QR Music - Interview with Public Service Broadcasting: "It’s what captured some kind of an imagination in some people."

Following the success of last year's Every Valley, Public Service Broadcasting took to the road earlier this month equipped with vocoders, historical broadcast samples, and some of the most impressive visuals to ever grace the Limelight. I sat down with J for a chat about the thematic journey involved in putting a Public Service Broadcasting track together, and how their material translates to being played live. 

You’ve played Belfast a few times now, and I wonder how it compares touring this side of the world after having played shows in the States, and for the likes of KEXP over there. Is it a different experience, a difference reception?

"It definitely is a different experience just because it’s so massive. It’s pretty hard I think, for UK bands, especially ones– you know, we’re not particularly prone to airplay over there so you’re relying on word of mouth and getting a little break here and there. It’s been quite difficult, whereas [in the UK] we have the benefit of a bit more support from radio, from the likes of BBC 6 Music, Amazing Radio and people like that. It makes such a big difference to your reach and ability to pull a crowd in. In terms of reaction to the material though, it’s remarkable how similar it is pretty much most places we go, it doesn’t seem to hit any dead end."

You don’t use a vocalist or lyricist in the traditional sense, largely using broadcast samples instead. The content is quite political, there’s also a lot about change and experimentation, which I think you always mirror so well in the music and instrumentals. Is this something you try to do when writing, theme the music around the sample, or how does that come about when you’re putting a song together?

"The music’s written in response to the subject we’re writing about, so it’s kind of an emotional response translated into music that you hope then translates that back to an emotional response for the people at the other end. With a song like 'Progress' which is about automation, computerisation, and the sort of the forward march of human kind at the expense of some aspects of humanity, I guess it made sense to have it be a sort of mini-conflict between more acoustic elements of guitar, drums, bass, and more synthesised stuff like the vocoder and synths, and slightly strange effects. Without ever wanting to get too literal, it does definitely come into it."

Was sampling and using effects, vocoders, and keeping things a lot more electronic always the kind of project you had in mind, or did you ever consider a more acoustic kind of sound?

"I’ve been mucking around with different sounds since I was about sixteen, just seeing if anything worked. Then I gave up on it and started doing something for my own amusement. All of a sudden I ended up with this thing on my hands that seemed to be getting a good reaction from people, and I picked it up and ran with it. It wasn’t written in the stars or anything, but it’s what captured some kind of an imagination in some people."

I’m really interested to know how you select the broadcast samples you use, are they things you stumble upon or have you purposefully gone looking for them?

"Sometimes it’s the first one, and sometimes the second. I think with the most recent album, more than any of the others, it was writing and then trying to find stuff that would fit. Songs like 'They Gave Me A Lamp', I knew I wanted that to be about women’s support groups, but I had no idea where the material was going to come from. It was quite a lot of work to track down a suitable archive for that and slot it in with the actual feeling behind the song, whereas with Progress we watched some of the films beforehand, so I knew the quotes [we were going to use] about man and machine and things changing before your eyes– that was in my head as I was writing."

With Every Valley being album three, you guys are obviously seasoned in both touring and recording. Was there anything on the processes from previous tours and albums that influenced how you went about the most recent ones?

"Yeah, I nearly went a bit mad at the end of The Race For Space because I was doing basically everything myself at home. We only had three and a half days in an actual studio, and all the guitars and synths and stuff was me recording and editing it, trying to do too many things and falling down a bit of a rabbit hole. So, I definitely didn’t want to do that again for this album, and we were lucky enough to have a full month in our makeshift studio in Maida Vale to record it. Our sound man who tours with us, James, had a very strong hand in the sound of the record and did a lot of the editing, taking a lot of that sort of work off my hands. It was less stressful than it had been previously, and I think because we started as one [band member], then two, and now there’s three of us, and because the subject matter was something a bit more concrete and tangible, the idea was to make it sound a bit more organic and earthy – a bit richer."

Being based in London and having recorded the bulk of the previous albums there, it did strike me as a little odd to have recorded Every Valley in rural Wales. Was it a conscious decision to get out of the city and have a different environment, and did that shape the music at all?

"I think it shaped the music in all kinds of odd and intangible ways really, it’s hard to define how, but I’m sure it did– even just the sound of the room we were in. We did it because of the subject matter, [which is] something so many people are still dealing with, and because I think there's a resentment in a lot of places in the U.K that aren’t London, that London is too London-centric. It’s that kind of metropolitan bubble effect and, I think as creative people, you do need to get outside of things that make you comfortable, and put yourself in these potentially awkward, potentially uncomfortable situations of going to places you’ve not been, interviewing people you worry might see you as some sort of pernicious, outsider-type. All these kind of things are actually really good for creatively stimulating and challenging you to rethink your ideas about what you’re doing, and how you’re doing it."

It’s really interesting you say that because being based in the North of Ireland, the London-centric nature of the industry is extremely obvious, especially in relation to gigs. Do you actively try to avoid the pattern of playing almost exclusively in London and large cities, reaching places that a lot of people don’t usually tour?

"We try to– it really depends on the level of production of the tour. The reason these dates came up later than the rest was partly because of festival arrangements for last year, and not being allowed to do stuff in the meantime. But I think it’s also partly because in the U.K the venues are slightly bigger, so we can bring more production. You don’t want these things to affect you as a musician, but ultimately it’s going to. It’s difficult, but we’ve done all sorts of gigs in weird places– we recently went to Poland and played down a mine, and I think we’ve retained a kind of openness and not wanting to just be some sort of London-based band, out of touch with the rest of the country."

You mentioned the level of production you bring with you on tour, how do you translate the music from your record to a live performance?

"I’m never really interested in just doing a carbon copy of the record, so all sorts of little things change. Song links change, and sometimes you need to put a few more bars in, or leave a bit more room for improvisation. Sometimes they’re more drawn out than on the record, and just due to the nature of trying to reproduce quite a rich album live, there are some things that we substitute for others. Without wanting to rely overly on backing tracks, we use them where necessary to sort of thicken things out, or do things that are simply impossible to recreate live in the current set up. It’s definitely different, and I think that it’s a bit more visceral. I think we step it up slightly in terms of loudness, and – I don’t really like using the word – but the sort of aggression of it. It’s always nice to leave room on the record for more live– you don’t want to go full pelt on it all the time."

Do you keep in mind how a song could sound live when you're writing?

"It’s often in my mind how it’s going to work live, an ‘I can’t wait to hear this on stage’ sort of thing. And just in terms of trying to do stuff that’s not too impossible to play live. Using collaborators who we can’t take along with us very often, you do make it more difficult for yourself – obviously as much as we’d love to, I don’t think James Dean Bradfield’s going to be able come on the road with us."

Collaborating with the likes of James Dean Bradfield, do you each arrange music together or as separate pieces you then bring together? 

"We always look to not be dictatorial about it, and certainly with James it was a case of him coming up with the melody and engaging in terms of the subject and the material we were using for him to sing from – so talking about which writers and which poems we were going to use. You can play someone the idea you have for a melody and, just because of who they are and the way they get used to doing things with their own instrument, you find they very quickly take a different route than you would’ve, and then you’ve got something different. It’s something I’ve had to get used to as a rampant control freak [laughs]."

Public Service Broadcasting play Belfast on the 25th May as part of BBC 6 Music's Biggest Weekend. Tickets on sale now. 

By Addison Paterson