Public Service Broadcasting are a UK instrumental duo renowned for their live performances in front of banks of old television sets. With little more than percussion, bass, guitar, and occasionally banjo as well, they create these forward propelled motorik tunes that occasionally build, but in the main are relatively constant in their dynamics.
To some extent the music acts as a bed for the thousands of samples spread throughout the album. Public Service Broadcasting have mined the past, digging into the archives of the British Film Institute, from the 1953 film The Conquest of Everest, whilst also grabbing all the public domain material that they can get their hands on. We’re talking educational voice over’, propaganda films, fictional feature films, they don’ discriminate. You wouldn’ be out of line to suggest that their debut album is dense with samples, where the samples have very clearly taken on the role of the vocalist.
There’ no immediately apparent narrative that springs from the recontextualisation of these spoken word samples, and it doesn’ feel like Public Service Broadcasting are butting together ill fitting samples to create an entirely new meaning. At times they’re exploring seemingly inane content such as the magic of colour, whilst at other times it’s about birds or Mt Everest. They’re not overtly political, though there are some bites from the war years. Their interest instead seems to be to cloak their music in a certain nostalgia for a bygone age. A kind of Noel Coward meets Trans Am with a stiff upper lip. They’ve purposely chosen not to let their music do their longing, it’s too diverse, too informed by electronic music, too groove based, their rock outs, their rocktronica, their post rock, and electro pop couldn’ represent anything else but right now. In this sense the sole purpose of the samples is for warmth, to cloak their sounds in another guise, to link themselves to another time, another world, and another emotion.
Instrumental music could be about anything. Most of the time it’s up to the listener to attribute a deeper personal meaning. But Public Service Broadcasting are keen to shepherd the listener in their own direction, creating concept tunes, and using the comfort of history to provide a much needed context and explanation.
