Public Service Broadcasting
"I have to make this music or else I get terribly depressed."
Seeing Public Service Broadcasting play their latest album The Race For Space live is an audio-visual treat. Not only is there excellent electronic music alongside live instruments, there’s also moving space equipment and a visual feast of original footage. You don’t quite know where to look, such is the bounty of wonders on stage. I spoke to the man who IS Public Service Broadcasting, the smooth dressing J.Willgoose Esq, to find out why he loves space so much and why his music is filled with hope.
Were you in more conventional bands when you were younger?
Yeah, I played in a lot of bands at school and university and beyond. More conventional in some ways, but a few odd ones, definitely. It was the break up of those bands that led me to tinkering around at home which led to this starting.
How did the concept of Public Service Broadcasting first come to you?
I was just doing it for fun really, to find a way to give mostly instrumental music some vocals without singing. I really liked the sound of the first voices I used, as a sonic character at first rather than using it as an emotional narrative hook, which is what it turned into as it’s evolved. It was purely for self-amusement.
How did you come to team up with your drummer, Wrigglesworth?
I’d been doing gigs as PSB for about a year and had eight or nine tracks written, and it was getting to the point where it was going alright but it could be a lot better if I had a live drummer. So it was mid 2010 when me and Wriggles met up; I knew he was a good drummer and it’s worked out alright.
Who would you say influences your work musically?
It gets harder and harder to call them the older I get as there’s more and more music. Radiohead would be a big one for me, as would Mogwai, a lot of electronic music, a lot of older music…Primal Scream were very big for me for a while. In terms of what I listen to now, it’s all over the shop really.
What did you learn from making your first two EP’s that helped you when producing your subsequent albums?
You learn to trust yourself a bit more and not doubt as much whether the music you’re making is any good. It tends to relax you a little bit although making an album is never relaxing! You learn to give ideas time and space to breathe; the most difficult thing is not doing the same old tricks, but giving yourself new challenges and keeping things fresh. I have to keep it interesting for me, because I have to listen to this music all the time!
How much time do you have to use clearing and requesting permission to use samples?
We tend to do most of that upfront. We research into whether it’s alright for us to use stuff ahead of sitting down to write it. We’re lucky that the people we work with, especially the BFI, have just been great about it all. We can rely on them to give us the thumbs up and we get on with it.
What is the purpose of Public Service Broadcasting…why is it important to you to do this?
I don’t feel it did at the start, it just was what it was. As it’s grown and evolved it has started to take on a bit of a meaning and you do find there are common threads running through it in terms of optimism and faith in technological development and people working together to come through hardships, so all these kind of things do run through all of the music. It starts to become its own little philosophy. It’s nice not to be a cynical band, another apathetic band; in a way, despite the fact we don’t speak on the records, we do have a voice and it’s becoming clearer as we go on.
I feel like your music’s definitely a positive force.
Yeah I think it is too, and that’s weird because I’m the least positive person you’ll ever meet! Genuinely. I always fear the worst, so it’s probably why I feel I have to make this music or else I get terribly depressed.
Why did you decide to use space exploration as your focus for your most recent album?
Well, I was interested in it, I knew it was an extraordinarily dramatic period of history and I thought that it would be as good a prompt as any to try and write some music around. I knew there was footage around that we could use and it was just another step forward in time which appealed to me, a bit closer to our own time. I wanted to keep things moving forward, another step closer to the present.
When I first heard your track The Other Side, I broke down in tears. It’s the human element, about hope and trust, and just the best song. Is that one of your favourites on the album?
It’s not that bad is it? Ha ha! I have to say I’m very touched and surprised by people’s reaction to that track. As I was putting it together I though it was good and engaging and was much more literal in the matching of the story and music than other tracks on the album but I didn’t expect it to connect with people in the way that it has. So it’s been a lovely surprise that it has. It’s turned into the highlight for a lot of people. For me, the one I knew I could do something with right from the beginning when I heard the samples was Go. As soon as I’d written it, I knew it was good. The rest of them you tend to have question marks over; some days you think they’re alright, other days terrible, but with Go I thought it was quite good. You don’t feel that very often!
I wanted to ask you about the fact that obviously as you are using old footage, it is mainly men’s voices that we hear in your work. I know you used The Smoke Fairies on your track Valentina, which seemed fitting, but has it been hard to find female newscasters from the past?
It’s very hard. Sadly it’s an unfortunate by-product of looking at this period of history. I did toy with the idea of looking at the astronauts’ wives; imagine if that was your husband going round the dark side of the moon, listening to the loss of signal. That must have been absolutely petrifying, not to mention the press demands on them. But there just wasn’t enough material there for us to use unfortunately. Women’s voices were more marginalised and more silent back then. I think as we keep working our way through recent history we’ll be able to redress that balance.
How do you go about deciding the order of tracks on your albums?
It’s a range of things really, what’s going to flow well or juxtapose interestingly in terms of telling the actual story. It’s not a history lesson, it’s a musical interpretation of those events which is why it doesn’t run chronologically, just to try to play thing stuff against each other. Like Gagarin’s flight and Apollo 1 were vey far apart in terms of time, but putting the songs about those things next to each other undercut any celebrations, and to remember that the human cost was very high on the space programmes.
Do you know what your next project’s going to be?
Yes, but it’s top secret!
You must learn an awful lot from researching for your music.
You’d think so, but no, it’s all in one ear and out the other! Especially for Wriggles. If he did a quiz on space he’d know Neil Armstrong, Yuri Gagarin and he’d be able to tell you Valentina’s first name but I’d be amazed if he knew her surname.
What you do is completely original; I can’t think of anyone else doing anything similar. Do you sometimes feel like you’re on your own out there, and is it challenging when you support more traditional guitar bands live?
Supporting is never easy; you’ve got to be quite tough and I’m not the toughest. So yeah, you’re never going to be everyone’s cup of tea, especially when you’re a bit weird like we are. It’s nice to go out on the road with people like the Manics or the Kaiser Chiefs who we’ve supported, and it speaks really well of them that they choose to take a bit of a risk with us. I don’t feel isolated; there seem to be enough people who like us to give us hope. If everybody turned around and said this is terrible, you should stop, then I might have to think about it!
I saw you at Latitude this summer; How did you find the crowd? Do you find your live show works better in a venue or in a festival environment?
That was a good one! Latitude was definitely a highlight of the year for me. It was a great crowd with a really good, warm, friendly, positive feeling in the tent. And the noise was incredible! Earlier that week we’d played to 10 people in Norway so it was a bit low to high. The good thing about our show is it works well in different ways in both venues and festivals. We’re able to scale up and down well.
What’s been your most memorable show to date?
I think it goes back to Glastonbury 2013, which was the first time we played it. It was an eye opener, a reaction unlike anything else, like being punched in the stomach really. It was a wall of noise and I don’t think I’ll forget that.
It must be pretty nerve wracking playing live as there is so much equipment on stage that you rely on working together at the right time. Do you suffer from stage fright, or have you ever?
That’s the only element of it that is nerve wracking. Sometimes I look down at my fingers and I think what would happen if I forgot what to play next, but luckily your brain takes over and knows what to do so you just let it get on with it. In terms of the technical stuff, there have been a couple of disasters but nothing too high profile thankfully. It’s been a learning process really because no one really does what we do the way we do, on a slightly tight budget, and there are always ways to improve.
Public Service Broadcasting play at OPEN’s Banking Hall on 12th February. Tickets available from ueaticketbookings.co.uk
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