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

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 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.

Cool! Thanks. :)

Helium is very good too

c)If it is a concern, her politics seem to have been fine during their prime and she left years ago (the new records are great)
d) I am very partial to the telemetric melodies compilation

*takes notes*

Thanks people!

The one actual physical disc I plucked from a discount bin (but *still* don't know well) is apparently The Moving Frontier which I'm guessing is not immensely acclaimed...

btw, the chronology with Billy playing in Broadcast is obviously back to front, but if Plone had been eligible for this poll I would have given them hefty votes.

Tender Buttons was my #1 for albums, probably their most song-y release but

Oops

Tender Buttons was my #1 for albums, probably their most song-y release but also I think it also just showcases the various strengths of the band so well, you still get a lot of the psych feel/general strangeness on there as well.

I voted for the compilations rather than the individual EPs as that's how I know them but I should try giving them a listen separately, just to see how they flow in that format.

ok, (come on) let's go.

is 77 a bit too many tracks? possibly, but number 78 was somehow the highest ranked track with less than two votes, also it was me who had to make images and all 77 are done now, as of about 20 minutes ago. going this high also lets us sample a few different flavours which would otherwise be missing.

https://i.imgur.com/osFDaZ9.jpg

77. Locusts
From Come On Let's Go Single, 2000. Compiled on The Future Crayon, 2006
Fan-made video by Blue-Loire on YouTube
27 Points, 3 Votes

In a little yellow lemon tree, no less! A+ CaAL!

pictures look not so great at this size, will make some minor adjustments

What to say about Locusts? I like it a lot, but it flits from idea to idea, and only a few moments are truly special, so can understand it being overlooked.

https://i.imgur.com/G3VYeuf.jpg

76. Chord Simple
From Come On Let's Go Single, 2000. Compiled on The Future Crayon, 2006
Fan-made video by Muse Seymour on YouTube
28 Points, 4 Votes

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!