Broadcast, retrofuturist pop & hauntological pop; megaguide.

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Re: Broadcast, retrofuturist pop & hauntological pop; megagu

Post by UlricvonCatalyst » Thu Aug 03, 2017 5:33 am

We seem to have forgotten about the oddly-named, high-concept Tara King th.

Magnetic Bounds owes a clear debt to Broadcast via Elephant's Memory and is no less enjoyable for it.

The high-concept comes in the form of their LP, the successive videos for which seem to form a kind of spy movie narrative. Maybe better described as plain vanilla Retro without the 'futurist' suffix? Here's Hirondelle & Beretta - make your own mind up.

Their newer Stellar Fantasies seems a comfortable fit in this thread, mind you.

I'd guess they're an easy sell to fans of Death & Vanilla....
Last edited by UlricvonCatalyst on Thu Aug 03, 2017 7:41 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Broadcast, retrofuturist pop & hauntological pop; megagu

Post by hewstigator » Thu Aug 03, 2017 6:31 am

shadowplay wrote: If you don't know already you might want to check out Michael Tanner/Plinth (link in first page), who is also Tyneham House. Music for Smalls Lighthouse was also released on Clay Pipe and it's a beautiful and beautifully packaged elpee.
thx again, man if Plinth's wintersongs were reissued on LP that would be somethin'...!!

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Re: Broadcast, retrofuturist pop & hauntological pop; megagu

Post by shadowplay » Thu Aug 03, 2017 6:38 am

hewstigator wrote:
thx again, man if Plinth's wintersongs were reissued on LP that would be somethin'...!!
It was last year. still some available
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Re: Broadcast, retrofuturist pop & hauntological pop; megagu

Post by hewstigator » Thu Aug 03, 2017 6:46 am

shadowplay wrote:
It was last year. still some available
D
just ordered!! jeez shadowplay, how many records have you sold with this here thread??

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Re: Broadcast, retrofuturist pop & hauntological pop; megagu

Post by shadowplay » Thu Aug 03, 2017 7:43 am

hewstigator wrote:
shadowplay wrote:
It was last year. still some available
D
just ordered!! jeez shadowplay, how many records have you sold with this here thread??
Three so far! :D

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Re: Broadcast, retrofuturist pop & hauntological pop; megagu

Post by UlricvonCatalyst » Thu Aug 03, 2017 3:00 pm

For those interested in some of Keenan & Cargill's non-musical influences, this interview's worth a watch.

Newcomers to the whole Hauntology sinny oeuvre should, of course, begin with The Wicker Man and proceed to The Stone Tape via a clutch of Lawrence Gordon Clark's A Ghost Story For Christmas plays ( taking particular care NOT to miss Lost Hearts) and the aforementioned TV adaptation of The Owl Service. After those....the possibilities are endless.

I know David often (quite rightly) champions Robin Redbreast, whose themes, like The Wicker Man's, succinctly encapsulate some essential Hauntological tropes - the culture clash between the modern, urban way of life and the rustic, ancient world; rationalism versus magickal thinking; science versus the supernatural; pagan sensualism v Christian sexual repression.

What you then fit into that loose framework comes down to personal taste, memories from your formative years, and whatever feeds your own individual head. Personally, I'd toss Sapphire & Steel into the cauldron, alongside the 1979 Quatermass TV series and the same year's Red Shift. Based on my formula, I might equally include Cocteau's Orphée - as magical as cinema gets - though I've never seen it name-checked in connection with this loosest of genres. If you want to be othodox, stick to British telly from the mid-'60s to mid-'70s, but as I said, the Sky's the limit.

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Re: Broadcast, retrofuturist pop & hauntological pop; megagu

Post by mediocreplayer » Thu Aug 03, 2017 7:31 pm

UlricvonCatalyst wrote:We seem to have forgotten about the oddly-named, high-concept Tara King th.
This is pretty good! I am not a stickler for originality so I am not bothered that it is pretty derivative of the bands you mentioned. There seems to be some kind of documentary on youtube which I saved to watch later (with all the other videos on that list from 10 years ago).

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Re: Broadcast, retrofuturist pop & hauntological pop; megagu

Post by shadowplay » Thu Aug 03, 2017 9:33 pm

UlricvonCatalyst wrote:For those interested in some of Keenan & Cargill's non-musical influences, this interview's worth a watch.

Newcomers to the whole Hauntology sinny oeuvre should, of course, begin with The Wicker Man and proceed to The Stone Tape via a clutch of Lawrence Gordon Clark's A Ghost Story For Christmas plays ( taking particular care NOT to miss Lost Hearts) and the aforementioned TV adaptation of The Owl Service. After those....the possibilities are endless.

I know David often (quite rightly) champions Robin Redbreast, whose themes, like The Wicker Man's, succinctly encapsulate some essential Hauntological tropes - the culture clash between the modern, urban way of life and the rustic, ancient world; rationalism versus magickal thinking; science versus the supernatural; pagan sensualism v Christian sexual repression.

What you then fit into that loose framework comes down to personal taste, memories from your formative years, and whatever feeds your own individual head. Personally, I'd toss Sapphire & Steel into the cauldron, alongside the 1979 Quatermass TV series and the same year's Red Shift. Based on my formula, I might equally include Cocteau's Orphée - as magical as cinema gets - though I've never seen it name-checked in connection with this loosest of genres. If you want to be othodox, stick to British telly from the mid-'60s to mid-'70s, but as I said, the Sky's the limit.
Excellent stuff, I'd add in Children of the Stones and The Changes.

Also remember Valerie and her Week of Wonders and the Alice and Womderland adaptation by Jonathan Miler.

Btw good shout on Tara King Theory, they are a hard band to keep up with since they don't release a lot of actual records.

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Re: Broadcast, retrofuturist pop & hauntological pop; megagu

Post by UlricvonCatalyst » Thu Aug 03, 2017 11:07 pm

^ I could've spent a lot longer on a more comprehensive list, but I have to sleep some time. :) Will add more as they occur to me....starting with Paperhouse.

Yes, that Tara King bunch seem to be as much about the vids as the songs, and hardly about the records at all. Does that make them the retro-futurist Monkees?

In musical terms, I was just reflecting on what a considerable part the sonic palette plays in retro-futurism/hauntology and how much crossover that gives it with trip-hop and other retro-influenced genres. In many respects that would put Portishead as close to Broadcast as some of the bands listed in the OP. Other bands which spring to mind are Mono, with their widescreen cinematic take on Scott Walker meets Dusty Springfield, and much of the Bungalow label's 1990s output.

I think, though, the hauntology tag really requires a particular lyrical (or sample-set) content, drawing from that folk-horror-magick well. As evidenced by Ghost Box packaging and the Scarfolk site/book, graphical presentation plays a large part in the equation too. I remember Sarah Records' exasparation at how much scene in-between indie music came wrapped up in a sleeve with a '60s-looking dolly-bird on the front, and that kind of presentation, which has never really gone away, could be as much of a line in the sand between a given record being labelled Hauntology or Down-Tempo Electronica/Whatever Else as the music in the grooves.

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Re: Broadcast, retrofuturist pop & hauntological pop; megagu

Post by shadowplay » Fri Aug 04, 2017 1:54 am

UlricvonCatalyst wrote:
Yes, that Tara King bunch seem to be as much about the vids as the songs, and hardly about the records at all. Does that make them the retro-futurist Monkees?
Yeah and I curse them with blood magic for that. I remember you mentioning them in the past and buying a couple of tapes and some sevens. They were on Moon Glyph who also hosted The New Lines and Death & Vanilla.

As for the relationship between some of the bands and the triphop thing, I mentioned ages ago about how Broadast originally had a lot in common with early 90's instrumental hiphop (with very different goals and outcomes) and there's certainly a bit of a venn diagram between the retrofuturist hauntologists and BOC.

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Re: Broadcast, retrofuturist pop & hauntological pop; megagu

Post by Jaguar018 » Fri Aug 04, 2017 5:15 am

shadowplay wrote:
UlricvonCatalyst wrote:Yes, that Tara King bunch seem to be as much about the vids as the songs, and hardly about the records at all. Does that make them the retro-futurist Monkees?
Yeah and I curse them with blood magic for that. I remember you mentioning them in the past and buying a couple of tapes and some sevens. They were on Moon Glyph who also hosted The New Lines and Death & Vanilla.
Yeah. That's weird; it's like they have a pretty strong dose of 'the sound' that I crave, but something about them makes me feel a little icky. I just kind of bounced around their songs on YouTube and I'm sort of torn about the whole thing. The singer's voice goes into this 'cutesy' territory sometimes. I wish they'd just make records and skip the videos.

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Re: Broadcast, retrofuturist pop & hauntological pop; megagu

Post by mezcalhead » Sun Aug 06, 2017 9:46 am

UlricvonCatalyst wrote:For those interested in some of Keenan & Cargill's non-musical influences, this interview's worth a watch.
That was great. I like that Cargill points out that films and TV shows tended to unfurl more slowly prior to the Hollywood sci-fi blockbusters like Star Wars coming on the scene. He also mentions that Broadcast go over better with British people of a certain age who get the cultural references - this is fascinating for me as we didn't have a lot of the TV in Australia but my mother was very insistent that British culture was important and I read a lot of books from the UK and was encouraged to watch anything from the BBC that made it to our ABC.

I guess there are Australian parallels to the horror/hauntology/early 70s sci-fi thing - Picnic at Hanging Rock comes to mind. Obviously if you go back any time at all then Australian history is colonial with all that implies. One of my favourite books as a kid was The Nargun and the Stars, an amazing story which drew from indigenous myth.

UlricvonCatalyst wrote: Red Shift.
I think I've talked up Alan Garner here before; his entire upbringing and background seems to have perfectly suited him to writing about themes of weird history, time-shifting, the past impinging on the future, and so on.
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Re: Broadcast, retrofuturist pop & hauntological pop; megagu

Post by shadowplay » Mon Aug 07, 2017 4:34 am

Just a FYI. I just bought the reissue of Belgian singer Claude Lombard Chante LP from 69' which is relevant concerning the influence section here. It's not a rare record or anything but it's nice having a new one.

Examples;

Claude Lombard - Polychrome


Claude Lombard - Les Enfants Perle


Claude Lombard - Sleep Well

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Re: Broadcast, retrofuturist pop & hauntological pop; megagu

Post by UlricvonCatalyst » Mon Aug 07, 2017 5:03 am

mezcalhead wrote:I guess there are Australian parallels to the horror/hauntology/early 70s sci-fi thing - Picnic at Hanging Rock comes to mind.
The Last Wave even moreso, I'd say, but yeah - Peter Weir is the antipodean hauntology meister.

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Re: Broadcast, retrofuturist pop & hauntological pop; megagu

Post by shadowplay » Tue Aug 08, 2017 2:59 am

mezcalhead wrote:
I guess there are Australian parallels to the horror/hauntology/early 70s sci-fi thing - Picnic at Hanging Rock comes to mind.
I like Mark Fisher's short essay on Picnic, sad he's no longer with us.

Btw if people haven't seen it look up Look Around You which is one of the earlier attempts to recontextualise some of the material that influenced some of this music and ephemera surrounding it. Came out a couple of years before Ghost Box, all the music was IIRC bespoke and it's pretty well done. I just rewatched the Calcium one and it's not unlike some of the mince third hand opinions voiced on the various components of an offset guitar up in New and Reissue. ;) Here's some handy information to impart in Amps.

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