The Noise Made by People

Broadcast

Product Details

• Audio CD (April 18, 2000)
• Original Release Date: April 18, 2000
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Tommy Boy
• ASIN: B00004SH94
• In-Print Editions: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (39 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #14,652 in Music (See Bestsellers in Music)

  Popular in these categories: (What's this?)

  #27 in	Music > Alternative Rock > Indie & Lo-Fi > Ambient Pop
  #63 in	Music > Alternative Rock > Indie & Lo-Fi > Dream Pop
  #69 in	Music > Pop > Britpop

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

Amazon.com
Back in 1997, U.K.-based Warp Records released a quirky mini-album of rare material from its newest signing, a little-known experimental pop band from Birmingham called Broadcast. Eyebrows were raised. Why had Warp--a hard-edged techno label famed for its avant-garde output from electronic pioneers like Aphex Twin--signed this quirky, retro- obsessed West Midlands five-piece? The reason is simple: Broadcast is a very talented band. This much is proved by their brilliant debut, The Noise Made by People. The album's skewed electronic pop and retrofuturism most resemble the analog styling of Stereolab and original krautrock musicians such as Can and Neu. Yet Broadcast's sound is wonderfully unique, an enchanting mixture of analog synth sounds and West Coast psychedelia fused with '90s electronica and indie-pop sensibilities. With the addition of haunting and occasionally chilling vocals from singer Trish Keenan, the effect is at times mesmerizing. The Noise Made by People is an eerie, uplifting, and enchanting debut album from one of Britain's best-kept secrets. --Matt Anniss

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Wonderful Noise, November 6, 2001

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

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.

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

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.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

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

By	William R. Nicholas "bill nicholas" (Mahwah, NJ USA) - See all my reviews

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.