PUBLIC SERVICE BROADCASTING, BBC SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA, JULES BUCKLEY

This New Noise (Test Card)

This album, Public Service Broadcasting’s second collaboration with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, also feels like a fitting path for the group to follow. PSB’s infatuation with stirring cinematic retellings of human battles in modern history, such as the space race, the miner’s conflict, and the Cold War lead here – to a full-power orchestral retelling of the mindbending upheaval caused by radio broadcasting, in celebration of the BBC’s centenary.

The marriage of the two is made in heaven. Listening to PSB was always much akin to watching a movie without pictures, and the inclusion of an eight-piece orchestra elevates their form to a score befitting the gravity of the event they’re musically narrating. More gentle in softer parts; grander in the louder parts. The only thing subtracting from the score is a decrease in PSB’s usual level of variety, both musically and narratively – perhaps because the advent of radio is less dramatic, in a mortal sense, compared to (say) the threat of nuclear war.

words JASON MACHLAB