Broadcast and The Focus Group Investigate Witch Cults of the Radio Age

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Broadcast and The Focus Group Investigate Witch Cults of the Radio Age is an album collaboration by Broadcast and The Focus Group, released by Warp Records on 27 October 2009.

Video Broadcast and The Focus Group Investigate Witch Cults of the Radio Age

Background

Musician, graphic designer, and Ghost Box Records co-founder Julian House (artist behind The Focus Group) had collaborated previously on artwork and packaging by British avant-pop group Broadcast. Their shared sources of inspiration--1960s BBC soundtrack music, pulp science fiction, European pop, occult texts, and jazz--led to this, their first album-length musical collaboration.

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Reception

Broadcast and The Focus Group Investigate Witch Cults of the Radio Age was voted one of the best 50 albums of 2009 by The Wire.

Rookie wrote that "the vast array of chopped and screwed samples-drawn from horror movies, nursery rhymes, and something that sounds like a long lost mantra-like ritual from some faraway place a hundred years ago-create a dynamic, haunting, but still pleasant mood, which is what makes it so thrilling." Vice reviewed Witch Cults as "perhaps Broadcast's finest achievement, with intimations of Pink Floyd circa Piper at The Gates Of Dawn, as well as the horror film The Innocents and a whole, macabre toybox of colourful, arcane devices." PopMatters reviewed Witch Cults with "The entire album is an exorcism of an dead universe. Nothing can stay together here. It's hauntology as a pasture of incidental tones and half-ripped photographs."

BBC Music Review reviewed the album favorably stating "Witch Cults Of The Radio Age is laced with enough wonder and intrigue to keep you coming back. It doesn't make perfect sense, but the sense of mystery is a key in itself." Drowned in Sound called the album "chaotic, overstimulating, like opening a dusty wardrobe and having an entire childhood tumble down on your head" Pitchfork critiqued the album "predictable" and the collaboration between Broadcast and The Focus Group like "trying to cast their spells at the same time: Some of the record is great, plenty of it is cross-chatter."

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Track listing

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References

Source of the article : Wikipedia