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Friday, January 14, 2011 

None of us have anything

I don't necessarily talk about them much (then again, these days do I talk about anything much?), but Broadcast are one of those bands, you know, the ones that are secretly your favourites and you listen to all the time but never tell people about. They made a few really excellent albums, and inspired in my opinion one of the best pieces I ever wrote at Stylus. Today I hear that the wonderful Trish Keenan, the band's frontwoman, has died of pneumonia-related complications after contracting H1N1. As Ellis says, I'm shocked and more than a little horrified to hear the news. My condolences go to her family and friends, and also to everyone else out there who's realizing that they'll never hear her voice on a new song again.

Years ago I was going to go to Toronto and see Broadcast open for Ladytron; for some reason I either couldn't or didn't go. Even at the time I knew I'd regret it.

This was rather shocking to wake up to this morning, especially with hearing of her being sick just yesterday. I was fortunate enough to catch them at Fun Fun Fun Fest 2009 in Austin while covered in mud and blood in the pouring down rain. It was a very gray blurry wet day, but I recall the set pretty vividly, and I remember it being awesome.

pic: http://bit.ly/eF8WQN

Very sad.

Really nicely done, Ian. Where would a person start with Broadcast? I've never really spent any time with it.

I hadn't even heard she was sick, Katie. Yeah, very shocking. Why were you covered in blood, exactly?

Jenny, the weird thing about Broadcast is that their first album (which I love) is essentially a different band from their other two records (the band dropped from a quintet to a duo after the first), and then in 2009 they made a record with the Focus Group (one of the Ghost Box bands) that is apparnetly quite good but, again, different. I'd suggest starting with the nice little mix Matthew Perpetua of Fluxblog posted today, and I can certainly upload some albums if you'd like. All three records are really good, and while I don't have it, their compilation of pre-first album stuff (Work and Non Work) is supposed to be worthwhile too (there's also a thing called Future Crayon that collects rarities and b-sides, which I haven't heard).

Link:
http://perpetua.tumblr.com/post/2744531333/broadcast-the-message-sent-was-of-discontent

Oh, okay, gosh, I haven't been on Fluxblog in years, but I'll so soon.

The mixes he occasionally uploads tend to be for bands I already like, so I don't download them; but they also tend to be very well constructed.

Also, Nitsuh Abebe's fine article has somehow made me feel even worse about the whole thing.

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About me

Ian Mathers is a freelance writer whose work has appeared in Stylus, the Village Voice, Resident Advisor, PopMatters, and elsewhere. He does stuff and it magically appears here.

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