Published on
March 2, 2015
Category
Features
Broadcast
‘Echo’s Answer’
(Warp, 1999)
One of the most haunting and beautiful songs in Broadcast’s catalogue, ‘Echo’s Answer’ was the first real taste of Broadcast’s debut album. A sharp contrast to the maximalist jazz discordance of ‘Hammer Without A Master’, the stripped-back ethereality of ‘Echo’s Answer’ was almost shocking. Keenan’s quiet delivery of a cryptic yet sinister lyric, surrounded by little more than ring-modulated piano and electronically manipulated string samples, showed a maturation and refinement of the band’s approach.
It recalls both The United States Of America’s ‘Love Song For The Dead Ché’ and obscure Belgian chanteuse Claude Lombard’s 1969 Ondes Martenot-infused ‘Sleep Well’, though Keenan strips away the sentiments of those songs and recites in its place a resigned ballad of imprisonment. Her love of these artists and subsequent appropriation of their methods was an attempt to reimagine “a better Sixties – one without sexism or racism,” as she put it. “I discovered psychedelia, and it seemed to have self-help properties that allowed me to let go of an immobilizing working class pride that was cementing a false identity into my psyche, stopping me from transforming.” It was a transformation and reawakening that she would nourish for the rest of her life.