The Noise Made by People

Broadcast: the name of this band was, for me, actively off-putting. If it conjured up any kind of associations, they were anodyne ones. While I'd read about them any number of times, it was only after the release of their collaborative album Broadcast and The Focus Group Investigate Witch Cults of the Radio Age in 2009 that I began to investigate their work, and to realise what I'd been missing out on. Not much more than a year after that came the desperately sad news that their singer Trish Keenan had died.

Having first obtained their music by way of file-sharing, there did't seem any great hurry to buy their albums on physical media, but, at length, I did the right thing and acquired the three studio albums on CD, beginning with 2000's The Noise Made by People. It often happens that I'm attracted to music with a cooler emotional temperature, and Broadcast's sound strikes me as particularly chilly, and also - figuratively - sharp-edged, metallic and bright - like something that could easily give me a migraine if I stared at it for too long.

Their songs are unsettling places to linger in, but I find them fascinating. My favourites on the disc are among the more obvious ones: 'Unchanging Window', 'Echo's Answer' and, especially, 'Come On Let's Go', but the more abstract instrumental numbers likewise contribute splendidly to the whole.

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All Wrapped Up

Here's another of the compilation cassettes I bought this summer, having taken home a Denon twin-deck hi-fi cassette player from the local charity shop. All Wrapped Up is a 1983 compilation of singles by The Undertones, with Side One filled with A-sides, and B-sides on Side Two. A cassette must be the least desirable medium for such an arrangement, with a long rewind required if one just wants to hear the hits repeatedly. The Undertones were unapologetically provincial and anti-fashionable, with their songs sharply-written slices of life that pointedly avoided any mention of politics, or of the then-continuing violence in their native Derry. My favourite tracks are the obvious choices: 'Teenage Kicks', 'Jimmy Jimmy', 'Here Comes the Summer', 'My Perfect Cousin' & 'Wednesday Week'. Their later singles showed increased sophistication but lack the some of the straightforward charm of their earlier work. The B-sides, not unexpectedly, are mo

In Heat

Having acquired the soubriquet "the walrus of love", Barry White thereafter became something of a figure of fun, something that misled me (and presumably others) into disregarding his music. Only within the last few years have I begun to pay it more attention. After picking up a copy of his '74 album Can't Get Enough last summer, which I loved, I sought out some of the music by his protegés Love Unlimited. From a Discogs seller I ordered well-used copies of Under the Influence of... ('73) and In Heat ('74) for only £6.25. The only unappealing thing about In Heat is its awful title. The songs and the singing are strong; the arrangements rich & warmly enveloping. As one would expect from White, the thematic focus is firmly fixed on amatory matters. The opening number 'Move Me No Mountain' (the only one on the record not written by White) offers a refreshing rebuttal to the kind of lyrical hyperbole in songs like 'Ain't No Mountain High E

Bananas Are Not Created Equal

I knew Jay Berliner's name from his contributions to Van Morrison's Astral Weeks and Charles Mingus' The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady , so when I saw this curiously-titled LP at the local charity shop I was intrigued, and bought it even though I had no idea what kind of music it might contain. This was after the days when one could still buy records there for a pound apiece, but I don't think I paid more than a fiver for it. The music turned out to be an all-instrumental blend of funk, soul & jazz. Berliner's virtuoso lead guitar is only one of many attractions here. The band of first-rate session musicians behind him are all uniformly excellent too, and, crucially, sound like they're having a blast. Cornell Dupree's supporting guitar work, while less showy than Berliner's, is beautifully-judged, and the rhythm section is terrific. Arranger/conductor Wade Marcus was no slouch either, judging from the way everything comes together. Two of the funk

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