‘Spell Blanket’ Demos: Broadcast’s Trish Keenan in Her Own Words

Those of us who think a lot about songwriting but aren’t songwriters still understand the basics of making one. Take a melody or string of words that pops into your head or out of your musical instrument and match it with a rhythm. Then do another line and try to make the second line rhyme with the first (or don’t). Repeat the process, add in a chorus and maybe a bridge, a wicked Mini Moog solo (or, sure, guitar) and bingo: you’ve got yourself song.

Whether this creation is any good is another question, but the point is that every song we know and love begins as a sketch, a germinal sprout, that grew as the artist gave it attention, tended to it and fed it.

Last week, Warp Records issued Spell Blanket – Collected Demos 2006​-​2009, a bittersweet set of sketches by Broadcast. The beloved British band was fronted by the late Trish Keenan, who, with her partner James Cargill, created a series of mesmerizing synth-driven drone albums. Powered by Keenan’s voice and melodic ideas, Broadcast’s work has become a touchstone of the late-‘90s/early-’00s music. In release notes, here’s how Warp describes the record.

Spell Blanket comprises songs and sketches drawn from Trish’s extensive archive of 4-track tapes and MiniDiscs. The recordings lay the groundwork for what would have been Broadcast’s fifth album, offering a window into Trish and James’ creative process during the post-Tender Buttons period from 2006-2009.

For those of us who love seeing under the proverbial hood of songwriting, the record is a revelation, even if it reveals a gut wrenching absence — a what-could-have-been glorious record. Here’s the sketch called, fittingly, “The Song Before the Song Comes Out.”

Here’s what happened to one little iteration of that sprout, via the Ghost Box Study Series featuring Broadcast and The Focus Group. (Ghost Box was a label cofounded by the South Wales-raised graphic designer Julian House, who made music as The Focus Group.)

Although some songwriters like to maintain the mystery so avoid talking process, Keenan, who died in 2011, didn’t mind discussing her inspirations and ideas.

Here’s what she said about “Libra, the Mirror’s Minor Self,” from Broadcast And The Focus Group Investigate Witch Cults Of The Radio Age, in a 2009 interview with The Wire.

I wrote this over an instrumental written by James. A misty loop with rummaging sounds that reminded me of the theme to [the 1969 TV adaptation of Alan Garner’s children’s novel] The Owl Service. I liked the idea of a disembodied voice that floats across a piece of music without feeling attached to any pulse. The words were a cut up of my horoscope. I quite like the caring tone of horoscopes and found shuffling the words around a bit added up to something quite gentle and cryptic. To me it’s how a seance mirror would speak, luring you to its reflection by a kindly tone but when you look in for an answer, you’re totally confused by what you see. I was actually frightened by the way The Focus Group laid heavy bass fragments and electronics over the top of the song, and as I saw it, at a crucial point in the first resolution of the vocal line. It’s like authorial sound enters to say ‘No! That’s not how it’s going to be’ and suddenly the vocal disappears and you’re left out on your own not knowing who you are.

Here’s what she said about “Make My Sleep a Song,” also from … Investigate Witch Cults …

This is a kind of LaVey lament where the female character is complicit in the strange event. I like those moments in British films like The Wicker Man and The Witches, when you’re not quite sure if the people of the village know all about the odd occurrences or not but an accidental citing or overheard conversation reveals that they are as much apart of the bizarre set up as the suspicious and aloof owner of the stately home. This is an incantation taken from The Witches’ Bible. I think it has a joyous innocence and obsessiveness that works well towards the end of the EP, it recollects all the sensory events without revealing what really happened.

Spell Blanket is a ridiculously beguiling document, most of which is of much better sound quality than opening track “The Song Before the Song Comes Out.” Combined, they reveal Keenan and Cargill’s love of 1960s psychedelia and drone-heavy organs and synths.

We’re currently stocking the just-released 2LP version of  Spell Blanket – Collected Demos 2006​-​2009 in our newly expanded online store. Warp has long pressed high-quality vinyl, and they’ve lovingly packaged the 36-track release to be worthy of the music within.

More info on the release here.