Come On Let's POLL - ILM Artist Poll #114 - BROADCAST (Polling and Lobbying Thread)

Incidentally, please don't count on any significant extension beyond the given deadline. We'll aiming for the week after that for the rollout. There's still a pretty generous ~3 weeks left, so let's pretend that we 'built in' the near-obligatory extension at the outset. :)

"WE'RE aiming" rather.

A curio today, here is a remix of a Badly Drawn Boy track, think I honestly prefer it to every BDB original - Another Pearl (Broadcast Remix)

starting to dive back into the catalog and it's making me want to re-watch lodge 49

amazing use of broadcast in several episodes, in particular "the book lovers" in one flashback scene

Fun Fact: very earliest ballots have cited 62 distinct tracks and 11 albums thus far. #ExtremelyPrematureFunFacts

I have a playlist of 40 songs ready to go. Feeling good about my choices, but still need to work on ordering them. I'll go through the playlist in the next few days to sort that out.

I was thinking again about "What You Want" aka "Dulcimer Jam" in the middle of the night. It's immensely unfortunate that we have no studio version of that, as I think would be quite popular in such an alternate universe. Freaked me out, it did, what with Keenan banging her twangy instrument and chanting "don't bleed (plead?) for the things you don't need", etc.

Given that it was seemingly the closer or penultimate track for over a year in their duo performances, it was surely becoming one of the most performed songs of their entire career. The crispest available recording might be the very last performance as the festival was, er, broadcast on the wireless. Anyway, it's on my ballot even though we have no definitive recording.

Whoops, that Youtube time index might the end of the song. It begins about 28:40, if that's the case.

Listening through today, Ominous Cloud is the one I had to bump up my list. I could listen to that outro forever.

It's also way higher on my ballot than I might have expected before this exercise! A *lot* of Haha Sound is, for that matter. I fear I underrate that whole LP when it's not playing.

Yeah, a few Haha Sound tracks have risen up my list too. It's always been my least favourite of the three main studio albums, but it really is an astonishing album.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zOobFF1mXLU

ellenmeilee
7 years ago
A little backstory for fans of this song... Trish, who I was friends with for many years, used to come to my house during the day when I was out at work to write songs. My cat, Corky, is very shy, and at first he would just poke his head round the door of the room where she was sitting, and then run away. As the day went on, curiosity would overcome him and he would finally try and make friends with her. Hence, the lyrics of the chorus. We filmed some of the vid at my house and I appear in the vid for about 2 seconds. What a thrill and an honour for me and Corky xxx

: )

2005. Can we call them 'seminal figures' in the history of the cat video?!

Gee, the sound quality of this recording of a short LA set circa EP1 is ridiculously high. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekzAM56YVBw

Interesting how often an orphaned version of the bloopy post-"Where Youth & Laughter Go" interlude featured in sets around this time. Makes its omission from The Future Crayon all that more perplexing.

Started my dive back into their discography this morning with Work and Non-Work. So far, every single song from that album is in contention.

My feelings too, then every LP I was waiting for the drop in quality and it never came.

I love Broadcast so much and the idea of even just ranking their albums, let alone tracks, fills me with anxiety

Started my dive back into their discography this morning with Work and Non-Work. So far, every single song from that album is in contention.

― sctttnnnt (pgwp)

Yeah, I am absolutely voting for every track on this compilation. I am also realising that if this was a regular album, it would probably be in my top five albums of all time.

XP: Feel free to go with unranked tracks! (Albums too, if you really want lol. I've stated 'unranked or unranked' for albums as well in the past, with shorter ballots, but there's been zero demand for it, so simply left the word out this time.)

But, yeah, I get that none of this really addresses the problem of their oeuvre being pretty solid all the way through. :)

"ranked or unranked" rather, aaargh

voted. my god that was tough. still second guessing myself but I honestly love every single song I put down. Its just the order I can't nail down

Same for me. I love the 40 songs I have but I'm not going to ever be happy with the order. I'm still not even fully decided on my number one.

I really skimped on WANW in my submitted ballot due to some spurious sense of it being a bit 'early vaguely unformed sketches' relative to later albums and then I played it this morning and was rapt for 40 mins, so, yeah. There is no way of ranking Broadcast that does not short-change massive chunks of Broadcast.

"ranked or unranked"

forgot how much I adore the outro to “Look Outside”

Yes! "Look Outside" is great, but I too needed to remind myself of this fact.

LOL mattkkkk. Probably a "tide raises all boats" sort of move with this particular discography, but given we've had people ruling out voting for years now I'm happy to accommodate every possible quirk if it means an extra ballot or two. :)

After handful of ballots, 71 distinct tracks and 14 LPs/EPs have already got the nod from voters.

Shall I send you a quick summary, CaAL?

Incidentally, if I don't acknowledge your ballot by email (hopefully within a few hours unless it was the middle of the night here) something may have gone awry, so feel free to raise it. (I'm yet to experience this, but the occasional ballot has definitely gone astray in the long history of these polls, so please excuse this most tedious administrivia!)

Oh my, I just realised I didn't get mattkkkk's joke on the first pass. LOL.

according to no plan!

Awkwardness happening to someone... in this thread. *blushes*

Incidentally, from another thread: is there a glaringly obvious reason why this emerged? (Or maybe it was instantly the favourite of the great unwashed and I was just hopelessly ignorant?)

songs that weren't a bands biggest hit, but have gone on to be their legacy song and biggest iTunes seller

it’s been covered a few times, including by clairo

there’s also a terrible cover out there by the band tennis

Oh wow. Listening now. Thanks.

I should definitely have considered the possibility of covers after asking "Why does 'Swingin Party' have so many streams?" during The Replacements poll lol.

it’s also the band’s most conventionally pretty song, which goes a long way in some quarters

just remembered this band is pure magic, why the fuck would we poll them, like weighing a ghost

I feel like the point of a poll is secretly only 18.3% about ranking stuff, and some 81.7% about eliciting such declarations of love!

I wasn't sure if I'd find time to participate in the poll, thinking I'd just follow.
I'm so glad I am. I've listened to Maida Vale, and now I'm relistening the albums in order and I'm already so enthusiastic.
ILM polls are like the cherry on top of music enjoyment.

One oddity I tossed some points is the remix of Saint Etienne's Angel. Seemingly stripping the St Et content back to little more than a vocal snippet (?), it ends in up "Accidentals" territory instead: dominated by wonky looped samples from what sound like entirely unrelated sources. Spooky!

"ends up in 'Accidentals' territory" rather. #BrainDamage

Voted!

Really tough getting these songs in order. Best band in the world.

One oddity I tossed some points is the remix of Saint Etienne's Angel

Completely forgot about this! It deserved points yes. This was on Casino Classics (Oct 96) so pre-dates the release of Book Lovers - St Et were extremely early adopters. I'm pretty sure I read somewhere that they tried to sign Broadcast to EMIDisc? Thank fuck they did not succeed.

Best band in the world

This is definitely the case.

Princes Hill Secondary College Vocal Group wants to remind you to put the, um, bangin' Witch Cults opener, The Be Colony, on your ballot.

Still the best version of Lights Out IMO

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDc-k9kIRRg

It's meatier than the BBC version innit. One thing I like about this song (though it's possibly most pronounced in the familiar studio version) is how the bass and the buzzy synth line accentuate the end of each bar, almost like they're being switched off altogether. Or like they're employing a tape loop again even though that's presumably not what they're doing this time. At least until later on, lol.

Also "I want to watch the carpark empty" is heavy, man.

Which Microtronics are people thinking of voting for? I may put a few in, Microtronics 05 for example.

I think I had all of 03-07 and a couple more from the second half on my shortlist. But ended up whittling that down to just 04 in the end. Clearly ballots should have had 50 slots. :(

*scans list for something that hasn't been mentioned yet*

Distant Call!!! Perhaps Echo's Answer's somewhat unheralded cousin, what with the icy mood and relative lack of a beat. All about the little details: bass as punctuation; the minutiae of the distortion on the synths; "I am not made of clay"; extended woozy coda. You know it makes sense.

Fun fact: exactly one track has appeared on all ballots so far and... well, it's an a good one. (Mine is one of those ballots, so of course I approve.) But I would never have guessed this track at the outset.

No, wait, there are two in that category! I wouldn't have guessed the second one either!

A few extraordinary remixes/strays of note:

Projects, "Accidents Will Happen (Broadcast Remix)"
Gonjasufi, "The Caliph's Tea Party (Broadcast & The Focus Group DedNd Remix)"
The Sea and Cake, "Interiors (Broadcast Remix)"