Public Service Broadcasting - The Race For Space

    Public Service Broadcasting – The Race For Space

    20 Jun

    By

    Artist: Public Service Broadcasting
    Album: The Race For Space
    Year: 2015
    Genre: Electronic, Pop
    Style: Ambient

    Trans Europe Expressions

    Having just come back from the Munich High-End Audio Show and some rapid continental rail journeys from Germany to the Netherlands, Belgium and the UK during which I spent some time using earpods to create an alternate soundtrack to the trip. Music and travel go hand in hand.

    What to play on a fast train at 300km/h?

    Krautrock is somehow well suited to the rhythmic sounds of the tracks and the fast-moving scenery and helps paint timeless visuals found in Western Europe on a rail journey.

    On the way from Munich to Hanover my travelling posse was very attuned to the Trans Europe Express aesthetic provided by Kraftwerk back in 1976. On my return from London to Amsterdam it was another favourite album from PSB – The Race For Space which made the journey go more quickly.

    As a self-confessed nerd and geek I’m following the current space race for Moon and Mars with great interest. I have several feeds and subscriptions to news about technology and launch developments. It’s quite inspirational to see real engineering occurring often with the spirit of Kelly Johnson evident in the rapid problem solving and mission focus.

    What to listen to when travelling at close 30,000 km/h?

    UK band Public Service Broadcasting (PSB) is well immersed in Krautrock rhythms and drumbeats. For those familiar with the 2013 release Inform Educate Entertain will have enjoyed the traditional Germanic 70’s sounds (Neu, Can, Kraftwerk, Michael Rother etc).

    Public Service Broadcasting is a London-based duo consisting of J. Willgoose, Esq. on guitar, banjo, other stringed instruments, samplings and electronic instruments; and Wrigglesworth on drums, piano and electronic instruments. They take samples from old public information films, archive footage and propaganda material and blend this into clever electronica and drumbeats.

    This 2015 release saw them add more 1960s space race public broadcasts which are very recognisable for those raised in that era when a flickering black and white TV and scratchy AM radio broadcasts were all you could get to describe the incredible technology feats occurring on a global scale.

    Nowadays the coverage of space launches are so detailed and almost ringside seating views are freely available on YouTube for the literally groundbreaking exploits of today’s space pioneers to be analysed in minute detail.

    This album is nostalgic, but also forward thinking and often heads towards ambient. It’s painting pictures of attempting to leave earth with terminal results and also leaving earth at terminal velocities. It’s an epic ride with background noise and commentary filling in the vacuum. It can be listened to in a full sitting making repeat plays enjoyable.

    PSB are one of the best “prog-rock” practitioners currently creating new music. Prog Rock is a very loose category for PSB’s electronic dance, industrial noise and other genres (which they encapsulate) to be assigned. They have filled large concert arena’s and played with orchestral support so it’s not all studio fireworks.

    PSB sound was easy for me to adapt to as it reminds me of Australian industrial electro pioneers Severed Heads from the 80s who blended spoken word radio broadcasts with synthesiser and programmed drum beats.

    Thomas Dolby was another artist to blend public radio broadcasts into catchy pop melodies. The recorded voice is part of the collage, and it takes a clever mind to assemble these with melody. Almost a filmmaker’s vision.

    As we enter a new era of space technology development, I’m excited to be alive when a human might reach the surface of Mars (in my lifetime). What this entails is of course challenging, but looking out of a train window traveling at 300km/h was for me a good place to start the exercise.

    What would it be like to travel in space and arrive at the Mars Station?

    I can get there with music now (and with early Tangerine Dream I can leave the Solar System pretty easily) but perhaps one day it will be as easy as getting onboard and GO!

    But perhaps not tomorrow 😉.

    Playlist

    1 The Race For Space
    2 Sputnik
    3 Gagarin
    4 Fire In The Cockpit
    5 E. V. A
    6 The Other Side
    7 Valentina
    8 Go!
    9 Tomorrow

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