Secret Meeting score: 75
by Philip Moss
For anyone who’s unfamiliar, Public Service Broadcasting are certainly an interesting proposition. Essentially, they are an electronica driven guitar band, but, in the place of the generic lyric spewing frontman, they layer their sharply focused compositions with thematically selected archive footage, and voiceovers from public information films. Under Sir Bernard Lovell’s magnificent telescope, there could not be a more perfectly fitting act- ‘Just once in a while, let us exalt the importance of ideas and illumination’, American journalist, Edward R. Murrow, reads over opener, Theme from PSB.
Like Kraftwerk meeting the Stone Roses, People Will Always Need Coal – from their 2017 album, Every Valley – is awash with chugging synths, and complemented by the overlaid live percussion from drummer, Wrigglesworth. While on Progress, taken from the same record, band leader, J. Willgoose Esq.’s swirling guitars are converged with Camera Obscura front woman, Traceyann Campbell’s repeated choral flurries – ‘I believe in progress’ – which elevates the song and provides a rare sing-a-long moment.
Following the diversion into the stories of the rise and fall of the mining community in South Wales, the middle part of the performance does become, at times, a little repetitive. But the return to the theme of space exploration through the spiky, shuffling guitars of Gargarin – ‘The first strides into the unknown are about to be made… the hero that blazed the trail to the stars’ – re-energises the set, as it blasts into life through a trio of live brass.
After forming in 2009, Public Service Broadcasting have steadily grown album upon album – turning niche idea into a fully formed vision. In many ways, they encapsulate everything that Bluedot – an innovative science-orientated festival – stands for, and tonight their set more than showed that they are broadcasting to a wider public than I’m sure they ever imagined possible.
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