When applied to music, the term “hauntology” does not refer to haunting in the spiritual sense of ghosts and Ouija boards. Rather, it describes a unique type of electronic music that embraces retro-futurism and the cultural ghosts of bygone eras. Hauntology often uses samples and old electronic instruments to create intense moods that go beyond mere spookiness. Deriving from the concepts of French philosopher Jacques Derrida, the original deconstructionist, it is heady stuff, indeed.
What does hauntology have to do with the British group Broadcast and their newly-released Distant Call: Collected Demos 2000-2006? Broadcast’s often-overlooked final studio album, Broadcast and the Focus Group Investigate Witch Cults of the Radio Age, released in 2009, was a collaboration with the Focus Group. The Focus Group is an alias of British artist Julian House. House co-founded the Ghost Box record label, which is closely associated with the hauntology sound.
It is fitting, then, that the final official Broadcast release is haunting in the more traditional sense. Distant Call consists of 14 demo recordings by the group’s primary creative force, singer/lyricist/multi-instrumentalist Trish Keenan. All these songs save two appeared in their final versions on various Broadcast releases. These demo recordings, though, consist of just Keenan and her acoustic guitar. The ambient background noise, tape hiss, and Keenan’s waifish, often multitracked voice create a genuinely ghostly, ethereal atmosphere. This impression is made all the more poignant–and eerie—by the fact Keenan died unexpectedly of the H1N1 virus in 2011. Keenan is almost literally singing from beyond the grave.
The intimate, unpolished nature of these recordings raises the issue of whether critical evaluation of demos is fair or even logical. After all, the music on Distant Call was never intended for a broad audience. However, since Keenan’s death, Broadcast’s stature as a cult favorite and critic’s darling has only grown. If you are one of the hip kids, chances are your favorite band has them on their playlist. That means a collection like Distant Call comes with an inherent audience and curiosity factor, especially after the well-received Spell Blanket: Collected Demos 2006-2009, released in May 2024.
The arrangements on Distant Call are almost always similar to those in the finished versions. Listening to these 14 tracks does, however, reveal a couple of fundamental truths. For one, shorn of their rhythm tracks, electronic bells, and bleeps, Keenan’s mannered, exquisite songs amount to traditional English folk music in the vein of Sandy Denny or Pentangle. Also, the sparse arrangements emphasize the pure quality of Keenan’s songwriting. Even in the low sonic light, her senses of melody and insight are undiminished.
“Tears in the Typing Pool”, probably Broadcast’s signature song, is even more devastating without its polished vocal overdubs and Mellotron. Crucially, though, heavy reverb still shrouds the vocals. Keenan’s exhausted but valiant chronicle of a struggle to save a doomed relationship, the “long-distance runner…stopped on the corner”, goes from melancholic on Tender Buttons (2005) to downright funereal here. The nursery rhyme melodies of “Still Feels Like Tears” and “The Little Bell” are still beguiling, while an uptempo number like “Pendulum” somehow retains its punky energy. The two “newly-discovered” songs are fascinating if only because they emphasize how difficult Broadcast were to pigeonhole. The gently strummed “Come Back to Me” is the most folksy track of the bunch, while “Please Call to Book” is unabashedly poppy and fey.
Ironically, though they expose the traditional underpinnings of Keenan’s material, the recordings on Distant Call don’t make Broadcast any easier to crack. Like many cult favorites, Broadcast were more easily admired than consumed in large doses. Their music always felt mysterious and, with it, a degree of distance and isolation. In that sense, Broadcast were always haunting, and Distant Call, while not essential, leads to that chill-inducing realization.