Bright Magic

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As well as EERA, the album’s other guest voices include Blixa Bargeld, veteran of The Bad Seeds and Einstürzende Neubauten, who becomes the voice of Berlin’s industry on the robo-teknik “Der Rhythmus der Maschinen”. Andreya Casablanca of Berlin garageistes Gurr stands in for Marlene Dietrich in “ My Blue Heaven”, an anthem of proud self-determination. On 10 March 2017, PSB released a new single titled Progress featuring vocals from Tracyanne Campbell from Camera Obscura with photo shoots showing the band as a three-piece with new member JF Abraham featured on promotional photos. Their third studio album, entitled Every Valley, about the coal mining industry's rise and fall in the Welsh Valleys between the 1950s and 1980s, was released on 7 July 2017. As with The Race for Space, the band had two album launch concerts, this time in Ebbw Vale, where the LP was recorded. EERA’s first moment to shine in the main set was in Gib mir das Licht (Give Me The Light), a tribute to the openly bisexual, heavily opiated burlesque (and often fully nude) dancer and artist Anita Berber. There weren’t many taboos Berber didn’t shatter in 1920’s Berlin. It’s a haunting tune with a fragile-sounding vocal adapted from Berber’s poem Kokain, which EERA delivered in great style. The piece closed with a beautifully moving baritone sax solo played by John ‘Rittipo’ Moore. It’s one of many appearances made by Rittipo as he forms one-third of a horn section affectionately known as “The Brassy Gents” who come and go as required through the performance. Sort of making PSB an occasional eight-piece. You still with me? J. Willgoose, Esq. of Public Service Broadcasting. Image: Frank Hoensch / Redferns via Getty Images

a b c "Public Service Broadcasting > UK Charts". Official Charts Company . Retrieved 2 October 2021. Public Service Broadcasting release their fourth album, Bright Magic, via Play It Again Sam. An album in three parts ( Building A City / Building A Myth / Bright Magic), it is their most ambitious undertaking yet, bringing you to Europe’s heart and de facto capital, the cultural and political metropolis that is the ‘Haupstadt’ of the Federal Republic of Germany – Berlin. Public Service Broadcasting return with new album Bright Magic | Louder". www.loudersound.com. 2 June 2021 . Retrieved 4 June 2021.

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Separated into three parts (‘Building a City’, ‘Building a Myth’, ‘Bright Magic’), this album offers an absorbing overview of an incredible city – and others like it – complete with samples from ‘Wochende’, a 1928 tape recording by Walter Ruttman that blends speech, field recordings and music together. After hearing this, J. Willgoose, Esq decided to make his own version that sums up the state of the modern world. If Spitfire requires three hands to be able to play comfortably, the three-part Lichtspiel (Play Of Light) suite which occupies the majority of side B on Bright Magic is an altogether more ambient, relaxing affair. Dominated by multiple layers of lush keyboard swells and pads, the band played it in front of Viking Eggeling’s 1923 experimental animation film Symphonie Diagonale, which inspired the music and the latest iteration of PSB’s ‘satellite dish’ logo. It was a calm segue between some of the more aggressive music which came before and the bangers still to come in a finely judged 105-minute setlist.

Go! captures the final minutes of the Apollo 11 moon landing, except in the PSB version the mission controllers all shout their positive mission states of “Go!” in perfect 4/4 time. The audience did it too, with associated punching of the air. This tune is a massive crowd favourite and was notable for some of the fastest rhythm guitar playing I’ve ever heard. I’ve no idea how Willgoose’s Telecaster retained all six strings by the time he’d finished with it. Perhaps it didn’t. Perhaps it never does. Public Service Broadcasting have been “ teaching the lessons of the past through the music of the future” for more than a decade now. 2013’s debut album Inform – Educate – Entertain used archival samples from the British Film Institute as audio-portals to the Battle Of Britain, the summit of Everest and beyond. Two years later, The Race For Space used similar methods to laud the superpowers’ rivalry and heroism in orbit and on the Moon. In 2017, joined by voices including Manic Street Preachers’ James Dean Bradfield, Every Valley was a moving exploration of community and memory via the rise and fall of the British coal industry. Pointedly topical in its analyses, it reached number four on the UK charts.

Bright Magic

Next stop? Berlin. The London band have created an album in three parts ( Building A City / Building A Myth / Bright Magic), that brings you to Europe’s heart and de facto capital, the cultural and political metropolis that is the ‘Hauptstadt’ of the Federal Republic of Germany. Bright Magic will arrive on September 24th, 2021 via Play It Again Sam. Doing this felt inevitable, somehow,” muses J. Willgoose, Esq. “In my head, it was whirring and pulsing away for a long time, even before Every Valley– this fascinating, contrary, seductive place. I knew the album was going to be about the city, and its history and myths, and I was going to move there. So it’s quite a personal story. It’s become an album about moving to Berlin to write an album about people who move to Berlin to write an album…” Public Service Broadcasting is a London-based musical group consisting of four members known mainly by their stage names: J. Willgoose, Esq. on guitar, banjo, other stringed instruments, samplings and electronic musical instruments; Wrigglesworth on drums, piano and electronic musical instruments; J F Abraham on flugelhorn, bass guitar, drums and assorted other instruments including a vibraslap; and Mr B on visuals and set design for live performances. [3] [4] The band has toured internationally and in 2015 was announced as a nominee in the Vanguard breakthrough category of the fourth annual Progressive Music Awards, staged by Prog magazine, [5] which they won. [6] History [ edit ]

To get his head in the right space, lead Broadcaster J. Willgoose Esq. (really) for eight months in 2019 relocated to the city formerly divided by the Cold War, channeling its somewhat chaotic, bohemian energies, in the process creating, he says, is an ‘impressionistic portrait of a city from the ground up’. Public Service Broadcasting win Rebel Playlist at 6 followed by an addition to the main daytime playlist!". Popular News. Archived from the original on 2 June 2012 . Retrieved 20 May 2012.There’s lots of other boffinery in the notes as well, but essentially this is PSB shorn of some of their niggly contrivances. Opener Der Sumpf (Sinfonie der Großstadt) is a brief, Moog heavy taste of what follows, an expansive sounding ambience which is also filtered variously across the Lichtspiel triptych – Opus, Schwarz Weiss Grau and Symphonie Diagonale in case you were wondering. Chris Hawkins: J.Willgoose interviewed about the making of the single Spitfire". BBC 6 Music programmes . Retrieved 20 May 2012. [ dead link] Ultimately, Public Service Broadcasting have released a single emitting a unique vibrance, hypnotising tones and a truly expressive orchestration that offers a vast landscape with a story-telling attribute resonating within the structure and the tonality of this ensemble. Sherwin, Adam (25 June 2015). "Pink Floyd, Kate Bush, Public Service Broadcasting all nominated for Progressive Music Awards 2015". The Independent . Retrieved 5 July 2015.

The single and album, to be entitled Bright Magic, were recorded in Berlin’s famous Hansa Tonstudio recording complex (home to Bowie’s Heroes, U2’s Achtung Baby and Iggy Pop’s Lust For Life among others). The album is themed as a tribute to the art and expression of the city of Berlin and moreover to Europe as a whole. It’s likely to continue the establishment in the single of German-speaking sung vocals and a near absence of vocal samples.On 30 August 2022, PSB played a specially commissioned, album length, piece for Prom 58 called 'This New Noise', with the BBC Symphony Orchestra at the Royal Albert Hall in London. It was commissioned to celebrate 100 years of the BBC. At the time of the performance the band said there were currently no plans to tour the piece, or to release it as a record - but they hinted that this may not be set in stone. The band subsequently announced that there would be a record release on 8th September 2023. He wrote and recorded in Kreuzberg’s famous Hansa Tonstudio recording complex. This brought closer several inescapable musical touchstones: Depeche Mode’s classic eighties triumvirate, U2’s Achtung Baby and, crucially, Bowie’s “Heroes” and Low. “The whole shape and structure of the record is very much in debt to Low,” says Willgoose. Indeed, the Warszawa-evoking “The Visitor” – whose designated colour is the particular Orange of that album’s sleeve – was initially intended to feature a sample of Bowie reflecting, says Willgoose, on “how he viewed himself as this vessel for synthesizing and refracting other influences, and presenting avant-garde influences to the mainstream. We tried to absorb a bit of that spirit.” An album in three parts (Building A City / Building A Myth / Bright Magic), it is their most ambitious undertaking yet, bringing you to Europe’s heart and de facto capital, the cultural and political metropolis that is the ‘Hauptstadt’ of the Federal Republic of Germany – Berlin.