good for that time. It's what we felt. But since then, we've decided to focus on a more simple and consistent sound. And Trish said, a less precious approach as well. We definitely rethought how we use the equipment and where. We've always had quite a conventional setup, before speakers on stands and the mixing desk in between. We just got really bored with that.

• 1:33:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:33:31Yasi Salek?

  I know it's a really lame take, but Tender Buttons is my favorite.

• 1:33:34Speaker 02

  It is.

• 1:33:34Yasi Salek?

  In fairness, it's the one I found and the one I spent time with, but it's the same, it's the one I always come back to.

• 1:33:40Speaker 02

  To me, it's the masterpiece.

• 1:33:41Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. It's the masterpiece. Okay, so, okay, so.

• 1:33:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, we're going into this.

• 1:33:44Yasi Salek?

  I said it right, I said it right.

• 1:33:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, I a hundred percent agree with you.

• 1:33:47Yasi Salek?

  Because, I mean, and it also just truly might be a taste thing, like, I don't, I don't respond super well to, like, explorations and sound. Like, it's fine, and I think it's cool, and I'm glad it exists, but it's not something I want to return to, to listen to. But that's how, that sounded kind of like stupid of me, but you know what I'm saying?

• 1:34:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:34:07Yasi Salek?

  It's kind of like what she just said, like, we were really interested in, like, sort of, how much can we layer on to here, and how much can we, like, experiment and push out? And then here, they were kind of like, okay, what if we, like, remove that desire to not be like other girls or whatever?

• 1:34:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:34:23Yasi Salek?

  And kind of come to the core of who we are, which they're just fundamentally not like other girls?

• 1:34:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:34:27Yasi Salek?

  And I feel like this just, like, nails it.

• 1:34:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, but it's also, I mean, like, it goes places that are also so, to me, like, deeply unnerving.

• 1:34:36Yasi Salek?

  Hundred percent.

• 1:34:37Speaker 02

  Like, scary as fuck places.

• 1:34:39Yasi Salek?

  Broadcast deeply unnerving is really the tagline.

• 1:34:42Speaker 02

  Majorly. It's a really, really unnerving band, but I mean, like-

• 1:34:45Yasi Salek?

  I'll tell you what, jet lag?

• 1:34:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:34:47Yasi Salek?

  Light depress, throw on broadcast, a bit of Suicide Watch.

• 1:34:53Speaker 02

  No, of course.

• 1:34:53Yasi Salek?

  A bit of Jetelephone the authorities to come get me and put this thing on. What is it called?

• 1:35:00Speaker 02

  And they're outside the door.

• 1:35:01Yasi Salek?

  That's right. And they're waiting, hello, AI told us that you were, um, considering. Just kidding, so dark.

• 1:35:08Yasi Salek?

  Go on, Harry, sorry.

• 1:35:09Speaker 02

  Oh, um, I didn't tell you about, okay, sorry. Can I do a side tangent?

• 1:35:14Yasi Salek?

  You didn't tell me about the time a ghost visited you. No, tell me.

• 1:35:17Speaker 02

  Well, no, no, it's, that's it.

• 1:35:18Yasi Salek?

  Actually, it is.

• 1:35:19Speaker 02

  No, no, I mean, this is the time to talk about the ghost, so.

• 1:35:22Yasi Salek?

  Oh, my god, I was fully just pulling me out of my ass. Okay, great, let's, let's talk about the ghost.

• 1:35:26Speaker 02

  About the ghost. Okay, so, I had a very bad quarter-life crisis. It was just like, just a confluence of, like, shitty things piled up after the other. And I was living in this very, very old house. And it didn't freak me out at first, being there. I definitely, like, felt the temperature change, and I felt like a kind of really uncanny sense of presence about the entire place. And I found out, like, from, like, a downstairs neighbor, like, oh, yeah, there's a woman and her cat that are apparently the ghosts that haunt this place. And I was like-

• 1:35:58Yasi Salek?

  Cat ghost is cool.

• 1:36:00Speaker 02

  Well, it was weird, too, because I remember, like, I remember, like, in retrospect, being like, oh, yeah, there was something that used to brush against my leg constantly in the kitchen.

• 1:36:07Yasi Salek?

  Feline ghost, trying to get a pet.

• 1:36:09Speaker 02

  Trying to get a pet. And I was like, I don't see enough. It was fucking creepy. But I remember, like, I lost my shit completely. I like, I would experience, like, moments of, like, dissociation, you know, where, like, I could, like, feel my subjectivity kind of just slipping into the ether. And it's a very weird place to be, like, of just, like, not feeling like a totally integrated, coherent human being.

• 1:36:35Yasi Salek?

  And none of this is related to the experimentations with LSD that you were doing during this time?

• 1:36:39Speaker 02

  I was like a total sober little fucker.

• 1:36:41Yasi Salek?

  You were like, I was drinking Coca-Cola.

• 1:36:43Speaker 02

  I was drinking soda pops, you know? So, this is all to say that, like, I was already kind of primed, like, living in this weird house, not feeling great in my life, mentally not being in the best place

• 1:36:56Yasi Salek?

  Sure.

• 1:36:57Speaker 02

  to see a ghost, right? And-

• 1:36:59Yasi Salek?

  They come when the veil is thin.

• 1:37:00Speaker 02

  They come when the veil is thin, and I, and I think that it also is kind of playing on your system internally. And I remember this one time, I was on the phone with my mother, and I lost my fucking shit because I was sitting on my bed. And I saw this, like, half-present woman run by, like, the door frame, like, the, the, the hallways right here, the bathrooms over here, my door is wide open, I'm sitting on my bed, run through. Like, like, like, fully run through. And I, like, am on the phone, she, like, hears me, like, lose my shit, be like, what the fuck was that? I leave, I go walking around for hours, refuse to come back.

• 1:37:41Speaker 02

  But this is all to say that you'll never believe what record I found again during this time period.

• 1:37:47Yasi Salek?

  Came right back to your door.

• 1:37:48Speaker 02

  It was fucking Tender Buttons.

• 1:37:50Yasi Salek?

  The ghost lady put it there?

• 1:37:51Speaker 02

  The ghost lady put it there.

• 1:37:52Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Wow.

• 1:37:53Speaker 02

  And I think that-

• 1:37:54Yasi Salek?

  I don't think that probably helped you.

• 1:37:56Speaker 02

  No, I mean, what, it totally helped me, and the reason why it helped me was because there is something about the way in which her voice ricochets through these really scary spates of noise, where she kind of goes in and out of focus.

• 1:38:11Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:12Speaker 02

  And is this being that, like, is incoherent and, like, so deeply, like, like ravaged by sadness, and then is able to re-cohere, where I was like, I-

• 1:38:25Yasi Salek?

  I am girl who's going to be okay.

• 1:38:27Speaker 02

  I'm girl who's gonna be okay. I was like, I was like, I, I, I am going through it, and this lady is, like, proving in sound that you can be a coherent being at the end of this, actually.

• 1:38:39Yasi Salek?

  Right. Even if you're dissolving right now, you will reconstitute.

• 1:38:42Speaker 02

  You will reconstitute. It was fucking wild.

• 1:38:44Yasi Salek?

  Wow, that's so, I do, I do firmly and fundamentally believe that music finds you when you need it the most.

• 1:38:52Speaker 02

  Majorly.

• 1:38:53Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:53Speaker 02

  Majorly.

• 1:38:54Yasi Salek?

  It's always been my experience.

• 1:38:56Speaker 02

  Music plays you. You play music, no, sorry, music plays you.

• 1:38:59Yasi Salek?

  Music plays you, actually, period. I just wanted to let you know that I also lived in a house with a ghost in San Francisco.

• 1:39:06Speaker 02

  Go on.

• 1:39:06Yasi Salek?

  Um, I lived in the house where Pedro from The Real World died. That's pretty cool.

• 1:39:13Speaker 02

  That's an angelic ghost.

• 1:39:14Yasi Salek?

  I know, exactly. It was, it was like a blessed situation.

• 1:39:17Speaker 02

  Truly, holy shit, Yasi.

• 1:39:19Yasi Salek?

  I know.

• 1:39:19Speaker 02

  That's amazing.

• 1:39:20Yasi Salek?

  A little bit of Yasi lore for you guys. Yeah. We all have our San Francisco moment.

• 1:39:25Speaker 02

  Literally.

• 1:39:25Yasi Salek?

  Not everyone, but many of us.

• 1:39:27Speaker 02

  Of the mind, the San Francisco of the mind.

• 1:39:29Yasi Salek?

  Right, sure.

• 1:39:30Speaker 02

  We all go there.

• 1:39:31Yasi Salek?

  The rice a roni of the mind, the San Francisco treat. James Car- Cargill?

• 1:39:36Speaker 02

  Cargill.

• 1:39:37Yasi Salek?

  Said of this album, there are two types of songs we do. There's one where Trish will write on a guitar pretty conventionally, and then we'll try to put the sound to it. Or there's the little demos that I do that Trish will write the songs on top of. So Trish won't play too much, you know, won't do too much of the instrumentation afterwards, but she might write it initially. It works quite well now, but this has taken a long time for that to happen. It never worked like that when there was more than two of us. So I do think maybe part of Tender Buttons locking the fuck into place is that, and I don't want to disrespect the other members, but it's always been maybe about this nucleus of two people. And then once they were sort of able to function as this, like,

• 1:40:21Yasi Salek?

  just the two of them, it really starts to sing.

• 1:40:24Speaker 02

  Totally.

• 1:40:24Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:40:25Speaker 02

  Totally. That makes total sense.

• 1:40:26Yasi Salek?

  James also said that Tender Buttons was quite intuitive. There's nothing really labored on as far as sequencing or fiddling with electronics goes. I think that's really interesting too, because I do think despite everything, you can hear the labor on the other album. You can hear the trying.

• 1:40:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:40:40Yasi Salek?

  And there's this, you don't hear trying on this one.

• 1:40:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:40:44Yasi Salek?

  Also, I think one of the most major things, which you kind of pointed out a little bit earlier, the sort of core,

• 1:40:51Yasi Salek?

  I don't want to say influence, but kind of the influence and inspiration, at least like

• 1:40:56Yasi Salek?

  thematically and emotionally for this album for Tender Buttons was Trish had lost her father. He had died. While they were, I think just before.

• 1:41:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:41:06Yasi Salek?

  And so she brings that incredible, you know, pain and loss and grappling with that idea of real grief.

• 1:41:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:41:16Yasi Salek?

  Into this, into this album. And there are a lot of personal references, but then they're kind of mixed up in all those like automatic writing, cut up coded texts.

• 1:41:27Speaker 02

  Totally. I mean, and the other thing that's so crazy about automatic writing too is like, I don't know what those parts are.

• 1:41:32Yasi Salek?

  No, right.

• 1:41:33Speaker 02

  Like what is, what is that truth there? It's so mangled and does kind of, you know, you have to kind of make the sense.

• 1:41:39Yasi Salek?

  Well, I mean, she's such a private person. Like, I'm sure that's the only way it was possible for her to express.

• 1:41:44Speaker 02

  Totally.

• 1:41:46Yasi Salek?

  I love that this album opens with an acoustic guitar.

• 1:41:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's incredible.

• 1:41:49Yasi Salek?

  Unfortunately, I am that girl. It's no matter what, you're gonna take me back to the acoustic guitar, but I found the F opens with an acoustic guitar. And I think, I mean, just puts me at ease for a second. Yeah.

• 1:42:02Speaker 02

  To comfort her.

• 1:42:03Yasi Salek?

  What are some other like standout tracks for you on here?

• 1:42:08Speaker 02

  I think that that sweep from I Found the F to Corporeal.

• 1:42:14Yasi Salek?

  Corporeal is my fucking favorite broadcast song.

• 1:42:19Speaker 02

  I think it's my favorite broadcast song too.

• 1:42:21Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:42:21Speaker 02

  I, I, Corporeal is, does things that are just so crazy.

• 1:42:25Yasi Salek?

  It's so, but it's, it's weird. It's like,

• 1:42:29Yasi Salek?

  like if you don't pay too close of attention, it's kind of just a pop song in, in the weirdest way possible.

• 1:42:34Speaker 02

  I mean, it's the, it's also such a, again, like, like that, the way you could read that song in particular.

• 1:42:40Yasi Salek?

  Lyrically, you mean?

• 1:42:41Speaker 02

  Lyrically. It goes off into like the most intense dynamic possible, which is sex and death, right? The, just the very thin line that kind of separates those two things, right?

• 1:42:50Yasi Salek?

  And then you, then when you have the added layer of thinking about her father's illness, like then you're like, oh, the X-ray, like how many X-rays did she look at? You know, like, you kind of can like see the maybe like the slight kernels of where it started, but then where it goes. And also like, it's a body horror a little bit, you know, like.

• 1:43:12Speaker 02

  Totally.

• 1:43:12Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. I also read, by the way, that Trish said in an interview, just apropos of nothing, I've had an astral projection. I've had an out of body experience. I just fell asleep on the couch and I had my back facing outwards. And I just rose my body up to the ceiling and saw myself lying there. And my friend actually walked in and put something on the television and walked back out again. And I told her that she did that.

• 1:43:35Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 1:43:36Yasi Salek?

  Also adds a layer to the song. Cause like this, this song is so much to me about

• 1:43:42Yasi Salek?

  being dissociated, being divorced from your body, from yourself, from your physicality.

• 1:43:46Speaker 02

  I wrote a description.

• 1:43:48Yasi Salek?

  Please?

• 1:43:50Speaker 02

  Forever ago, to try to get someone to listen to this.

• 1:43:54Speaker 02

  Tell them it's best to think of it as Trish Keenan as a ghost before her own time. And that the poles that she travels to are heaven and hell, life and death. The sadic is the journey a soul has to take. That's how I, as a weepy bitch, think of it.

• 1:44:07Yasi Salek?

  Oh my God.

• 1:44:18Speaker 02

  The mutability of these things, right? That it is life and death. She's talking about looking at an X-ray. And wanting the doctor or surgeon to do the same things to her that's on the X-ray.

• 1:44:33Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:33Speaker 02

  And you can't tell like, if it's like a come on to like, let's fuck.

• 1:44:36Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 1:44:36Speaker 02

  Or like, I am, this X-ray is riddled with cancer.

• 1:44:40Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:40Speaker 02

  You know?

• 1:44:41Yasi Salek?

  Like kill me or like eviscerate me.

• 1:44:43Speaker 02

  Totally.

• 1:44:44Yasi Salek?

  Erase me, you know?

• 1:44:45Speaker 02

  And there's a drop in that song too. I mean, the one that really gets me is like, there's, between the verses, there's this kind of synth that sounds like it's a heart monitor. Right? And then

• 1:44:58Yasi Salek?

  Totally.

• 1:44:58Speaker 02

  It finally drops out and becomes like the noisiest moment of the song. And then she does like the most blank, bland, ah, and then it kind of goes up, up, up and up.

• 1:45:09Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:45:09Speaker 02

  And you can't tell if she's orgasming or dying. It's so crazy to listen to.

• 1:45:15Yasi Salek?

  Wow. I hadn't thought about that. That's so true.

• 1:45:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:45:18Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. It's in it, it's her mind.

• 1:45:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, her mind, her fucking mind.

• 1:45:23Yasi Salek?

  Fucking mind.

• 1:45:34Yasi Salek?

  We are mankind, we are mannequin.

• 1:45:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:45:37Yasi Salek?

  With and without mind, with or without Darwin. But also classify me. Just classify me, the strings of my autonomy is to me, one of like the most perfect lyrics of all time.

• 1:45:48Speaker 02

  Totally.

• 1:45:49Yasi Salek?

  I love it. It's like, it's a, it's like a plea. It's like a bit of a taunt.

• 1:45:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:45:55Yasi Salek?

  But it's also like really sad.

• 1:45:57Speaker 02

  And then it also, like in concert and stuff, she also shifts it too. So like she'll, she'll be like, cause I'm my anomaly, you know, like it's, again, the looseness with the words, right? The, the tactile feeling of the thing actually does relate to that Kurtis Stein idea just so much. It doesn't need to make literal sense as long as it fucking hits.

• 1:46:16Yasi Salek?

  This song hits so hard.

• 1:46:17Speaker 02

  It fucking hits so hard.

• 1:46:18Yasi Salek?

  But you're right. That whole stretch, like tears in the typing pool is fucking.

• 1:46:22Speaker 02

  Could we tell it this long?

• 1:46:23Yasi Salek?

  Yes, we absolutely can.

• 1:46:25Speaker 02

  So this is the other like acoustic guitar moment. And this to me is like the absolute like gut punch sorrow one.

• 1:46:34Yasi Salek?

  It's rough.

• 1:46:35Speaker 02

  Of all time, it's fucking rough, man.

• 1:46:37Yasi Salek?

  It's rough.

• 1:46:38Speaker 02

  This is a hard time for Yasi to record.

• 1:46:39Yasi Salek?

  When you're recovering from juggling, feeling mildly depressed. Um, and dissociating and you're like, now this bitch talking about fucking.

• 1:46:49Yasi Salek?

  When you got a bitch in your ear, talking about the page turns on me and you.

• 1:46:53Speaker 02

  Oh my God. Well, but that one also so crazy too, because you could read that two different ways too, right? It is

• 1:47:00Speaker 02

  a breakup.

• 1:47:01Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 1:47:02Speaker 02

  Or it's her talking to her dad.

• 1:47:05Yasi Salek?

  Totally.

• 1:47:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:47:06Yasi Salek?

  It's loss.

• 1:47:07Speaker 02

  It's really intense loss.

• 1:47:09Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:47:18Speaker 02

  Like my lowest moments that I know are my low moments are the ones where I don't really have words to describe my experience.

• 1:47:25Yasi Salek?

  Hundred percent.

• 1:47:26Speaker 02

  You know, like, like my capacity to write is the thing that like has saved me again and again and again. Like I don't.

• 1:47:31Yasi Salek?

  Can I tell you something so embarrassing?

• 1:47:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:47:34Yasi Salek?

  Wow. I just really put my shit on Front Street on here. When I don't have words, when I feel really terrible, I always return, and this is so weird because I am not that big of a fan of this band.

• 1:47:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:47:46Yasi Salek?

  To a, a national lyric.

• 1:47:48Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 1:47:49Yasi Salek?

  You would never have accepted, right?

• 1:47:50Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:47:50Yasi Salek?

  But there's one lyric where he says, I feel mechanical and thin.

• 1:47:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:47:54Yasi Salek?

  And I'm like, I don't know why. It's just

• 1:47:58Yasi Salek?

  always works for like, it's so simple. And it's like, you just have that like,

• 1:48:04Yasi Salek?

  anyways, that's all I wanted to let you know. That's where my mind goes when I have words to the fucking national.

• 1:48:09Speaker 02

  Totally. But I mean, like you need to get a jump start though. I mean, like you gotta, you gotta put on the national, you gotta put on some automatic writing. You've got it.

• 1:48:16Yasi Salek?

  Right. Well, sure. Yeah.

• 1:48:18Speaker 02

  Matt Berninger, make an automatic writing record.

• 1:48:21Yasi Salek?

  It's possible his wife wrote that because his wife wrote a lot of the lyrics.

• 1:48:23Speaker 02

  That's kind of cool.

• 1:48:24Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. I feel mechanical and thin. Hear me play my violin again.

• 1:48:27Speaker 02

  There we go.

• 1:48:27Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Sorry, go on. I cut you off. Anyways, please go on.

• 1:48:32Speaker 02

  Oh, but I mean, like to me, she's not doing the emotion with her voice.

• 1:48:37Yasi Salek?

  No.

• 1:48:37Speaker 02

  It's the way that the voice is mixed and the way in which the voice is put in conversation with itself.

• 1:48:43Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 1:48:43Speaker 02

  So when it does, you know, when she is stacking the vocal harmonies and multi-tracking her voice, like, like it leaps up at different points in a way where it almost sounds like the kind of thin mechanical version of her versus the one that's actually emoting.

• 1:49:00Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 1:49:00Speaker 02

  And those layers also too, really fucking hit during grief, like periods of grief where like you have layered experiences. I mean, like I, I think about this, like how.

• 1:49:14Speaker 02

  You know, like when you experience a period of grief, like, like just how the kind of cliches of language kind of hit you all over again, like.

• 1:49:19Yasi Salek?

  Totally. I also think there's like something inborn to grief is numbness.

• 1:49:23Speaker 02

  Totally.

• 1:49:24Yasi Salek?

  Like it is kind of an oscillation between numbness and not numbness.

• 1:49:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:49:28Yasi Salek?

  So, and that quality in Broadcast is so perfect.

• 1:49:33Speaker 02

  Majorly.

• 1:49:34Yasi Salek?

  For grief.

• 1:49:35Speaker 02

  Majorly. Yeah, no, I think, I think that's a really crazy thing that happens with that, with those songs in particular. I think that that one too.

• 1:49:44Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, Tears in the Taping.

• 1:49:45Speaker 02

  Into Corporal.

• 1:49:48Speaker 02

  Where you kind of dance that shit around. It's wild. But I mean, like, I think America's Boy is a perfect song.

• 1:49:54Yasi Salek?

  It's really great. I said, okay, I have something to read about that. They asked her, could you describe the process you followed when writing America's Boy? And Trish said, it was just an instrumental piece of music to begin with. I liked it, but I wasn't particularly trying to craft a song. I was looking after my dad, who died during the making of the record. We always had a ritual of doing the Sunday crossword, and I started to like the language of the cryptic clues. I love the weird sentencing of the clues, and I started to echo them back a little. One crossword in particular was very negative towards America, many such cases, around the time of the scandal of the American troops treatment of Iraqi prisoners. I guess that the crossword writer was expressing it through this coded system of the language. And James says, the crossword was about the abuse of the prisoners. And Trish said, it wasn't about it directly.

• 1:50:36Yasi Salek?

  My interpretation was that it had an anti-American tone. In writing the lyrics, I kind of answered my own versions of the questions as a spontaneous reaction. It was something that I wrote within a 20 minute session. That's so fucking cool.

• 1:50:49Speaker 02

  That's cool.

• 1:50:50Yasi Salek?

  Which is why it's called America's Boy.

• 1:50:51Speaker 02

  Totally.

• 1:50:51Yasi Salek?

  And why those lyrics, if, when you see that lens, you're like, oh, yeah, Quaker toil and Texan oil.

• 1:51:00Speaker 02

  But again, you know, again, it's a funny thing too, right? Where the music is so violent. And she's like, I don't know. Yeah, no, it's, it's incredible.

• 1:51:09Yasi Salek?

  It's really good. And you know what? Drag us straight to hell, Ben. We deserve it.

• 1:51:13Speaker 02

  Literally.

• 1:51:22Yasi Salek?

  NASA nude, you're manly, you.

• 1:51:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:51:24Yasi Salek?

  So fucking good. Um, yeah, that first, I guess if you look at it as like side A, side B, I don't have the violin for me, but I presume it probably.

• 1:51:32Speaker 02

  It probably is.

• 1:51:33Yasi Salek?

  Is, yeah. Cause not that the second half is bad, cause I love it too, but.

• 1:51:37Speaker 02

  Of course.

• 1:51:38Yasi Salek?

  The songs don't jump out to me as much, as much as like the kind of experience of side two.

• 1:51:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:51:44Yasi Salek?

  Although.

• 1:51:45Speaker 02

  There, I mean, there's certain, okay.

• 1:51:47Yasi Salek?

  I do love You and Me in Time.

• 1:51:49Speaker 02

  I think that Subjet to the Ladder does kind of get to that astral, sorry, arc of a journey, Subjet to the Ladder. It does kind of get to that kind of astral projection version of things too.

• 1:52:02Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:52:03Speaker 02

  But You and Me in Time, fucking, that's another gut punch right there too, where it's like.

• 1:52:09Yasi Salek?

  It's truly fucked me up, fam.

• 1:52:11Speaker 02

  Oh, God.

• 1:52:12Yasi Salek?

  This is very obviously, I think, about the loss of her father.

• 1:52:15Speaker 02

  Majorly.

• 1:52:16Yasi Salek?

  It's almost like she puts aside her like clever or like sideways-ness of the lyrics.

• 1:52:24Speaker 02

  Totally.

• 1:52:24Yasi Salek?

  They're pretty pure here, you know?

• 1:52:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:52:26Yasi Salek?

  It's like very sweet.

• 1:52:28Speaker 02

  What I like about this too, is that it is, in my head, a companion to Echo's Answer. It is, it is.

• 1:52:38Yasi Salek?

  It's nature.

• 1:52:39Speaker 02

  It's still a nature thing.

• 1:52:40Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:52:41Speaker 02

  But it's also like forgiveness, like.

• 1:52:43Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 1:52:44Speaker 02

  In a really intense way. But I think that it is definitely kind of reckoning with, you know, it's, those same kind of natural movements, even if they feel like they're permanent and irrevocable, are also reunifying in a sense too, right?

• 1:53:00Yasi Salek?

  The reconstitution.

• 1:53:01Speaker 02

  Reconstitution.

• 1:53:02Yasi Salek?

  Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. We return to the, return to the place from which we came.

• 1:53:19Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, what a.

• 1:53:20Speaker 02

  What a fucking record, man.

• 1:53:21Yasi Salek?

  What a fucking record, man.

• 1:53:23Speaker 02

  But I mean, again, like Black Hat, a banger, Michael A. Grammar, like, these are all like such shout along songs too, I think in my head.

• 1:53:32Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. I like Goodbye Girls as well.

• 1:53:34Speaker 02

  Goodbye Girls fucking rules.

• 1:53:35Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:53:35Speaker 02

  I love Goodbye Girls.

• 1:53:37Yasi Salek?

  I mean, there, there's no, no misses, like this. It's a real start to finish. And I, I, I get, it's interesting, cause like, they, they have great album art throughout, but is this the only one that has Trish on it?

• 1:53:48Speaker 02

  With her on it.

• 1:53:49Yasi Salek?

  And, and you know what? I'm sure that had a lot to do with people finding it. Had a lot to do with me finding it. Like, I saw this album cover and I was like, that looks interesting.

• 1:53:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:53:58Yasi Salek?

  You did too, like.

• 1:53:59Speaker 02

  I saw it. I thought it was a total record from distant past in conversation with these older collage records.

• 1:54:06Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:54:07Speaker 02

  Which is another, just such a crazy twist. It's so perfect, right?

• 1:54:11Yasi Salek?

  It's really, really amazing. Really amazing stuff. It didn't get as good of reviews as some of the, as Ha Ha Sound, which is interesting.

• 1:54:20Speaker 02

  No, did not.

• 1:54:20Yasi Salek?

  Um, which makes no sense to me, but.

• 1:54:23Speaker 02

  Wait, can I say something real quick?

• 1:54:24Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:54:25Speaker 02

  If I'm like unpacking my like unconscious motivations.

• 1:54:27Yasi Salek?

  Okay.

• 1:54:29Speaker 02

  Did I not in part want to write for Pitchfork to avenge this fucking album?

• 1:54:34Yasi Salek?

  No, that's, I love that.

• 1:54:37Speaker 02

  My first, my first Pitchfork piece was the Broadcast one.

• 1:54:39Yasi Salek?

  What did they originally say about this?

• 1:54:43Speaker 02

  They kind of just focus on the fact that it's noise, but they kind of just say it's noise for noise's sake.

• 1:54:48Yasi Salek?

  Right. And you were like, no, I'm a fucking watch, bitch.

• 1:54:52Speaker 02

  Sorry, I'm not just journey to heaven and hell.

• 1:54:54Yasi Salek?

  Right. For you to call it noise for noise's sake. I mean, a fun thing about Pitchfork, as we know, and we, we call it on the show all the time, like, they often got it wrong.

• 1:55:03Speaker 02

  Of course.

• 1:55:04Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. And then they love to do the thing where they're like, Sunday review, 10 out of 10. And everyone's like, I have a way back machine. Maybe it's a 0.8 when it came out, you know? I believe Belle and Sebastian had that recently happen.

• 1:55:16Speaker 02

  You know, it's like fun though, to me though, too, is like, it's both the best and worst thing about Pitchfork, right? The rating system, right?

• 1:55:21Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:55:21Speaker 02

  Because it also, in like an algorithmic era where everything is like rated, scrutinized, like, given.

• 1:55:28Yasi Salek?

  I don't believe in rating personally, but yes.

• 1:55:30Speaker 02

  But like, like given that kind of like shitty quantification.

• 1:55:32Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:55:33Speaker 02

  It is so nice to be like, these numbers are fake as fuck.

• 1:55:36Yasi Salek?

  Fake as hell, babe. I mean, like, for me, anything that lands between like six and eight, it's like, that's all one thing. I don't care, you know? Unless you say like one or 10.

• 1:55:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:55:50Yasi Salek?

  There's no distinction.

• 1:55:51Speaker 02

  Totally.

• 1:55:52Yasi Salek?

  And like, nothing really, I mean, I never see like a three, you know?

• 1:56:00Yasi Salek?

  Okay. Got your album.

• 1:56:03Speaker 02

  Got your album.

• 1:56:04Yasi Salek?

  America's Boy single, weird but cool.

• 1:56:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:56:06Yasi Salek?

  Um.

• 1:56:08Speaker 02

  That's a choice.

• 1:56:09Yasi Salek?

  It's a choice. You could have put Corporal.

• 1:56:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:56:11Yasi Salek?

  Might have had a different outcome. Um, but also it's fucking 2005.

• 1:56:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:56:15Yasi Salek?

  And it's a weird time for music.

• 1:56:17Speaker 02

  It's a weird time period.

• 1:56:18Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Microtronics, volume two comes out during this tour. Okay, then they put out this like collection of singles, EPs and compilations called The Future Crayon. So it's kind of everything that we've already talked about.

• 1:56:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:56:33Yasi Salek?

  Now shit gets fucking weird.

• 1:56:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, this is a very weird timeline.

• 1:56:38Yasi Salek?

  2009. So it's a full four years after Tender Buttons. I don't know what they've been doing.

• 1:56:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:56:42Yasi Salek?

  I presume touring, sitting in Birmingham, watching Czech films. I don't know.

• 1:56:47Speaker 02

  I, I remember reading this kind of stranger interview kind of toward the end.

• 1:56:51Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:56:52Speaker 02

  Where they're talking about money troubles.

• 1:56:54Yasi Salek?

  Well, they, I know they moved.

• 1:56:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, they moved to.

• 1:56:57Yasi Salek?

  To a place called Hungerford, yeah, which was very haunted.

• 1:57:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:57:03Yasi Salek?

  It was like tons of like occult phenomenon was happening there.

• 1:57:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:57:08Yasi Salek?

  Um, it's close to Stonehenge.

• 1:57:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:57:11Yasi Salek?

  There was a little coat house hotel that was known to be haunted. So I don't know if they moved because of money troubles.

• 1:57:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:57:17Yasi Salek?

  Or that's just concurrent.

• 1:57:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:57:20Yasi Salek?

  But.

• 1:57:21Speaker 02

  They're, they're in a haunted headspace, we could say.

• 1:57:23Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. What's up? How do you, what's a hauntology? How would you describe, define that? Cause that comes up a lot.

• 1:57:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. So I mean, there's the theory meaning.

• 1:57:35Yasi Salek?

  Okay.

• 1:57:35Speaker 02

  Which is from Derrida from 10,000 years ago.

• 1:57:39Yasi Salek?

  I knew you wouldn't know.

• 1:57:41Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, it's.

• 1:57:42Yasi Salek?

  Did you just, did you just snore at Dorita? Dorita? I can't pronounce that.

• 1:57:49Yasi Salek?

  I have a high regard for philosophers.

• 1:57:51Speaker 02

  Do you?

• 1:57:52Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, very much so.

• 1:57:53Speaker 02

  I.

• 1:57:54Yasi Salek?

  I read it, I read it at my free time.

• 1:57:56Speaker 02

  That's cool. I, I.

• 1:57:57Yasi Salek?

  So my brain doesn't atrophy.

• 1:57:59Speaker 02

  No, no, I mean, like, listen.

• 1:58:00Yasi Salek?

  I think we'd be better off if more people thought less about themselves and thought more about philosophy, but.

• 1:58:06Speaker 02

  A hundred percent. But I, I, I think that, um. You almost, as a writer at least, right? It so rarely serves you to evoke Dorita

• 1:58:19Yasi Salek?

  Sure.

• 1:58:20Speaker 02

  in plain language.

• 1:58:21Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:58:21Speaker 02

  In a way where it's like, they're gonna, they're gonna, and also to readers find that they're like, you know, even when you do it perfectly.

• 1:58:28Yasi Salek?

  Why don't you, I think you need to challenge the pitchfork readers to step up their game.

• 1:58:32Speaker 02

  Majorly.

• 1:58:33Yasi Salek?

  Intellectually.

• 1:58:34Speaker 02

  I think that, I think about this often because she did so well, but Ariel Gordon forever ago did a really great intro to, I think Alex G, where she talks about how Dorit in his, toward the end, started thinking about the cat's relationship to him, which is such a far out crazy.

• 1:58:52Yasi Salek?

  Ariel Gordon's been on the show, great, great writer.

• 1:58:55Speaker 02

  A hundred percent, but I mean, just like, that is, I remember like reading that lead and be like, that is how you fucking do it.

• 1:59:00Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, I think that, I mean, for me, that's like, part of what I love about criticism when it's done well is like, that kind of stuff, you know?

• 1:59:07Speaker 02

  Well, also too, I mean, like, if you talk about a British context.

• 1:59:09Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:59:10Speaker 02

  Like, they were doing that constantly. And like, Ian Penn is a massive hero of mine, British music writer, who was like notorious and known for this thing, where he would like, of course, bring in as much continental philosophy as possible.

• 1:59:23Yasi Salek?

  Love, need to go read him. Well, okay, back to hauntology.

• 1:59:25Speaker 02

  Hauntology. So the literal term from Dorit is talking about, it's from ontology plus haunting, right? So it is talking about this kind of zombie state that the world finds itself in after the Cold War ends.

• 1:59:40Yasi Salek?

  Got it.

• 1:59:40Speaker 02

  Where the political system of the world is kind of established and settled, right? We're gonna do liberalism, we're gonna do capitalism, and we're gonna do all this kind of shit.

• 1:59:49Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:59:51Speaker 02

  But because we have a very recent memory of what radical politics looks like, communism's gonna be in the background as this kind of ghost. And sometimes it will be scary, and sometimes it will just be this thing that is so distant and threadbare, and you just cannot really reach it.

• 2:00:10Yasi Salek?

  That's so interesting.

• 2:00:11Speaker 02

  But eventually it becomes an aesthetic

• 2:00:14Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 2:00:15Speaker 02

  category too.

• 2:00:16Yasi Salek?

  Right, right.

• 2:00:16Speaker 02

  At a certain point. And Mark Fisher in particular kind of picks this up and applies it to this thing about works of culture that evoke a past that was promised that never came to fruition.

• 2:00:31Yasi Salek?

  Right. The past that was promised.

• 2:00:34Speaker 02

  And, sorry, the future that was promised.

• 2:00:36Yasi Salek?

  Sorry, the future that was promised. It's very, very me, that we used to be a proper country, we were promised a different type of utopia.

• 2:00:42Speaker 02

  No, I mean, and you do it very effortlessly. You do hauntology very effortlessly.

• 2:00:45Yasi Salek?

  Thank you so much.

• 2:00:46Speaker 02

  But, but, you know, like, I think what's funny about hauntology, because, I mean, it comes up around this time period to talk about Ghost Box, the record label, and to talk about eventually Broadcast, right?

• 2:00:59Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, as like a project.

• 2:01:02Speaker 02

  Totally.

• 2:01:02Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:01:02Speaker 02

  Like, oh yeah, you're doing 1960s futurism, but how did that pan out for you? You're like the last holdouts who are still doing it.

• 2:01:10Yasi Salek?

  Totally.

• 2:01:10Speaker 02

  The way that it would have been done.

• 2:01:12Yasi Salek?

  Okay, that's so interesting. Okay, I'm gonna, I need to read more about that. Actually, Dorit is not one I've read yet.

• 2:01:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:01:18Yasi Salek?

  Which is weird, because that would be one on one, but if I need to go to, I need to quit Van Splain and go to school for philosophy, which is what I would love to do if I had a...

• 2:01:26Speaker 02

  What if you did both?

• 2:01:27Yasi Salek?

  Okay, so, you know, this show takes a really long time to make.

• 2:01:30Speaker 02

  I know, I know.

• 2:01:31Yasi Salek?

  I need like a patron. I need a Medici. Okay, so, all this is what is getting us to talk about this next release from Broadcast.

• 2:01:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:01:41Yasi Salek?

  Which is a co-release with Julian Howes, who you mentioned, who's their longtime artist, who had also founded his own label, Ghost Box Records, and he's a musician himself. And so they do this collaboration album called Broadcast and the Focus Group Investigate Which Cult of the Radio Age.

• 2:01:59Speaker 02

  So good.

• 2:02:01Yasi Salek?

  The title came first, Trish said. We initially spoke about collaborating on an EP based loosely around the idea of electronic voice phenomenon. I was just talking to someone about this, and I'm so obsessed with this. Oh, my friend Danielle, we were talking about how like, I feel like it doesn't get talked about that much anymore, but this used to be such a big thing that like, the idea that ghosts and like other dimensions communicate through the radio, through phones, through answering machines, but it could very much be digital technology, cell phones. But that's electronic voice phenomenon.

• 2:02:32Speaker 02

  Or, or again, like the technology playing you, where like, what do you hear when you hear these things and you engage with them? I mean, you've, you kind of become haunted too.

• 2:02:39Yasi Salek?

  Totally, totally. Anyway, so she said, "The idea of electronic voice phenomenon, but in the context of a Hammer horror film. We are keen to conjure up the psychedelic witch party at the mansion scenario too. Also to keep the idea pop and tongue in cheek, very conscious of not becoming too dry. I went to the local church and recorded some songs and vocal loops with that idea in mind. Next, we swapped sound files, then met up to compare what we'd done. We could see instantly that it added up to a bit more than an EP, but we didn't start to edit it down for an EP, we just let it dictate its own size." They sure did.

• 2:03:10Speaker 02

  Sure did.

• 2:03:10Yasi Salek?

  It's quite long. What do you make of this album?

• 2:03:14Speaker 02

  You know, again, a phenomenal vibe.

• 2:03:17Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, certainly, it's a vibes-based release.

• 2:03:21Speaker 02

  It's a vibes-based release. I think that it's also funny too, because like, if you read interviews from around this time period, she also starts giving kind of automatic writing responses in a way, where she's just like letting her references and associations

• 2:03:34Yasi Salek?

  Fly.

• 2:03:35Speaker 02

  Fucking fly.

• 2:03:35Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:03:36Speaker 02

  I think that Wire interview in particular was like so crazy, just in terms of like, her references. But yeah, no, I mean, like, do I love Hammer horror movies? Yes, I fucking love that shit.

• 2:03:48Yasi Salek?

  I don't know Hammer.

• 2:03:49Speaker 02

  Hammer horror is, Hammer was a, I'm not sure if it's part of the BBC or like a kind of film company related to it.

• 2:03:58Yasi Salek?

  Hmm.

• 2:03:59Speaker 02

  But...

• 2:04:00Yasi Salek?

  British Film Production Company, okay, founded in 1934.

• 2:04:02Speaker 02

  But they made schlocky, campy, you know, it's, it's the UK's version of Universal Studios, basically.

• 2:04:11Yasi Salek?

  Okay.

• 2:04:12Speaker 02

  You know, but almost like more literary as well too.

• 2:04:15Yasi Salek?

  They made like nine Frankenstein movies.

• 2:04:17Speaker 02

  They made nine Frankenstein movies. I think that the image of Dracula with the big pointy fangs actually comes from...

• 2:04:22Yasi Salek?

  Came from them.

• 2:04:23Speaker 02

  From them, actually.

• 2:04:24Yasi Salek?

  Comes from them.

• 2:04:24Speaker 02

  Came's.

• 2:04:25Yasi Salek?

  Also made a lot of Dracula movies.

• 2:04:27Speaker 02

  A lot of Dracula movies. And then also too, they get stars out of this too. So like Christopher Lee, who's Lord Summer Isle and The Wicker Man, is Dracula originally for Hammer Horror.

• 2:04:37Yasi Salek?

  Wow.

• 2:04:38Speaker 02

  Kate Bush has a song called Hammer Horror.

• 2:04:40Yasi Salek?

  Oh, okay, okay. Oh my god, and then here's where the fucking Misfits song, "Dy-Dy, My Darling," comes from. Okay, I need to get involved. Thing about me is I'm not a huge horror person, but I think I would like this kind of horror.

• 2:04:52Speaker 02

  It's, it's not scary.

• 2:04:55Yasi Salek?

  Okay, yeah. Wow, they made a lot of films.

• 2:04:58Speaker 02

  They made a fuck ton of films. But I mean, again, like, like, part of why Broadcast fucking rules is because like, their obsessions are these like freaks who are hired by companies like Hammer Horror.

• 2:05:11Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 2:05:12Speaker 02

  Or the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, where it's like, you are, you are, you are, you are putting your kind of experimental thoughts in service of, of making the Doctor Who theme song. And all those kids in the 60s who were gonna fucking listen to that shit are then gonna become ravers.

• 2:05:28Yasi Salek?

  It's crazy how much stuff like that in particular in the UK there is, where like, they just sort of were like, all right, here's, here's money, get weird with it.

• 2:05:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:05:38Yasi Salek?

  And then these are like in children's television programs and stuff, and then they inspire this entire spate of like incredible musicians

• 2:05:45Speaker 02

  Totally.

• 2:05:45Yasi Salek?

  who were just like radicalized by the weird children's theme song

• 2:05:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:05:49Yasi Salek?

  that some cool musician was paid by the BBC to make.

• 2:05:52Speaker 02

  And I think that you could also kind of like link this to hauntology again, where it's like, look at that thing that didn't pan out, you know? Look at that, look at that way of being. Like, we live in a neoliberal moment where there's no funding for anybody. Like, imagine if we had some funding and we could like make an experimental kid show. That'd be so cool.

• 2:06:11Yasi Salek?

  So cool. RIP Wonder Shows.

• 2:06:13Speaker 02

  RIP Wonder Shows.

• 2:06:14Yasi Salek?

  Not really a kid's show, to be honest.

• 2:06:15Speaker 02

  It's not a kid's show.

• 2:06:16Yasi Salek?

  To be fair, but what a, what a time to be alive.

• 2:06:20Speaker 02

  God.

• 2:06:20Yasi Salek?

  This is so weird.

• 2:06:24Speaker 02

  It's so weird.

• 2:06:25Yasi Salek?

  This is just a bizarre

• 2:06:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:06:29Yasi Salek?

  collection of recordings.

• 2:06:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:06:33Yasi Salek?

  I'm, I'm loath to even call them songs.

• 2:06:36Speaker 02

  They don't really work as songs.

• 2:06:37Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:06:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:06:38Yasi Salek?

  They're not songs.

• 2:06:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:06:40Yasi Salek?

  They're sound collages?

• 2:06:42Speaker 02

  Majorly.

• 2:06:43Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:06:44Speaker 02

  It's definitely a sound collage.

• 2:06:45Yasi Salek?

  It's very cool. It's very cool that anyone made this.

• 2:06:49Speaker 02

  Totally.

• 2:06:50Yasi Salek?

  I love the title, which I wonder why, actually, I should have looked this up, why it's in quotes, but Libra, the miners, the mirrors, miner self?

• 2:06:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:06:59Yasi Salek?

  Trish Keenan, famously a Libra.

• 2:07:01Speaker 02

  Well, she, she wrote that song using her horoscope and then cut it up.

• 2:07:05Yasi Salek?

  Oh, okay, so that, so it's a quote from her horoscope.

• 2:07:07Speaker 02

  She, you know...

• 2:07:09Yasi Salek?

  That's a really good idea.

• 2:07:10Speaker 02

  It's a really good idea. Well, she, I mean, like you said before about the crossword puzzle, she also talked to about loving the caring tone of your horoscope, right?

• 2:07:19Yasi Salek?

  Oh, yeah, that's so true.

• 2:07:21Speaker 02

  I mean, again, like, just the...

• 2:07:22Yasi Salek?

  It's not really the same anymore now. It's like Johnny Nichols telling you to dismantle the patriarchy, but it did use to have more of a caring tone.

• 2:07:28Speaker 02

  Totally.

• 2:07:28Yasi Salek?

  No.

• 2:07:29Speaker 02

  But I mean, just that you could read the, you could read the voice and hear the voice and be like, what if I actually spoke through that voice?

• 2:07:34Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:07:35Speaker 02

  That's a fucking thought process right there.

• 2:07:38Yasi Salek?

  So cool.

• 2:07:38Speaker 02

  So cool.

• 2:07:39Yasi Salek?

  Um, oh yeah, it's funny. This, this made me think about, but she said of this, a misty loop with rummaging sounds that reminded me of the theme to the nineteen sixty nine TV adaptation of Alan Garner's children's novel, The Owl Service.

• 2:07:51Speaker 02

  It's a very weird show. Again, again, like the places where I go because of fucking Ben, I fucking watched that show. It's a weird house show. It's like, I guess to do like with like Celtic, Drew, Drew and.

• 2:08:02Yasi Salek?

  I'm sure if you ask like some right wing people, they would say like, this was like, this is like some sort of nefarious like agenda of the like, um, you know, demon class or whatever to you.

• 2:08:13Speaker 02

  But I mean, you could totally flip it too. And so like, this is actually the most arch conservative thing in the entire world, right?

• 2:08:18Yasi Salek?

  Totally. I, I like, do you ever like fall down where sub stack rabbit holes and like wish you really hadn't?

• 2:08:25Speaker 02

  It's not sub stack. It's definitely like Twitter.

• 2:08:28Yasi Salek?

  Okay, Twitter for sure.

• 2:08:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:08:30Yasi Salek?

  Because Twitter is like, I'm like eight clicks away from being on some girl's page who like, has like an AI version of herself that wears like Hitler clothes and I'm, but has like huge tits. And I'm like, how did I, I need to, I need to cleanse my entire spirit.

• 2:08:42Speaker 02

  So when you, when you say sub stack, do you mean that like, they actually like write like a tract?

• 2:08:46Yasi Salek?

  Yes.

• 2:08:46Speaker 02

  No, that's crazy.

• 2:08:47Yasi Salek?

  So today, today I fell into a place I wish I'd never gone.

• 2:08:52Speaker 02

  Oh, God.

• 2:08:54Yasi Salek?

  What first got me is like, it was, it was clearly a woman writing about how like, women choosing not to have children is like, the, the utmost selfish act and a reflection of a diseased society. And I was like, oh, um, and then through that, I kind of like, was like, well, I'm gonna poke around her page a little bit. And there was like a whole thing about how like tangled versus Aladdin and how like.

• 2:09:20Speaker 02

  Oh, no.

• 2:09:21Yasi Salek?

  Actually, like Al- Aladdin is a thief and, and, and like, and, you know, immoral man.

• 2:09:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:09:28Yasi Salek?

  But, and the thief in Tangled is too, but actually, he reveals himself to be like morally pure and like ethically a crusader.

• 2:09:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:09:38Yasi Salek?

  And then the reason for that is because Tangled is based on a Christian fairy tale and Aladdin is not. And I was like, wowzers, McCowzers. Didn't know we were doing this shit still.

• 2:09:48Speaker 02

  So congratulations, Yasi Selig. You have found a maniac.

• 2:09:51Yasi Salek?

  I've, well.

• 2:09:52Speaker 02

  That is a maniac.

• 2:09:52Yasi Salek?

  There's a lot of, you know what happens? I, I'll, I'll tell the God's honest truth. I do, the ventuation room, I do have a deep interest in wellness.

• 2:10:01Speaker 02

  Of course.

• 2:10:01Yasi Salek?

  And unfortunately, there is the wellness to, it's like, people don't know how to just be like, we want healthy food and to like, and to like commune with God without saying shit like, it makes me uncomfortable when I see a gay man with a child, which is a tweet I saw from a health influencer the other day. And I was like, um.

• 2:10:21Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, it's like.

• 2:10:21Yasi Salek?

  Usually this.

• 2:10:22Speaker 02

  It's like how the Nazis were all nudists. You know, they, they, they were sun worshiping freaks.

• 2:10:26Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:10:26Speaker 02

  Who wanted to sun their taints to a.

• 2:10:28Yasi Salek?

  And it came back around.

• 2:10:29Speaker 02

  You know, and it, and it fully comes back around like.

• 2:10:31Yasi Salek?

  Because it is true that like, I guess like you could think of like, the deep devotion to optimization as a fascism, you know, but also just like, you can be into like, God and health and not be a fucking psycho.

• 2:10:47Speaker 02

  No, it's true.

• 2:10:48Yasi Salek?

  And not be hateful.

• 2:10:50Speaker 02

  It's true. It's true. I mean, like, and you could apply that also to nature.

• 2:10:53Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:10:53Speaker 02

  Right about like, how do you engage with your landscape and your surroundings, right? And I mean, like, just think about like, how that kind of links up to like Maha, like, and how it links to vaccines and raw milk and all that kind of stuff. Like it, it.

• 2:11:06Yasi Salek?

  It's been a rough time for me as an early raw milk adapter who loves raw milk.

• 2:11:10Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 2:11:10Yasi Salek?

  Because it's not a great signifier right now. And I have to be very explicit to be like, it's just the milk for me.

• 2:11:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, of course.

• 2:11:16Yasi Salek?

  Not the political ideology behind it, just the milk. Just, just the nutrients.

• 2:11:21Speaker 02

  When you do write your like.

• 2:11:23Yasi Salek?

  My tome on Substack, yeah.

• 2:11:24Speaker 02

  It's gonna be.

• 2:11:25Yasi Salek?

  Yasiism, yeah, people are like, we can't pin, the ventuation room is actually gonna be a whole thing. It's like when I run for president as the ventuation room party.

• 2:11:34Speaker 02

  Oh, God.

• 2:11:35Yasi Salek?

  Um, we've digressed, but I think it's okay because broadcast is really about digression.

• 2:11:39Speaker 02

  Yes, majorly.

• 2:11:39Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:11:40Speaker 02

  I mean, again, like, like one thing that I do quite like about the way they talk about this particular album is like, they know the beats, they know the cliches, they know the kind of directions. I mean, again, um, there's a part in that Wired interview where they're talking about,

• 2:11:55Speaker 02

  the way in which I think it is Libra's, the mirrors might, um, I mean, like, the, the Wired interview is so worthwhile 10,000 times over because not only do you get that one quote about how psychedelia gives you trans, you know, uh, allowed her to keep transforming so that a working class probably would not get her. Um, but she also has these incredible descriptions of songs on this particular record. So this is for Make My Sleep A Song, which is one of the very few songs that are kind of like actually songs. This is a kind of levee lament where the female character is complicit in a strange event. I like those moments in British films like The Wicker Man and The Witches, when you're not quite sure if the people of the village know all about

• 2:12:36Speaker 02

  the odd occurrences or not, but sorry, or not, but an accidental sighting or overheard conversation reveals that they are as much a part of the bizarre setup as suspicious and aloof owner of the stately home. This is an incantation taken from The Witch's Bible. I think it has a joyous innocence and obsessiveness that works well towards the end of the EP. It recollects all the sensory events without revealing what really happened.

• 2:12:58Speaker 02

  Cool, fuck, fuck, fuck me up.

• 2:13:01Yasi Salek?

  It made me sad a little bit. Well, I've been sad in general. Let's get some raw milk. Um, but like, and I don't wanna, there are, there are many artists who are like, creating from this sort of conceptual level and like with this level of intelligence, but like, I don't read about them as much anymore.

• 2:13:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:13:21Yasi Salek?

  You know, it's like a bit few further and few fewer and further between.

• 2:13:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:13:26Yasi Salek?

  And just like, reading about the process of someone who's applying these like galaxy brain.

• 2:13:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:13:34Yasi Salek?

  Thoughts to like their art. It's just like really inspiring. And again, I know there are other people, so I'm not trying to diminish. It's just, I feel like every day it's not who I'm seeing cross the TL, if you will. You know, who does this kind of in, you know, polarizing but crimes?

• 2:13:50Speaker 02

  Oh, majorly.

• 2:13:51Yasi Salek?

  Absolute genius. Says some insane shit, but like, you know, that woman's brain is firing on all cylinders all the time.

• 2:13:57Speaker 02

  And my problem with crimes though is like, very basic problem. Where the fuck is your music?

• 2:14:01Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, it's very the Rihanna, Rihanna core right now. It's like, get it together, honey.

• 2:14:05Speaker 02

  I mean, listen, she, she has children. That's, that's a very big time suck, but like.

• 2:14:09Yasi Salek?

  She probably has nineteen nannies.

• 2:14:11Speaker 02

  You probably have nineteen nannies.

• 2:14:12Yasi Salek?

  She has children with the richest man in the world.

• 2:14:14Speaker 02

  I know, it's insane. Why can't we like have like a moment?

• 2:14:16Yasi Salek?

  I've put out a hundred and fifty podcasts since the last time you put an album out.

• 2:14:20Speaker 02

  I want, sorry, where is your K-pop record? Where is your, like, you love, you love these things. Like, let's, let's.

• 2:14:26Yasi Salek?

  I know, I'm a, I'm a big fan. I mean, again, some questionable behavior, but I think she's a genius.

• 2:14:30Speaker 02

  Sure. But I mean, again, like to your point there, right? She is the person who is actually applying these galaxy brains.

• 2:14:34Yasi Salek?

  Totally. Like these, again, whatever you think about what her thoughts are on the things, at least she's like, thinking about things like in such an unusual and unique way.

• 2:14:43Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 2:14:44Yasi Salek?

  Um, okay, so, sorry, another digression. Yeah, again, this is, this is more of a thing that I'm glad exists than a thing that I, uh, enjoy experiencing.

• 2:14:56Speaker 02

  Majorly.

• 2:14:57Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:14:58Speaker 02

  Majorly. It's, it's one of those things where like, I'm like, Mother's Milky Way, which is like around the same time or the before.

• 2:15:05Yasi Salek?

  It's right after.

• 2:15:05Speaker 02

  Right after.

• 2:15:06Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, tour, it's a tour only EP that they put out while they're touring.

• 2:15:10Speaker 02

  That one really works for me though.

• 2:15:11Yasi Salek?

  It's so good.

• 2:15:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's really, really good.

• 2:15:14Yasi Salek?

  Well, cause maybe they were just like, okay, now let's make some real songs.

• 2:15:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:15:17Yasi Salek?

  Like, not real, but like whatever, song, song.

• 2:15:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:15:20Yasi Salek?

  I really love, um, Elephant Elephant.

• 2:15:23Speaker 02

  Elegant Elephant.

• 2:15:25Yasi Salek?

  Sorry, Elegant Elephant.

• 2:15:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:15:27Yasi Salek?

  Short circuit, Elegant Elephant. It's so beautiful.

• 2:15:30Speaker 02

  It's so good.

• 2:15:42Yasi Salek?

  There's a lot on here that's really great. Like, I'm just a person in this room.

• 2:15:45Speaker 02

  I was gonna say, I went to, I just versus roomy verse. And that's a crazy one too, because it is the most beautiful little melody and the song keeps fucking it up.

• 2:15:52Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, exactly. It's, it like, it, at every point, it's like, what if I was weird?

• 2:15:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:15:56Yasi Salek?

  Like.

• 2:15:57Speaker 02

  Well, she's also.

• 2:15:58Yasi Salek?

  You are.

• 2:15:58Speaker 02

  Incorporating, what is it called? The Goon Show?

• 2:16:01Yasi Salek?

  Excuse?

• 2:16:05Yasi Salek?

  That's another, that's another part of X.com that you don't wanna go down.

• 2:16:08Speaker 02

  God damn it.

• 2:16:08Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:16:10Speaker 02

  The Goon Show in the UK was a British radio comedy program, produced by the BBC Home Services, da, da, da, da. Um, but it was like audio comedy.

• 2:16:19Yasi Salek?

  Oh.

• 2:16:19Speaker 02

  Yeah. And so she's, I think that she's actually incorporating the kind of everyday ha ha surrealism of that show into that. So like when.

• 2:16:28Yasi Salek?

  Oh yeah, it was Peter Sellers. Oh my God, it's fucking Peter Sellers.

• 2:16:31Speaker 02

  Sellers.

• 2:16:32Yasi Salek?

  It's the motherfucking Pink Panther, bro.

• 2:16:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:16:34Yasi Salek?

  Spike Milligan and Harry Socom.

• 2:16:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:16:38Yasi Salek?

  I Googled it.

• 2:16:40Speaker 02

  We were, we were.

• 2:16:41Yasi Salek?

  Wikipedia. We were a huge Pink Panther household.

• 2:16:44Speaker 02

  Incredible.

• 2:16:44Yasi Salek?

  That really informed my sense of humor.

• 2:16:47Speaker 02

  Yeah. Do you?

• 2:16:48Yasi Salek?

  Inspector Clouseau.

• 2:16:49Speaker 02

  Do you like the Beyonce contribution to Pink Panther?

• 2:16:53Yasi Salek?

  No.

• 2:16:53Speaker 02

  It's fine.

• 2:16:54Yasi Salek?

  I'm sorry.

• 2:16:55Speaker 02

  It's cool.

• 2:16:56Yasi Salek?

  Do you?

• 2:16:57Speaker 02

  It's fine.

• 2:16:58Yasi Salek?

  Okay. Yeah, it's like, okay.

• 2:17:01Speaker 02

  But anyway, I mean, like the Goon Show, like, like, I think that like, when she kind of does her like very beautiful elegant melody, you start getting like.

• 2:17:12Speaker 02

  And I, I, I think it is actually sourced from there. Plus like all these crazy demonic whispers.

• 2:17:17Yasi Salek?

  Uh, that's great. I'm glad I know that. I can't wait to go back and listen, knowing that that's where that came from.

• 2:17:32Speaker 02

  In here, the world begins, fucking rules.

• 2:17:35Yasi Salek?

  Well, Harry, I do have a bit to read about this.

• 2:17:38Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 2:17:39Yasi Salek?

  "Mother plays like the band's version of a mixtape, an audio collage that swerves wildly between the pastoral and occult. The record draws from both British folk music and British folk horror, contemplating the slippery delineation that separates prim and proper England from its pagan past." Who said that?

• 2:17:56Speaker 02

  Me.

• 2:17:56Yasi Salek?

  Harry Tafoya. It's so good.

• 2:17:58Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 2:17:59Yasi Salek?

  Also, it made it make a lot more sense for me because I was like, oh, it's almost like they were here.

• 2:18:04Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 2:18:05Yasi Salek?

  Tender Buttons.

• 2:18:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:18:06Yasi Salek?

  And then they were like, we're here.

• 2:18:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:18:08Yasi Salek?

  Which songs? And then now we're here.

• 2:18:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:18:11Yasi Salek?

  Back to the middle, where the twain shall meet.

• 2:18:13Speaker 02

  Totally.

• 2:18:13Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Which I love.

• 2:18:16Speaker 02

  Yeah. And I mean, it is, they're never gonna do like a full gigantic production the way they did with Ha Ha Sound.

• 2:18:22Yasi Salek?

  No.

• 2:18:23Speaker 02

  But this is a DIY angle through the side that was so cool, though.

• 2:18:29Yasi Salek?

  And also like so clearly linked to, well, obviously the release before, but also just like their, their surroundings that we talked about.

• 2:18:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:18:37Yasi Salek?

  Being a stone's throw from Stonehenge, if you will, and all that, all that comes with that.

• 2:18:42Speaker 02

  Wait, could I say something about the move to Hungerford?

• 2:18:44Yasi Salek?

  Please?

• 2:18:45Speaker 02

  This is, this is Trish Keenan from that Wired interview again, which is incredible.

• 2:18:49Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, it's kind of like the most thorough and best interview.

• 2:18:51Speaker 02

  It's incredible. "For me, the paranormal is most powerful when it's unassuming, not obviously spooky or dark, and I do feel synchrony and coincidence all the time. For example, when we first moved from Birmingham to Hungerford, I noticed these odd reminders of people and things from the last place. Object names and people names were crossing over, swapping. For instance, we shared a house in Birmingham with a man called Jerome, and then when we moved to Hungerford, he was suddenly replaced by a boat. The lady who occupies a downstairs flat was his girlfriend's doppelganger. Even my mom was replaced by an old toothless poodle."

• 2:19:21Yasi Salek?

  Oh, not a toothless poodle.

• 2:19:23Speaker 02

  Old toothless poodle. You should do some mother work.

• 2:19:27Yasi Salek?

  I should do some mother work.

• 2:19:28Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, Trish Keenan should do some mother work.

• 2:19:30Yasi Salek?

  We should all, probably we should all do some other work.

• 2:19:33Speaker 02

  Love your mom.

• 2:19:34Yasi Salek?

  Love you, mom. Also, former guest of this podcast.

• 2:19:38Speaker 02

  Fatne, you're an icon.

• 2:19:40Yasi Salek?

  She's such an icon. Great memory.

• 2:19:42Speaker 02

  I know. She's, she's, she's literally mother.

• 2:19:44Yasi Salek?

  I mean, it's so true. Isn't it, isn't it crazy that I came from that? Like, she's truly like the most hyper feminine, like to the point that like I used to call her like, I'm like, you're like low-key a drag queen. You know what I mean? Like, and she loves, I'm like, I'm like, the makeup is tattooed, honey. We have like bleached blonde hair. I've never seen her in flats. Like, and then I'm in this. And she's like, to her.

• 2:20:04Speaker 02

  I think you underwrite yourself because you're also very, this is au re clamore to me.

• 2:20:08Yasi Salek?

  Oh my god, so my mom's like, what are, what are your pants? Why are your pants so ripped? Are these old? Like, that's her, she's truly.

• 2:20:14Speaker 02

  She's cool.

• 2:20:15Yasi Salek?

  But, but we've, we've had a lot. I've taught her a lot and I feel really proud of myself.

• 2:20:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:20:21Yasi Salek?

  Guess who didn't understand Chanel Vamp nail polish?

• 2:20:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:20:25Yasi Salek?

  And then came around two years later, loving it.

• 2:20:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:20:29Yasi Salek?

  Guess who didn't understand Marjorie Tabby's and now owns three pairs?

• 2:20:32Speaker 02

  Yeah. No, I mean, like, listen, the, the, the apprentices become the master.

• 2:20:37Yasi Salek?

  Exactly. It's absolute Mr. Miyagi hours. Um, all right. So after this release, we get a couple of like smatterings. There's, um, in 2010, a study series, oh, four, Familiar Shapes and Noises single out on Ghost Box. There's another collaboration with these three songs on it. And that's the last official release.

• 2:20:58Speaker 02

  Well, they have Burberry and Sound Studio.

• 2:21:00Yasi Salek?

  Oh my god, where is Burberry?

• 2:21:01Speaker 02

  That's in 2012.

• 2:21:03Yasi Salek?

  Girl.

• 2:21:04Speaker 02

  But that might be a, so they did a full film soundtrack with Peter Strickland.

• 2:21:08Yasi Salek?

  Oh, yes. Okay. Burberry and Sound Studio. Yes, yes, yes. And I didn't have a chance to watch that film.

• 2:21:13Speaker 02

  It's good. That's a great movie.

• 2:21:16Yasi Salek?

  This is the last thing that was actively worked on and completed by the band before Trish died in 2011, although it came out in 2012.

• 2:21:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:21:27Yasi Salek?

  So this is, this is a film score.

• 2:21:29Speaker 02

  It's a film score, but it's a weird one because like nine tenths of this particular soundtrack is just screaming and goblin noises. It's a horror film.

• 2:21:38Yasi Salek?

  Amazing.

• 2:21:38Speaker 02

  About a guy who does foley work in an Italian horror film studio. And it's incredible. It's like, like stabbing and it's like, like, just like, it's like lettuce, right? You know, it's incredible. Yeah, no, I mean, I mean, it's just also kind of funny to think too, like, that is such a perfect conceit for them to be.

• 2:21:57Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, it's like they really, they really came home on that one.

• 2:21:59Speaker 02

  Totally. There's like one song proper on this, Teresa Lark of Ascension, but it is again, like that thing where it's like, she's like doing la, la, la, la, you know, like that kind of thing.

• 2:22:11Yasi Salek?

  Hmm. Okay, fascinating. This has 39 individual tracks that are all less than two minutes and mostly less than a minute.

• 2:22:20Speaker 02

  I mean, they're literally like all like.

• 2:22:24Yasi Salek?

  Cool stuff.

• 2:22:24Speaker 02

  Cool spock.

• 2:22:32Yasi Salek?

  So incredibly tragic.

• 2:22:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:22:36Yasi Salek?

  Trish Keenan contracted swine flu.

• 2:22:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:22:40Yasi Salek?

  H1N1 during a tour in late 2010 in Australia, and she passed away from complications from pneumonia and she was only 42.

• 2:22:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:22:49Yasi Salek?

  Really fucking heartbreaking.

• 2:22:51Speaker 02

  Yeah. I remember her dying before really becoming a fan.

• 2:22:54Yasi Salek?

  Cause, yeah, cause 2011, were you in high school yet?

• 2:22:57Speaker 02

  I was in high school.

• 2:22:58Yasi Salek?

  But it was before you had fallen down the rabbit hole.

• 2:23:00Speaker 02

  Because before I'd fallen down the rabbit hole, I knew the band was like a kind of like surface level infamiliarity with them.

• 2:23:07Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 2:23:07Speaker 02

  And it was just so crazy remembering that she had died of this thing. And I remember like, I mean, I don't know how you felt about this too, but like, there was a sense with swine flu that like you kind of knew people who got it, but it felt kind of fake at the same time, too.

• 2:23:22Yasi Salek?

  I didn't know anyone that got it. I mean, swine flu was, it felt, that was like, wow, what a, what a precursor for COVID, given the fact that we were all like, swine flu. It was like a joke.

• 2:23:30Speaker 02

  It was like a joke. It was like, it was like.

• 2:23:31Yasi Salek?

  Which is crazy. Obviously, it wasn't many people died from it.

• 2:23:33Speaker 02

  Totally. But, but like, you couldn't put like a face or a name to it necessarily.

• 2:23:37Yasi Salek?

  Totally.

• 2:23:37Speaker 02

  It felt like very abstract.

• 2:23:39Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:23:41Speaker 02

  Except for this one very singular person.

• 2:23:44Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, this like, oh, it's so crazy.

• 2:23:47Speaker 02

  Yeah. There's a thing about her in particular where like, because of the way that she presented herself.

• 2:23:55Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:23:57Speaker 02

  That, and I think that we'll, we'll talk about this in a second, but like, in interviews, she could be a very kind of compelling, wonderful person. Everybody who knew her said that she was like the most remarkable, funny, kind.

• 2:24:09Yasi Salek?

  I asked Stuart from Bogway because I saw that they had played many shows together and he said she was like the coolest, most awesome person.

• 2:24:15Speaker 02

  Totally. Completely unpretentious, completely intelligent, completely present, completely cool. But the public image, though, was very diffuse, abstracted.

• 2:24:26Yasi Salek?

  Manic haunted pixie girl.

• 2:24:27Speaker 02

  Manic haunted pixie girl. And there was something about her death, I remember thinking this, where like, it didn't quite click to me.

• 2:24:35Yasi Salek?

  Hmm.

• 2:24:35Speaker 02

  She seemed like she'd always kind of been a little bit gone.

• 2:24:38Yasi Salek?

  Right. Like, she was so removed from you in terms of like accessing her like wholeness that you were just like, oh, well, now there's just, it's not that different.

• 2:24:49Speaker 02

  It didn't feel final.

• 2:24:50Yasi Salek?

  Oh.

• 2:24:51Speaker 02

  You know, like, like, that's the thing that's so crazy with this band is like this, I mean, they don't release anything, I think, apart from like a couple of songs on her birthday until Spellblanket.

• 2:25:04Yasi Salek?

  This makes me so sad. You said this, you said that like, once a year on her birthday.

• 2:25:08Speaker 02

  Yes. Yes.

• 2:25:10Yasi Salek?

  When did that start? Do you know?

• 2:25:12Speaker 02

  So in terms of timeline, I remember, I think it might've been the first birthday after.

• 2:25:21Yasi Salek?

  So like 2013 or 12 or something?

• 2:25:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:25:23Yasi Salek?

  So, I mean, that just like breaks my heart. So like, on her birthday, every year, James Cargill would release one demo that had not been released.

• 2:25:33Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 2:25:36Speaker 02

  I know.

• 2:25:38Yasi Salek?

  And then just two years ago, they, he put out Spellblanket, which is, what is it? All of the demos?

• 2:25:49Speaker 02

  After she died.

• 2:25:50Yasi Salek?

  Yes.

• 2:25:51Speaker 02

  He released a statement saying that they were still working on an album together.

• 2:25:54Yasi Salek?

  Okay. So there had, there was like an in, in process album.

• 2:25:58Speaker 02

  There's an in process album. And this was also, again, why it was kind of hard to accept that this band had gone away.

• 2:26:03Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 2:26:04Speaker 02

  Because there was still this album that was getting worked on. And he had announced it. We weren't sure when it was ever gonna come out. And you would get this kind of trickle out on her birthday.

• 2:26:17Yasi Salek?

  So, so everyone knew that it existed.

• 2:26:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:26:20Yasi Salek?

  And, but was like, well, what's happening with it? And then you would just get tastes of it.

• 2:26:26Speaker 02

  Yeah. I do not know you, James Cargill. I imagine that it was a tremendously profound loss.

• 2:26:33Yasi Salek?

  Oh my god, I can't even imagine. And also like the idea of maybe like exposing these unfinished pieces of someone. Like, I mean, you know, who knows? Like, maybe he had to, he had to finish them. So he knew that they were going out properly and that she was being presented.

• 2:26:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:26:52Yasi Salek?

  Properly, you know?

• 2:26:53Speaker 02

  And I think that the intimacy of the recordings also has this quality where she's so present in a way that it's actually kind of upsetting to listen to.

• 2:27:05Yasi Salek?

  Oh my god. Like, I didn't know about this. And I put on, and the fucking first track is this like, really has, I think, no, no production or anything. It's just, sounds like a voice memo she made. I know. And it's called the song before the song comes out.

• 2:27:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:27:23Yasi Salek?

  And it's clearly just her kind of singing to herself to get maybe the juices flowing or whatever.

• 2:27:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:27:28Yasi Salek?

  And it is so devastating.

• 2:27:30Speaker 02

  I know.

• 2:27:42Yasi Salek?

  I mean, imagine if it's that devastating to us, like what it must have been like for James Carville. I can't even, I can't even wrap my head around it.

• 2:27:47Speaker 02

  I think that what you said before a second ago about like, how the band whittling down was a gradual expression of the dynamic between these two people.

• 2:27:56Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:27:57Speaker 02

  Is another thing that's also so fucking real. I mean, like, I, you know, they tore it together.

• 2:28:06Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:28:06Speaker 02

  You know, I mean, I mean.

• 2:28:07Yasi Salek?

  I mean, it's like, it's like one of those cosmic things. Like, these were like, clearly like, the, the kind of soulmates that were like also artistic soulmates.

• 2:28:14Speaker 02

  Majorly.

• 2:28:14Yasi Salek?

  Just like truly put on earth to alchemize each other to make these like incredible works of art.

• 2:28:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. And, and what they did together was genius, I think. I think they really made really, really special works of art. There's one final song on that record that I cannot listen to, because I don't want it to end, is the thing.

• 2:28:36Yasi Salek?

  Hmm.

• 2:28:37Speaker 02

  So the final song on Spellblanket.

• 2:28:38Yasi Salek?

  Spirit House?

• 2:28:39Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 2:28:40Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:28:41Speaker 02

  I think the one before it is I Am The Bridge, which is I am the bridge between the dead and the living. And it's like, first of all, just for her to say that out loud, it's such a crazy thing to kind of encounter upfront and personal. But I don't want it to end, though, is the thing. I really would prefer to have it still be somewhat in suspense.

• 2:29:02Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:29:03Speaker 02

  Because I still want to have access to.

• 2:29:05Yasi Salek?

  Think that there's more.

• 2:29:05Speaker 02

  There's more.

• 2:29:06Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. It's really, I mean, it's, it's truly so beautiful to listen. I mean, it's difficult to listen to. And I couldn't like take it all in at once. I'd have to like take it in chunks.

• 2:29:17Speaker 02

  Yeah. There's bangers on that one, though, too.

• 2:29:19Yasi Salek?

  Totally. I mean, Infant Girl. I mean, there's, there's a lot that like really jump out at me, but.

• 2:29:25Speaker 02

  I think.

• 2:29:25Yasi Salek?

  Hip bone to hip bone.

• 2:29:26Speaker 02

  Hip bone to hip bone rules. I think, um, March of the Fleas.

• 2:29:30Yasi Salek?

  It's good. I Want To Be Fine.

• 2:29:31Speaker 02

  I Want To Be Fine. When they get really, really folky, it's intense.

• 2:29:37Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Oh, yeah. Talk about that. So you had, you had hinted at this earlier, but like, that you felt that this was like really a return to something that was being explored initially with her love of Joni Mitchell. And then you said even going back further into this like sort of pagan folk.

• 2:29:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:29:51Yasi Salek?

  Situation. But I'm curious, do you think that?

• 2:29:54Speaker 02

  Oh, I'm sorry.

• 2:29:56Yasi Salek?

  This would have been how it would have sounded had they finished the album?

• 2:30:02Speaker 02

  When I said that earlier, I meant it's a really interesting question that we'll never know.

• 2:30:05Yasi Salek?

  Oh, that we'll never know. Okay, okay. You just feel like this might have hinted at that.

• 2:30:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, because it's like.

• 2:30:09Yasi Salek?

  Totally. I mean, I hear that, too.

• 2:30:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's like, it's like, were you making folk music to sound like Joni Mitchell? Or were you also listening to like, to like any of like these incredible British folk singers?

• 2:30:21Yasi Salek?

  Hmm.

• 2:30:22Speaker 02

  Um, were you, were you getting back to this? Or did this kind of come to you gradually through the years?

• 2:30:28Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 2:30:29Speaker 02

  That's a kind of question that I would love to know the answer to. But I don't think we'll ever know the answer.

• 2:30:33Yasi Salek?

  No. Yeah, I mean, again, I think it's really worth a listen. But yeah, maybe steel yourself a little bit.

• 2:30:40Speaker 02

  Yeah. Um, Follow The Light, where she's kind of talking about look into the light, follow the light.

• 2:30:48Yasi Salek?

  I love that.

• 2:30:49Speaker 02

  It is, that's a crazy one to me, too, because like, it is a, such a basic magician trick, right? It is, it's a sleight of hand. It is look at this point, let me get you from another point.

• 2:31:00Yasi Salek?

  Right, right, right.

• 2:31:00Speaker 02

  But it's also talking about her death. It's wild to.

• 2:31:04Yasi Salek?

  Well, and also, who knows? Like, maybe she was marinating on other deaths, you know? It's like, I can't imagine she was predicting her own.

• 2:31:13Speaker 02

  No.

• 2:31:13Yasi Salek?

  You know, but.

• 2:31:14Speaker 02

  But it feels that way. I mean, I, I can't help but look at some of these songs and think that particular thought.

• 2:31:22Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:31:23Speaker 02

  And it's also.

• 2:31:23Yasi Salek?

  I mean, I think it's just a hallmark of their music. It's like, the Hauntology Corps.

• 2:31:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:31:27Yasi Salek?

  Um, that you're gonna think that, you know?

• 2:31:30Speaker 02

  You're gonna bring that loss into the equation.

• 2:31:32Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:31:43Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, I think it's really beautiful. It's crazy that it exists. It's really, I mean, I really respect that James Carville finally put it out. I think it's like such a gift to the fans.

• 2:31:52Speaker 02

  Majorly.

• 2:31:53Yasi Salek?

  And then I also love that they put out, same year, right, the demos.

• 2:31:56Speaker 02

  The demos.

• 2:31:57Yasi Salek?

  Which are so great to listen to and to hear, like what we were talking about earlier, like, how you can really see what is there to hang your hat on, you know, like how there's a real like solid structure underneath all these songs.

• 2:32:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:32:12Yasi Salek?

  It's fabulous.

• 2:32:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:32:14Yasi Salek?

  Well, Harry Tafoya, with that, I feel we've come to the end of the broadcast story. Yeah, I think you nailed it. Like, that not only is this band, it's a universe unto itself, it's a universe full of portals.

• 2:32:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:32:31Yasi Salek?

  That can take you to all these amazing other places. And if that's something that you are, you know, excited by or stimulated by, like, and you haven't really explored broadcast, it's like a wealth, it's a wealth of delight.

• 2:32:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:32:47Yasi Salek?

  And new, uh, new things to blow your mind.

• 2:32:51Speaker 02

  And it's like, she, it never ends.

• 2:32:54Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 2:32:55Speaker 02

  It never ends.

• 2:32:56Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:32:56Speaker 02

  Which is also such a weird thing with music, because music is based in time, right? I mean, music is, um, I mean, very basic definition of, of, of time-based art, right, is, is just you kind of conjure while you're listening to a song, this projection that feels like it could go on forever. And there's a way in which this particular band feels so endless.

• 2:33:22Yasi Salek?

  One of the most, like, looping, um, not actually musical looping, but like looping in your psyche.

• 2:33:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:33:33Yasi Salek?

  Gets you sort of into this space of, yeah, I know exactly, like a, like a temporal vagueness.

• 2:33:39Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, she, she talked about it even, too, where she was just talking about like, how it is time travel, right? You're, you're bringing yourself in the present moment into this past. And then where you go is so open, you know, in a way, it's, it could be so many different places.

• 2:33:57Yasi Salek?

  It's almost like dangerous, to be honest. Like, if you're not in a good headspace, like, this can really.

• 2:34:02Speaker 02

  It could be dangerous, but I think, I mean, I think that there's so much to go to.

• 2:34:09Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:34:09Speaker 02

  And it's a weird thing, too, right? Because, I mean, like, there's a, a broadcast is about something that has a timestamp, but then also, too, it keeps, it keeps playing, it's a frequency, right?

• 2:34:22Yasi Salek?

  It's, it's going forever into time and space. That's, that's such a good, you're right. It's like, it's a missive that goes out, but when, where does it, it never gets to anything.

• 2:34:32Speaker 02

  And I mean, it's one of the most basic mysteries, too. Like, where does music start? Where does it go?

• 2:34:36Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. The Band, The Band's Playin' question. Where does music start? Where does music go?

• 2:34:43Speaker 02

  Where does it come from?

• 2:34:44Yasi Salek?

  God.

• 2:34:45Speaker 02

  Yeah. God. It feels that way. It's so enormous. You're like.

• 2:34:48Yasi Salek?

  That's my, that's always my theory.

• 2:34:50Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah. Where does music come from? Where does it go? It, it feels like it starts in this enormity that you might as well call God.

• 2:34:57Yasi Salek?

  Mm-hmm. Yeah. But I do still think gay people should kidnap children. And that's where we'll end it.

• 2:35:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:35:06Yasi Salek?

  Harry, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. You were wonderful. Um, this was a challenging episode for me, but also a really beautiful one. Um, come back next week for a new episode of Bandplain.

• 2:35:24Yasi Salek?

  If you liked what you heard today, subscribe for more episodes of Bandplain. Our guest today was Harry Tafoya. This episode was produced by Rob Sunderland and edited by Adrian Bridges with help from Justin Sales. Video production by Jacob Hornet. Executive producers for Bandplain are Gina Delvecq and me, Yasi Selle. Our gorgeous and catchy theme song was composed and performed by Bethany Cosentino and Jennifer Clavon and graciously recorded by Carlos De La Garza in Los Angeles, California. Special thanks to our producer emeritus, producer Dylan, AKA Dylan Tupper Rupert, and also Sean Fantasy and the television program Chalked. Come back every Thursday for a new episode of Bandplain on Spotify or wherever you listen to or watch podcasts.