Is retro-futurism a new genre? I hope not, I've had enough of retro kitsch - Venus Hum, Ladytron, The Faint... It's the twenty-first century, everyone.

Broadcast bring something new to something old with something else as well. Songs like 'Colour Me In' and 'The Little Bell' have the affective innocence of Syd Barrett and sound like theme tunes to psychedelic children's programmes.

My favourites are 'Lunch Hour Pops', 'Ominous Cloud' and 'Hawk', all evoking that strangely English sensibility - landscapes of endless rain endured with good-humoured stoicism. If Stereolab were into Lewis Carroll instead of Hegel they would sound like Broadcast.

Other reference points are Can (the drumline on 'Pendulum' sounds like a lo-fi 'Mother Sky') and the Young Marble Giants on 'Ominous Clouds'. Or maybe I'm just reading too much into things? 'Oh let me think a while/To the playground of your smile' sings Trish Keenan dreamily on 'Ominous Clouds' - how this album can be seen as 'too cerebral' is a mystery to me, but some reviewers have. Maybe they just don't understand emotion that isn't rendered in instant cliches. Post-kitsch, post-retro, post-post-modernism, it's time for human beings to sing from their hearts again. Bless.

Nice neo-constructivist cover by Intro as well. Recommended.

-Andrew Russell

/sept 15th 2003/