Melbourne-based producer Alex Gillett’s debut self-titled album as Boy Is Fiction originally emerged back in 2006 as a self-released venture, with its 2007 reissue to a substantially wider audience on the UK’s List Records being met by widespread critical and listener acclaim. Three years on, this second album on the US-based Sun Sea Sky label Broadcasts In Colour sees Gillett delving even deeper into the lush blend of melodic IDM, post-rock, ambient and shoegazer influences that characterised his debut, resulting in a deeply immersive and finely detailed collection that traverses the sorts of emotional electronic terrain explored by the N5MD label with a melancholic blurred undercurrent leaning more towards the gauzy post-goth of the 4AD label’s heyday. It’s also an album that explores far more divergent terrain with a new degree of confidence and assuredness, compared to its predecessor. While the delicate ambient synthetic orchestral swells of opening track ‘In’ and the glacial clicking IDM landscapes of ‘As Far From Here As Possible’ see proceedings venturing forth into familiar terrain that’s been well covered by the likes of Proem, Plaid and SubtractiveLAD, it’s by the third track ‘Feeling Lazy’ that this album really starts to insidiously work its way into your emotional subconscious.
Winding digitally treated vocal tones through an intertwined backdrop of icily melodic synth tones and gliding, almost motorik-centred beats before layering delicate piano motifs out into the middle distance, the former track is easily one of the most cohesive and enticing examples of post-IDM electronics given a tangibly ‘human’ presence that I’ve personally encountered for a long time – particularly as harsh rattling breakbeats play off against the softer elements at the very end. The haunting ‘Silo’ meanwhile sees brittle, clicking textures slowly emerging into sharp focus around a gauzy backdrop of pulsing bass tones and ghostlike harmonic drones in what’s easily one of the most beguiling, near beatless segues here, before ‘Rat’ and ‘I Close My Eyes’ see more dark and menacing synth tones moving towards the forefront, as contorted metallic beats trace a relentless path against glitchy textures and vaguely Reznor-esque synths, in the few offerings here that hint more directly at Gillett’s early love of darker industrial sounds. That said however, while there’s certainly an overriding sense of haunting melancholy that permeates throughout the 16 tracks collected (borne out in track titles like ‘My Veins Are Blocked’ and ‘I Left You There’), it’s deftly balanced out with a sense of wide-eyed, sweeping grandeur and sheer human warmth, making Broadcasts In Colour an album that’s equally as approachable and accessible as it is bleak. An excellent second album from Gillett as Boy Is Fiction that deserves a place on many end of year lists, capped off by Paul Nolan’s gorgeous digipack sleeve art.
Chris Downton
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