Broadcast: Travels in space and sound

Skim-read a few reviews of Broadcast, or give their records a cursory listen, and you may get some odd ideas about them. You could picture the Birmingham trio as polo-necked avant-garde perfectionists, frowning over every precision-crafted note for weeks. Their sound wafted out on a spate of singles released in 1996-7, on which twinkle-toned Gallic pop blended with a blissed-out, space-pod futurism conjured from digitally processed instruments and the Nico-esque coo of the singer, Trish Keenan. All nonchalance and foreboding, it's so immaculately constructed that you wouldn't be too shocked to find a little esoteric severity about them.

But a trip to their Birmingham house reveals them not to be frosty boffins offering one pill to meet all nutritional requirements, but three friendly West Midlanders with a ready supply of tea and biscuits. The guitarist, Tim Felton, has a screwdriver stuck in some piece of Moog antiquery, but that hardly nails them as hard-core electro-heads, even if they do take their time - although they released their singles on a compilation, Work and Non Work, in 1997, it took them until 2000 to release a debut album proper, in the shape of the elegantly eerie The Noise Made by People. Three years on, they've finally delivered its follow-up, Haha Sound. Doesn't such perfectionism run the risk of losing them their audience? "I was a bit worried about that," nods James Cargill, the band's bass-player, "but it doesn't make rushing it an option."

"I don't think it is perfectionism, though," says Felton. "It's just so we get to a point where we don't think it's crap. We've got objectives we want to reach, and I think that's rare - I'd like to see more bands having strong ideas about identities and the way they want to sound. There are things we've done where we don't think it's perfect, anyway. When people say, 'It took you three years to make the album,' they probably imagine we spent three years sitting there trying to record. And it has been a bit like that, but not entirely."

Indeed, Haha Sound actually took less time to record than its predecessor. The Noise cost the band three years and three producers, as well as one drummer (tired of waiting, Steve Perkins joined fellow- Birmingham space-popsters Pram) and one engineer. Once Broadcast decided they had to produce it themselves, their Warp label-mate Tom Jenkinson, otherwise known as the beats vandal Squarepusher, popped by to free-up their creative ducts. "It was like a release, working with him," says Cargill. "He was kind of loose and confident, and he left this feeling that you don't have to have such a hard time, you don't have to labour on arrangements. He was really hands-on, while we'd be marking things up with a pencil... we were so rigid about how we would mix. But you learn to accept errors, y'know?"

Touring took up the best part of 2000-1, before other matters slowed them down. This time, their keyboardist split, making it one member down per album; then, a larger loss ground them to a halt. "The biggest thing that happened during the making of the album was Rob [Mitchell, co-founder of Warp] dying," says Felton. "He was really supportive of us, and it was a real blow..." Keenan takes over: "It was one of the things that made us pack up and come home. We spent most of 2001 setting up our studio, but the acoustics there were crap so we just thought, let's get out of here."

The recording space that kick-started Haha Sound was nothing like the almost Kubrickian, clinical images that Broadcast's music evokes. "We were at a jumble sale," says Keenan, "at a church hall across the road. We saw the high ceiling and wooden floors and thought, wow... We did our drum parts there. It sounded beautiful."

It's not surprising that Broadcast are sensitive to space, because their music conjures up a distinct sense of environment. The Noise gives off a spotless future-world ambience; Haha Sound's skewed, nursery-rhyme space-folk teases at hazy schoolyard images. Their influences are similarly evocative, ranging from Czech film to John Barry; Ennio Morricone to French library music. ("Background music that studios make for TV and radio on particular themes," Felton explains, "say, if you wanted music for something about birds. It's faceless and a lot of it's crap, but it's kind of a free music, because they're not trying to make hits.")

As for bands, it was a shared love for the Sixties sonic adventurists, the United States of America, that brought them together initially. "We were founded on their record," says Cargill. "It's got this mix of avant-garde, pop and folk, all working together. There's not a great deal like it. It seemed to say, there's no limit - you don't have to use the Beatles as a barometer."

The richness of these influences, coupled with the near-detachment in Keenan's voice ("I'm not into decorative vocals," she says, "I can't be Shirley Bassey."), goes some way towards explaining why some see them as faintly esoteric. But they make warm, human music: Keenan finds expression without flabby flourish, and the band apply sonic colour to pop basics in a way that transcends pop and experimental music. It explains why they're a little unsure about being seen as aural brain-food. "It's better than the opposite, I suppose," Cargill says, warily. "Yeah," Keenan quips, "bumfood."

"I can see why people would say brain-food," Cargill continues, "because it's not in-your-face, beat-driven music. I think it comes from working with electronica, so people can come up with easy labels such as 'lab technicians'. But it suggests a kind of academic thing, when the melodies are there for you, like in most pop music. A lot of people probably think we're graduates who've studied music, but we're not. I don't think we're that well-educated compared with other groups." At that, Felton grins mischievously. "It's like, 'Broadcast shocker: they're the thickest band out there'," he laughs. "We're nouveau thickies!"

'Haha Sound' is out now on Warp