PUBLIC SERVICE BROADCASTING
“One of the things we’ve always done well is not just creating interesting artists who make great music but creating odd musicians who work on a pop level.” J. Willgoose, Esq is musing on British culture’s ability to embrace the eccentric and singular. The nation has seen a few mercurial brilliant artists, who took the seemingly whimsical and made it profound.
Willgoose, along with his band, Public Service Broadcasting, is no stranger to uncovering beauty in less obvious places. Only recently, development for their latest album involved recording electrical interference on Berlin’s Leipzigerstrasse with a wide-band electromagnetic receiver. The site of the German capital’s first electric streetlights, a shifting spectrum of fizzes and hums presented an ethereal heartbeat which could form a base for his music.
A place which has witnessed economic booms, division, innovation and life on the edge of oblivion, Berlin has long stood as a refuge for artists and wayward souls. And now Public Service Broadcasting are attempting to understand what makes it unique amongst the European cultural tradition. Released on Fri 24 Sept, Bright Magic neatly dovetails into the city’s reputation for rule-breaking, hedonism, outrageousness and welcoming those seeking reinvention.
In 1930 Walter Ruttmann
