TEARS IN THE TYPING POLL: ILM Artist Poll #114 - BROADCAST (Results Thread)

https://i.imgur.com/MtaPElj.jpeg

9 Extended Play (2000)
132 Points, 6 Votes, 1 First Place Vote

https://i.imgur.com/sUyDFbL.jpeg

8 Mother Is The Milky Way (2009)
176 Points, 15 Votes

I was disappointed that the reissue of Mother Is the Milky Way changed the artwork. Did the original violate some copyright?

Is this the original or the re-release? It's the one on Discogs anyway.

https://i.imgur.com/zzGNfbU.jpeg

7 The Future Crayon (2006)
194 Points, 14 Votes

I didn't really know Mother Is The Milky Way well until the recent reissue. It's a cool release. I also bought the Microtronics reissue which I hadn't heard before. I'm not sure it'll get regular plays but there were some nice moments.

The Book Lovers is a contender for the greatest EP of all time. Maybe just ahead of Stereolab's Fluorescences from the same time.

I remember being stuck working in a deserted bookshop in Southampton once and the only CDs I had were The Book Lovers, Flourescences and Miss Modular. It was a pretty good day.

Is this the original or the re-release? It's the one on Discogs anyway.

yeah, agreed, less good.

...and here's a new entry straight in at number six

https://i.imgur.com/QDVnRUU.jpeg

6 Maida Vale Sessions (2022)
239 Points, 13 Votes

I guess that Future Crayon votes were pretty much split between the album and the constituent EPs, but I do think it holds up as a gorgeous sprawling monolith in its own right. Probably slightly more Trish-lite than most of the other 'big' albums though.

Maida Vale might be a very recent release but it's so satisfying how it unifies three distinct eras of Broadcast. There's also something really massively on-brand about engaging with them via evening radio broadcasts heard at a 25 year remove.

Yeah as a container of tracks that i voted for individually, Future Crayon could have been my number #1 release vote, I sortof wish it was now. Its majestic record, I vastly prefer it to Work and non work. Pendulum has always seemed a bit of an oddity for them with its conventionally heavy Loop / Can psych type groove and does that wonderful Broadcast trick of synthesising something you already love and immediately making the source material pale a bit in comparison. Well, perhaps not the Can part.

The progression through the maida vale sessions one is just a delight, the last side absolutely slays me. I wonder if anyone else voted for the Nico cover in the end.

Personally I find Future Crayon to be a bit of a slog, although I ranked it. I've never heard the constituent EPs and singles and imagine I'd prefer them.

The 3-inch Microtronics CDs are really fun, even if the cases break when you touch them. I bought the LP reissue and it sounds quite nice; when preparing for this poll I listened to both. (The Microtronics artwork looks a little pixilated on the LP sleeve; I wonder if the reason they changed the Mother Is the Milky Way art is because they didn't have a high-res source for the original.)

Oh hey happy to see the Maida Vale sessions so high in here.

sorry, that was an unplanned break. anyway

https://i.imgur.com/xUY40Tm.jpeg

5 Broadcast And The Focus Group Investigate Witch Cults Of The Radio Age (2009)
286 Points, 17 Votes, 2 First Place Votes

Ah, I assumed I'd be catching up on everything through to #1. :)

One thing I only realised through this exercise is that I possibly prefer a combination of EP1 + EP2 played consecutively to TNMBP!

apologies for the break, something came up, we will still be finished tonight.

witch cults was my number one, it's easily the one I come back to most often. everything just fits together so well.

I wonder if anyone else voted for the Nico cover in the end.

Ha!

#5 was my #1 too so that works for me. A surprise return to form IMHO, despite not actually sounding much like any previous form of Broadcast. Little details still surprise me.

it's funny the pollrunners are so out of step with the rest of the voters, and this may not be the final example of this

anyway, on with our hastened schedule

https://i.imgur.com/srkVRNs.jpeg

4 Work And Non Work (1997)
496 Points, 23 Votes, 4 First Place Votes

Testament to how good this is that I bought it and played it to death even though I already had all but two tracks (Accidentals & We've Got Time)

The cool thing about the top 4 is I seem to recall all of them being at the top of the ranking at some point. Though that reign came rather too early with W&NW!

votes have been fairly predictable up to this point, but will they be so for the three canonical LPs?

https://i.imgur.com/zvxAA16.jpeg

3 The Noise Made By People (2000)
597 Points, 23 Votes, 3 First Place Votes

will be honest, I expected this one to win handily

guessing voters are mostly sleeping now. Will try not to skip a few hours again.

anyway. are we ready for our top two?

I'm here, at least, despite a dodgy mobile connection. Surprise me lol!

https://i.imgur.com/bIAh2Xv.jpeg

2 Haha Sound (2003)
624 Points, 23 Votes, 5 First Place Votes

https://i.imgur.com/KhVsfGK.jpeg

1 Tender Buttons (2005)
650 Points, 20 Votes, 6 First Place Votes

must sleep now myself, looking forward to some comments in the morning.

Excellent work!

I remember saying in the other thread that was I perfectly content with the results if ~20 votes was all we were going to get. Haha Sound and TNMBP had been jostling for #1 for most of the voting period. As is often the case, later ballots had a slightly different flavour and Tender Buttons snatched it, by a whisker. All three still sit within little more than the span of a first-place-vote.

Not sure I even had a firm opinion before this exercise but I settled on HHS as my favourite of the three more conventional studio LPs. Despite gently dissing "Pendulum" above. :)

Regret not making time to vote but thank you so much for doing this.

Top 3, about right- just expected the placements to be different. Glad to see the TB love was as big as mine! My deep love of this band came from doing some graduate school work at my grandparents’ house shortly before my grandmother passed and I remember listening to Tender Buttons and everything clicked. A band becoming more devoted to electronics for support after another departure of a band member. My grandmother in hospice, needing electronic medical equipment to monitor and keep her on support.

Also wish I had gotten around to voting but enjoying this thread, thanks.

I think The Noise Made By People would've been my No 1 - despite being underwhelmed by it on release - I felt like it was too careful and buttoned-up and distant - perhaps I wanted it to be something that it wasn't? But now I think I enjoy that slight remove, in fact really appreciate it as a soundtrack for feeling slightly detached from life, looking through windows or walking alone. A nice daytime record.

Generally I prefer to listen to digital copies of albums that I first got to know on CD, but this is a rare example of a 21st century LP that I enjoy more on vinyl.

When Trish died - and this has happened with a few artists I admire - it felt like I instantly had a very different sense of her (and Broadcast's) artistic journey - it is hard to explain but knowing that the project was over completely recast my understanding of their body of work.

xpost

The top 3 is the same as mine, same order. I came to Broadcast late and apart from Witch Cults didn't hear their catalogue until after Trish died. My vote for TB may well just come down to "at the end of the day I am a 'songs' person and TB has the highest proportion of them," though I also associate it with a bad time in grad school, when the album seemed to offer something like grace.

Glad to see Tender Buttons top the albums list. Not only their best set of songs, but one of my favorite sounding albums ever--the sonic palette of primitive drum machines + sentient-fax-machine synths + Trish's sweet, stoic voice to me evokes an eternal, glowing future.

Yeah very much on the money. Haha is my favourite but TB is an alchemical record which blew the doors off their previous confines, made them a hugely exciting band rather than a beautiful style exercise. I think I will be listening to Witch Cults for decades and slowly decoding it.

I don't think I saw this mentioned on the other thread - a mixtape made by Trish around 2010, which may serve as an amuse-bouche ahead of the tracks rollout:
https://aquariumdrunkard.com/2016/04/20/trish-keenans-mind-bending-motorway-mix/

Fairly sure the top three is how the same order they all placed in the 2000s poll on here a couple of years ago. It was great to see them do so well in that.

I would happily put Tender Buttons in my all time top ten albums, maybe even top five but I had this crazy realisation during the voting process that not only would I put Work & Non Work ahead of it, I might put it above every album I've ever heard. It's one of those albums that makes me feel nostalgic for when I first heard it and still excites me just as much after 25 years. I absolutely adore all nine songs (and voted for every one in this poll) and it's sequenced so beautifully. It is the album I would recommend to a Broadcast beginner. I love how that one leads to the three albums and the journey they would take.

Weirdly I remember being so disappointed with Tender Buttons when I got it. It was a couple of years later I revisited it and everything fell into place. Very happy to see it at the top. Also happy to see Maida Vale up there. I feel kinda guilty it's probably going to get my number one vote in the end of year poll in January. It's a wonderful collection.

I was disappointed with Tender Buttons initially too, but it never fully recovered in my case! It's the closest they came to approximating some actual 'in' sounds of the era. I think my 2005 reaction is on this site; something like "the world needed another electroclash act?" It's probably more like an album of Pendulums in reality, except that the once delicious drums are now overwhelmingly little more than a click track. And, all of a sudden, they were breaking into 3/4 uncharacteristically rarely, lol.

I remember the descending wibbly guitar in "Black Cat' immediately sounding alarmingly 'indie' and unambitious. Far from breaking down barriers, it seemed that references to stuff outside the confines of rock were getting swapped out. For someone whose first favourite Broadcast song was probably "Accidentals" much of the album seemed to represent an ever so *slight* drift towards the tired things that had me fleeing to Broadcast in the first place!

I don't dislike it though. It's still Broadcast innit. Small distinctions, etc. I just reach for it less often than other stuff and am glad they didn't really dwell there for long, recordings-wise.

My top vote was for TNMBP but my appreciation of Tender Buttons improved by the biggest margin on relisten during the poll: a more complete sonic clothing over intact melodies, more confidence, more surrealism. But I first heard TNMBP and love its vagueness, quaintness, dreaming apathy. Haha Sound is the one that I connect the least with, I find it has less unity, it's more a collection of experiments for me. Maida Vale was a perfect occasion for the poll and I like to think it was the trigger.

I've also realized, while I like the three bands, how much higher regard I have for Broadcast compared to Stereolab and Pram. I love Broadcast.

I feel like I should spend more quality time with Pram. They never quite clicked for me, but they endlessly feel like they might be about to do so.

I think I know what you mean about Haha Sound. Much of it sounds like a sequence of quite, er, small ideas. I mean, something like "O How I Miss You" is possibly the slightest thing in the whole world ever and yet... it's possible I've very nearly shed a tear over that thing!

the broadcast v stereolab narrative needs to knock it off

one of my favorite sounding albums ever--the sonic palette of primitive drum machines + sentient-fax-machine synths + Trish's sweet, stoic voice to me evokes an eternal, glowing future

Re Tender Buttons: this nails it really - I remember that it leaked very early (par for the course in 2005) and the sound of it was a real shock at first. It had a brace of springy pop songs (Black Cat, America's Boy, Corporeal, Michael A Grammar, Goodbye Girls) which definitely had the fizzy abandon that I'd always wanted from them. But, yes, Haha Sound had been their most cavernous album and yet this felt like their most minimalist. Tender Buttons and Young Marble Giants' Colossal Youth are both easily in my top 10 all-time albums, for similar reasons - stoic vocals over drum-machine bounce.

Loads of comments above regarding initial reactions to certain albums resonate with me. Broadcast have definitely become my favourite band over the past 25 years, and I've bought everything at the point of release since Book Lovers, but both TNMBP and Haha Sound did slightly different things than I'd initially anticipated

I had exactly the same initial reaction to TNMBP as emsworth outlines upthread; by the time the Pendulum EP came out I'd long since fallen in love with the chilly detachment of this prev album, but then the Pendulum tracks and parts of Haha Sound were so much about the newly gigantic and frenetic drums that my expectations shifted again. Both TNMBP and Haha Sound were massive growers for me and each new release completely changed my appreciation of the previous one.

I think I will be listening to Witch Cults for decades and slowly decoding it

Completely this, also - I guess it doesn't do what some people want from Broadcast, but it's so lush and dense and once you stop listening for tidy pop songs they do gradually emerge.

I’d describe my Broadcast taste as “basic”:

Tracks

Black Cat
Valerie
Pendulum
Echo's Answer
Corporeal
Tender Buttons
Unchanging Window
The Book Lovers
A Seancing Song
Ominous Cloud
Come On Let's Go
The Be Colony
Before We Begin
Where Youth and Laughter Go
Winter Now
Small Song IV
Elegant Elephant
According to No Plan
I Found the F
Poem of Dead Song
Let It Begin / Oh Joy
Tears in the Typing Pool
Colour Me In
In Here the World Begins
Message From Home
Forget Every Time
Minim
What I Saw
Living Room
We Are After All Here
We've Got Time
Accidentals
Distant Call
Papercuts
Chord Simple
Bit 35
Phantom
Ritual / Looking In
A Quiet Moment
Mother's Milk Means Music (At Home in the Universe)


LPs and EPs

HaHa Sound
Tender Buttons
Witch Cults of the Radio Age
The Noise Made by People
Mother is the Milky Way
Maida Vale Sessions
The Future Crayon
Work and Non-Work
Berberian Sound Studio
Microtronics 1 & 2

based on yr polling submissions, we're all "basic" broadcast fans!

Morvern Callar OST, never seen it

Basicness may be under-rated. Even though I enjoyed advocating for the messiness of Witch Cults at al as long-playing experiences, the individual tracks I actually plucked out for a ballot were still overwhelmingly 'pop' ones, or at least pretty and/or propulsive ones that stood up well in isolation.

My ballot existed mainly as a playlist so I'll make this public for a bit: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3N6zPhyqhBOhmnU5mzavSS (Approximately this, from early April, plus "Dulcimer Jam" somewhere in the middle.)

Er, "Witch Cults et al".

“Basic” fan kinda sums me up. I’ve enjoyed the big albums over the years and have heard things like Be Colony and BSS but didn’t think I could rank favorites. This poll will be fantastic for doing a deeper dive though.

Been away for the weekend, good to see so many of you enjoyed the rollout. IMO a "basic" fan would be into the more famous tracks from TNMBP, Papercuts, perhaps a couple of earlier or later tracks - and I can see no ballots along those lines at all, matt you even have A Seancing Song at #9! (and I will try to find a slot for a Morvern Callar viewing)

Here's my ballot, I would recommend the non-placing remixes btw!

Tracks

Ominous Cloud
Phantom
Ritual / Looking In
Where Youth & Laughter Go
Forget Every Time
The World Backwards
Come On Let's Go
You Can Fall
Message From Home
Papercuts
According To No Plan
Unchanging Window / Chord Simple
Before We Begin
We've Got Time
Winter Now
Echo's Answer
The Book Lovers
Illumination
Michael A Grammar
Test Area
Avril - Be Yourself (Remixed by Broadcast)
Minim
Man Is Not A Bird
I See, So I See So
Badly Drawn Boy - Another Pearl (Broadcast Remix)
The Be Colony
Poem of Dead Song
Microtronics 05
Inside Out
City In Progress
Living Room
Hammer Without A Master
Locusts
Miki Furukawa - Coffee & Singing Girl!!! (Broadcast Remix)
Belly Dance
Dave's Dream
One Million Years Ago
Dead The Long Year
Hawk
Long Was The Year

LPs & EPs

Investigate Witch Cults of the Radio Age
Work and Non Work
The Book Lovers
Extended Play
Extended Play Two
Microtronics
The Noise Made By People
Haha Sound
The Transactional Dharma of Roj
Maida Vale Sessions

Great roll-out and a pleasure to follow the discussion - thank you everyone, especially CaAL and N!N!N! for making this happen.

TRACKS
1 Come on let’s go
2 Before we begin
3 Michael a grammar
4 Man is not a bird
5 Unchanging Window/Chord simple
6 Corporeal
7 Lights out
8 The book lovers
9 Paper Cuts
10 Pendulum
11 Tears in the typing pool
12 Long was the year
13 Valerie
14 Echo’s answer
15 The Be Colony
16 Subject to the ladder
17 Lunch Hour Pops
18 America’s Boy
19 Black Cat
20 Ominous Cloud
21 Still feels like tears
22 Goodbye Girls
23 Colour me in
24 Where youth and laughter go
25 Winter now
26 “I See, so I see so”
27 The Little Bell
28 I found the F
29 Hammer without a master
30 Minim
31 Arc of a journey
32 Make my sleep his song
33 In Here the World Begins
34 Message from home
35 What I saw
36 Dave’s Dream
37 A Man for Atlantis
38 The Equestrian Vortex
39 According to no plan
40 O How I miss you


ALBUMS
1 Ha Ha Sound
2 Tender Buttons
3 The Noise made by People
4 Broadcast and the Focus Group Investigate Witch Cults of the Radio Age
5 Work and Non-Work
6 The Future Crayon
7 Mother is the Milky Way

I had a lovely afternoon yesterday reading and listening through much of the Spotify playlist, starting at the top.

Yep, excellent work guys - threads like this refresh my faith in ILM :)

my mixed ballot!

Ranked
Come On Let’s Go
The Book Lovers
Before We Begin
City In Progress
Goodbye Girls
Man Is Not A Bird
The World Backwards
Black Cat
Where Youth And Laughter Go
Paper Cuts
America’s Boy
Unchanging Window / Chord Simple
Pendulum
Winter Now
Michael A Grammar
Tears In The Typing Pool

Unranked
The Little Bell
Echo’s Answer
Message From Home
Phantom
Poem of Dead Song
According to No Plan
Lights Out
You Can Fall
Until Then
Dead The Long Year
Lunch Hour Pops
Minim
Ominous Cloud
I Found The F
Corporeal
Bit 35
Subject To The Ladder
You And Me In Time
Test Area
Distant Call
Hammer Without A Master
Daves Dream
I see, so i see so
Long Was The Year

ALBUMS
Haha Sound
Tender Buttons
The Noise Made By People
Work And Non Work

Catching up with this belatedly (am abroad and have been w/o internet for a few days). Thanks to the poll runners for an excellent rollout experience and superb images. My #1s were Tender Buttons and "Echo's Answer" for the record.

My list. I still use Last.fm and it shows 500 plays for one band in a couple of weeks which is vv unusual for me. Brilliant poll - one of the best ever.

Until Then
Sixty Forty
We’ve Got Time
Corporeal
Echo’s Answer
Valerie
Goodnight Girls
Message From Home
Paper Cuts
City In Progress
Come on Let’s Go
I Found the F
A quiet word
Pendulum
Before We Begin
The Book Lovers
Accidentals
The Be Colony
Hawk
Make My Sleep His Song
Man Is Not a Bird
Forget Evertime
Lights Out
Living Room
Hammer Without A Master
Tears In the Typing Pool
Long Was The Year
Lunch Hour Pops
In Here The World Begins
Unchanging Window / Chord Simple
Teresa Lark of Ascension
Look Outside
Where Youth and Laughter Go
Tuesday’s Offering
The Aphid Sleeps
Microtonics 07
Elegant Elephant
The Equestrian Vortex
Illumination

watched Daisies and now i could see where a the influence in some TB era promo photos came from.

The results playlist on shuffle is currently my favourite thing in the world.
(up late, a little drunk/high, belly dance just hit)

I completely missed this poll and thread when it was live, but even a year later it's ILX at its best. good job everyone!