Noise Made By People

Broadcast | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (April 18, 2000)
• Original Release Date: April 18, 2000
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Tommy Boy
• ASIN: B00004SH94
• Also Available in: Audio CD  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (42 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #176,988 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Track Listings

1. Long Was The Year

2. Unchanging Window

3. Minus One

4. Come On Let's Go

5. Echo's Answer

6. Tower Of Our Tuning

7. Papercuts

8. You Can Fall

9. Look Outside

10. Until Then

11. City In Progress

12. Dead The Long Year

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com's Best of 2000

Five years on, Broadcast (one of Britain's finest groups of pop experimentalists) finally got around to releasing a proper debut full-length. The group's sound veers from skewed, downtempo electronic pop to weirdly accessible analog futurism in the course of one song; it is simply delightful cocktail lounge music for the postmodern sophisticate in you. By turns eerie, uplifting, and enchanting, The Noise Made by People was well worth the wait. --Mike McGonigal

Product Description

After being mired in the studio for nearly three years, Broadcast returned with their first proper full-length album, The Noise Made by People, a collection of more shimmering, weightless pop that is nostalgic for yesterday's visions of the future but remains on the cutting edge of contemporary music. Where their early singles (collected on 1997's Work and Non-Work) painted small, quaint portraits of their retro-futurism, The Noise Made by People delivers their sound in widescreen, filmic grandeur. Richly layered yet airy pieces like the album bookends, "Long Was the Year" and "Dead the Long Year," seamlessly blend symphonic, electronic, and pop elements into smoky, evocative epics, while synth-based interludes such as "Minus One" and "The Tower of Our Tuning" present Broadcast's more detached, scientific side. Likewise, Trish Keenan's air-conditioned vocals sometime suggest a robotized Sandie Shaw or Cilla Black, but her humanity peeks out on "Come on Let's Go" and "Papercuts." "Echo's Answer" and "Until Then" are two of the other highlights from the album, which despite all of its chilly unearthliness, is a noise made by (very talented) people.

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Wonderful Noise, November 5, 2001

By 

W. Davidson (Melbourne, Australia) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Noise Made By People (Audio CD)

This is the first proper CD from these Brit art-poppers. Twelve new tracks that add new dimensions to their work, developing their dream-like sound into further dark and uncharted waters. Broadcast are full of contradictions, they somehow manage to sound lush and lo-fi all at once, their elegance and individuality is wonderful and addictive. They can also balance sounding cheery and poppy yet ominously dark all same time ("Come On Let's Go" for example). A hard trick to pull off, but they do it.

The Noise Made By People utilises samples and loops less than their previous work. Although the sound is often rich and dense they are not afraid to trim the sound back to the basics and pause into silence where necessary ("Echoes Answer"). Broadcast share a sense of minimalism reminiscent of indie gods Young Marble Giants (although more technically sophisticated, and have sampling technology on their side). And the comparisons don't end there, the lyrics are stylistically similar and share the austere melancholy of YMG.

This is an album that will stay with you if you let it. Recommended for those with a sense of adventure and an appreciation of outré pop music.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Styles and songs, September 23, 2000

By 

Bill Your 'Free Form FM Handi Cyber Print DJ ... (Mahwah, NJ USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Noise Made By People (Audio CD)

Broadcast is one of the few bands I've heard in a long time that can take many styles, and layer them simultainiously without sounding like trend-mongers. I hear in this album a lot of Bark Psychosis, a lot of Belle and Sabastian, a lot of Tricky, and a lot of 1968-style gotic-psych expermentation.

The key is the songwritting. A lot of bands like this try to sound styalistically diverse. But they lard these styles onto weak songs, as if style could completely replace subtance.

Broadcast, on the other hand, has a reason for every effect and piece of noise they use, and this only makes great songs better. There is a lot of meat in this meal, but also a lot of richly dark atmosphere. It all works quite well.

This band also understands that dying-but-still-kicking art of the ALBUM: there are interludes and unfinshed little soundscapes here, but they act as bridges between songs, and run a thread that unites the album from begining to end with some dark, unspoken trepadation. Even Stereolab albums aren't this coheasive.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars music medicine, November 13, 2000

By 

debbie diamond (Los Angeles, Ca. United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Noise Made By People (Audio CD)

The sounds of Broadcast bring visions of vast green fields with tall grass and bent flowers on hillsides where the sun shines but is so far away that it barely feels warm. To me they are painters that use sounds as colors....a lot of 6/8 numbers that swirl around and around...dreamy....if you are a fan of the lovely girl voice over haunting distant songs then you'll dig this album and their others...it's not about pop songs on this album, it's music medicine for your soul and mind.