Broadcast, 2001-2012

Broadcast has been my favorite music group for a good portion of the last decade.  I was impressed the first time I listened to their Work and Non-Work album, especially "The Book Lovers."  Their first full-length album, The Noise Made By People, impressed me even more.  And when Haha Sound came out in 2003, I started to like them more than Stereolab.  My preference for their sound hasn't wavered since, although the band has dissolved since the death of their lead singer, Trish Keenan, in January 2011.  Her death affected me just as much as Mary Hansen's about 8 years earlier.

The memory I associate most with The Noise Made By People is our (my wife and I) first road trip from  Wisconsin to Maryland with our friend Nicole in the winter of 2002/3.  It started snowing gently in rural Ohio as the song "Echo's Answer" started playing in the car's CD player.  I remember it was my wife who driving at the time and she thought the experience was very moving.  Since then, that album has given her nostalgia for that time.

Haha Sound was my favorite album during our time in Korea.  I first listened to it about an hour before my plane was to arrive at Incheon International Airport in January 2004.  Hearing that album raised my adrenaline and made me excited to start a new year teaching there.  To this today, I consider Haha Sound to be my favorite Broadcast album and is definitely in my top 20 favorite albums.

Although I liked their next album, Tender Buttons, almost as much as Haha Sound, it doesn't evoke any strong emotions or memories.  I got it during an unemployed period of my life, but I'm not sure if that's the reason why.  The following album, which was a compilation album of mostly previously unreleased songs, contains a few of my favorite Broadcast songs.  I probably listened to The Future Crayon more than any other album while I was in Russia, but no single memory jumps out at me except intensely listening to the album while sitting in my bed.

The group's last album, Broadcast and The Focus Group Investigate Witch Cults of the Radio Age, was released just in time for Halloween in 2009.  And this has to be the best Halloween album I've ever heard.  It sounds like an album that the Beatles or Rolling Stones may have collaborated on during the Magical Mystery Tour and Their Satanic Majesty's Request era focusing on the mysticism of the occult.  I believe this was the pinnacle of Broadcast's musical experiments.  It's too bad that this was the last to be released to the public while Ms. Keenan was alive.

I just read that they are considering to release another Broadcast album with Trish Keenan's vocals, but I consider the band finished.  However, I listen to Broadcast just as often as I have for the past 5 years.  I'm sure it will taper off later, but no time soon.