Music
Public Service Broadcasting
Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh
Rob Adams
FOUR STARS
IT began, aptly enough, with a public service broadcast. Ralph and Geoff are concert-goers with mobile phone cameras and very different approaches to using them. Ralph gets his pic quick and puts his phone away and Geoff, well, Geoff is the Herbert who wants to film the whole show, gets dodgy footage, loses his girlfriend, his family, his dog and … his life. Talking during gigs, we’re informed, is also annoying.
If it’s a warning, it works. The audience crammed into the Queen’s Hall is focused on the action onstage and onscreen as Public Service Broadcasting create new soundtracks to Pathé News footage using churning guitar – and even banjo – riffs, atmospheric keyboard motifs, heavy duty basslines, lyrical flugelhorn, and industrial strength drumming.
There are no songs as such really and any verbal communication comes via an ironically plummy computer-generated voice, but in Go!, which turns rocket-to-ground control dialogue into a chorus, they have a boffin rock item that’s downright catchy and the introduction of a horn section at strategic points emphasises the co-pilots, J Willgoose Esq and Wrigglesworth’s success in orchestrating powerful, dramatic and ultimately exhilarating music.
It’s total entertainment, with no little humour when the technology doesn’t do as it’s told and a compelling visual impact that’s as likely to introduce a subtle miniature galaxy as big warm glow lighting and live shots of the band intercut with newsreels on the two big screens and banks of televisions. Their parting shot, Everest, is a particular blast with an insistent horn chorale that’s almost as instantly memorable as George Mallory’s famous “because it’s there” response when asked why he wanted to climb the eponymous mountain.
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