REVIEW: Public Service Broadcasting

Public Service Broadcasting 

The accumulating crowd varied from M&S cashmere scarves to brightly dyed dreadlocks. The BBC Radio 6 audience are a strange mix of stereotypes all united with the common denominator, they are all music lovers. As Radio 6 are an advocate of Public Service Broadcasting, being awarded with their 'Rebel Playlist' twice in one year, their gig was transformed into the music clubs meet up. The crowd chorused into assertive nods and murmurs rather than the usual gig screams as the duo entered the stage. 

The two making up the entirety of the band looked like they had rushed from Dr. Who auditions sporting corduroy, dickiebows and elbow patches. They both remained silent throughout the performance, relying on the voice over of the Received Pronunciation accent of the bloke from the Nine O'clock news five decades ago. This unique idea of incorporating voice clippings from 20th century BBC continued in their set.

The Rescue Room's stage was crammed with retro TVs and a gigantic, neon radio tower which illuminated and projected old public information videos and propaganda clips from World War Two. J. Willgoose then sampled appropriate audio clips whilst multitasking to a Guinness World Record extreme. He juggled synths, his MacBook electronic samples and alternated between a Fender guitar and a banjo. Wrigglesworth, the other half the duo cleverly kept a tempo going through this hurricane of madness on drums.

The entire thing sounds like a Benny Hill chase, kind of disaster. Surprisingly, it worked very well. The brains behind the sound of Public Service Broadcasting have to be humongous. There must have been so much time dedicated to finding fitting visuals and strange samples such as, commentaries of expeditions of Everest and weird Dutch ice skating documentaries with such a distinct genre of music. Their guts have equaled their cleverness by making a career out of such an experimental sound with electronic-banjo fusions. Their gamble seems to have paid off as the excitement from the reserved radio 6 crowd climbed as the two reentered the stage for their encore. Their last song 'Everest' left the crowd feeling more elevated than Edmund Hillary, the chap in the projected video sitting on top of the highest mountain.