26 | April 16, 2015 | cambridge-news.co.uk | Cambridge News

THEY still do their own soundcheck, with‘front man’ J. Willgoose Esq, in reverseSuperman-style, taking his specs off as a

disguise.It doesn’t fool anyone, in fact it’s kinda

cute; but it does set a humbling, DIY tone,that makes it even easier to be swept up inthe eccentricity and mystery of the Londonbased Public Service Broadcasting.

J, who plays guitar and banjolele andhits buttons to make polite, witty recordedannouncements (“Hello – Cambridge”/ “Thank you” / “Here’s one about iceskating – in Dutch”), is joined by curly hairedWrigglesworth on drums, and visuals expertMr B, who skulks in the background.

Known as much for their love of corduroyas for stitching electronic music together

with archive public information films, warrecordings and speeches, they’ve recentlyfollowed up 2013’s Inform – Educate –Entertain, with new album The Race ForSpace. It’s the kind of record you play at fullvolume, while driving somewhere in the dark.

We found out more about it:So, you’re gearing up to play two nights atthe National Space Centre in Leicester tolaunch the new album. Do you have anysurprises in store, and are they going totranslate to the Cambridge Corn Exchangegig?

We won’t be able to have a rocket tower atevery venue we go this spring, but we’ve gotour usual stage set and we’ve been workingon a couple of extra super-duper specialextras which are quite frankly ridiculous, andtake us into full-on Spinal Tap territory. We’relooking forward to seeing people’s reaction toit; it’s pretty special, I think.

What attracted you to the era of the spacerace, and what did you set out to achievewhen writing the new album?

Not to be too boring, I think I was tryingto write a good album, something that hungtogether well and told a bit of a story throughthe space race. And maybe, for people ofmy generation anyway, highlight a few of therelatively unsung heroes of it, like the firstspace walker, Alexey Leonov and [femalecosmonaut] Valentina Tereshkova; maybehighlight a bit more of the Russian side whichhas kind of got lost in all the American moonlandings attention.

[Takes a deep breath] And maybe also, inour own little way, just offer a bit of optimismand positivity I suppose, a slight push back

They had thenous to splicearchive footagewith electronicmusic and, as aresult, are quiteexceptional. ELLAWALKER has avery civilised chatwith one half ofthe operation,J. Willgoose Esq.

Editor:Ella Walkeremail:ella.walker@cambridge-news.co.uk

For breakingentertainment newsfor the city, visitcambridge-news.co.uk/whatson

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THE HEADLINER: MUSIC

the critical listThis week’s entertainment highlights

Public ServiceBroadcasting:“Ask anyone,they’ll tell youI’m a helluvamover”

Cambridge News | cambridge-news.co.uk | April 16, 2015 | 27

against some of the prevailing cynicism of ourtimes.

What do you mean by that?This is one of our most technologically

and spiritually revelatory periods of modernhistory, I’d say, and a great number of peoplechoose not to believe that it’s happened, forvarious spurious reasons, which is incrediblydepressing. So this is our attempt to pushback against that.

That’s fair enough. The record is definitelyquite jaunty; you’re far more likely to dancearound to tracks like Go! and Gagarin, thansay the angrier Spitfire and Signal 30 fromthe first album.

I think so, there’s a lot of brave slashpossibly stupid decisions we took on thisrecord to challenge ourselves and trysomething new and stretch ourselves. If you’dtold me four years ago we’d be releasing asecond album and we’d have written a songfor a choir, and expanded things out to writefor six-piece brass and five-piece strings, Ithink I would have been slightly disbelievingof you. I think it’s a good sign that we’regrowing up a bit.

The video for Gagarin is categoricallyawesome (YouTube it for three minutes ofastronauts break-dancing to funk). Wheredid that come from?

The broader idea for the song just camefrom wanting to do something celebratoryand euphoric and upbeat and to try andmake people turn this fantastic event – firstman in space – into something that would bea really uplifting, celebratory piece of music.When it came to the video, I recently hearda phrase I was quite keen on: ‘There aren’tmany shortcuts to happiness, and dancing isone of them.’ So it came down to trying tocapture a bit of that euphoria on film.

Are you much of a dancer yourself?You can ask anyone, they’ll tell you I’m a

helluva mover.

Nice. Are you pleased with how peoplehave been reacting to The Race For Spaceso far?

The first reviews came in and they werefair to middling, and a couple of goodones, so it was kind of like, well, we werereasonably pleased with what we’d done butweren’t entirely sure what it was, I suppose.I think people are really connecting with it,in a way beyond what I thought they mightdo. They really seem to be appreciating whatwe’ve attempted to do.

So you can put to bed all those commentsthat accompanied the first album, that youwere destined for gimmickry, then?

I found all that rather annoying around thefirst record because I knew we were goingto do this next, and I knew we could makeit interesting and move beyond what a lot ofpeople were throwing at us. But at the sametime, I didn’t want to tell anyone what wewere doing, so it was like, just get on andmake it.

Do you think that criticism did affectthe making of this album, howeversubconsciously?

We don’t write things in response toanyone, we just write music about the stuffwe want to write about, so whatever otherpeople say about it is irrelevant really. It’smore about what it means to the people whoare listening to it.

You worked with singers for the first time(Smoke Fairies), on this record. You’ve

Turn to page 28

“This is one of our most technologicallyand spiritually revelatory periods ofmodern history and a great number ofpeople choose not to believe that it’shappened, for various spurious reasons,which is incredibly depressing. So this isour attempt to push back against that.”

28 | April 16, 2015 | cambridge-news.co.uk | Cambridge News

THE HEADLINER: MUSIC

previously said if a labelswooped in to sign you, they’dtry and get you to work withmore singers. Is this somethingyou’re considering anyway?

I don’t necessarily think a) alabel is going to swoop in, andb) we want it to be somethingwe want to do, and that’s whywe’re doing it, not because we’vesuddenly been paid a ludicrouslylarge advance and some recordcompany is panicking that wedon’t have mass appeal.

I like the way we operate atthe moment, there are a lotof downsides to it in terms offinancial stability and notreally having the cloutthat a lot of other largerlabels might have, but Iquite like the feeling ofoperating on the fringes asa bit of an outsider. It allowsus a lot of control overevery part of our process,which is very valuable to us.

So say, hypotheticallyspeaking, you werethinking about signingup some collaborators,who would they be?

I don’t really want tosay because I think wemight start going after afew of them, haha. I don’twant to let them get theirexcuses in early. But we’llsee, hopefully on thenext album there’ll be afew other interesting facespopping up.

Considering you’re stillvery much committed tothe bow ties, corduroyand lack of chat onstage, would it be fair

to say you’re still enjoying beingmysterious?

Yes, haha, very much so, I don’twant to ever be, particularly, too[obvious]. We like to leave a littlebit of room for imagination inwhat we do, and not just in ourmusic.

OK, well, we are prepared toaccept that fact if, in return, yougive us one detail about yourreal life, however mundane orordinary.

Erm, haha, I’m very keen onbirds, I like garden birds. That’ssomething quite mundane isn’tit?! Yep, big fan, so if the RSPBare interested, tell them to get ine a lot

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still

From page 27“We won’t be able to

have a rocket tower at everyvenue, but we’ve been working on a

couple of extra super-duper special extraswhich are quite frankly ridiculous, and take

us into full-on Spinal Tap territory”