Broadcast - Distant Call - Collected Demos 2000 - 2006

So this is it, the last batch of previously unheard Broadcast recordings, a collection of 12 demos that were later worked into a different form for the Haha Sound, Tender Buttons and The Future Crayon albums, plus two 'new' songs discovered by James Cargill after Trish Keenan's passing. It's those two tracks that will perhaps appeal most to the hardcore fan - when the possibility of any more is close to zero, a little extra can add up to quite a lot. And as we saw with the incredible Blanket Spell set from earlier this year, Broadcast in demo-mode is as highly rewarding as any other incarnation, even if the experience is slightly different. Let it also be clear, this is no scraping of the barrell. Process was always integral to Broadcast sound, so to hear these songs in nascent form allows a window into their creative practice, while also accentuating just how adept they were at using the studio. As such, Distant Call reveals just how indebted to classic British folk Keenan was, the influence of Anne Briggs, Bridget St John and Sandy Denny clearer than ever, intimate, emotionally open and complex, channeling both a sense of folk classicism and its own internal evolution. If you know these songs well already, consider this a chance to be re-born again, a second shot at the first time if you like. But even if you don't, there's an entire discrete performance to be divined here, something unique, beguiling and personal that stands on its own. Demos by Broadcast's standards they might be, but really only by that.