Artist Spotlight: Broadcast made Birmingham sound like a transmission from 1968, and the demos are still arriving

Somewhere in the mid-1990s, in a Birmingham psychedelic club called Sensateria, a singer named Trish Keenan met a bassist named James Cargill. They started a band under the name Pan Am Flight Bag, then changed it to Broadcast. Over the next decade and a half they made some of the most unusual records that have ever sat on Warp Records, a label better known for electronic music.

If Slowdive, Beach House or Cigarettes After Sex live on your phone, this is a band worth meeting. Broadcast are quieter than most of them and stranger than all of them: Keenan's calm, slightly distant voice floating over vintage synths, tumbling drums and tape hiss, like a pop song heard through a wall. In their early years they were often compared to Stereolab and Portishead. They were also deeply shaped by an American psychedelic group from the 1960s, The United States of America.

Start here

"Come On Let's Go" (from The Noise Made by People, 2000). The debut in about three minutes: harpsichord punctuating vintage synthesisers, over a beat built for nodding along.

"Pendulum" (opening track of Haha Sound, 2003). The opener of the album that is often recommended first for its pop side.

"Tears in the Typing Pool" (from Tender Buttons, 2005). By this third album Broadcast were down to just Keenan and Cargill, and the sound turned sparse and electronic. It runs 2 minutes 12 seconds and is the one most likely to end up on a late-night playlist.

"Follow the Light" (2024). A single from the demo archive, released in March 2024. More on that below.

Why now

Keenan died on 14 January 2011, aged 42, from complications of pneumonia after catching swine flu. That ended the band, but not the music. In 2009 Broadcast had made a record with The Focus Group, Julian House's project, called Broadcast and the Focus Group Investigate Witch Cults of the Radio Age, and the band's music later soundtracked the film Berberian Sound Studio, with the score released on 7 January 2013.

Warp reissued the whole catalogue in March 2015, and in 2024 it opened the archive: Spell Blanket collected Keenan's four-track and MiniDisc demos from 2006 to 2009, written for the follow-up to Tender Buttons that was never finished. Distant Call, a second set of demos from 2000 to 2006, arrived on 28 September 2024 and marked the official end of the project. It includes an early version of "Tears in the Typing Pool."

For a band that sounds half-remembered even on their finished records, hearing the sketches is oddly intimate. Keenan's songs were never about big choruses. They were about atmosphere, and the demos prove it was all there from the start.

Where they sit for you

Broadcast are the older cousin of the dream-pop and bedroom-psych you already know. Slowdive and Mazzy Star deal in softness; Broadcast add the odd little electronic noises and a sense of mystery. Tennis recorded a cover of "Tears in the Typing Pool" in 2011, which tells you how long the song has been passed around between indie fans.

If you like Peter Cat Recording Co. for their retro, slightly eerie Delhi dream-pop, Broadcast are the British blueprint of that mood.

If you like Broadcast, try

• Beach House: the American duo who build their own slow, glowing worlds.
• Portishead: the Bristol band Broadcast were often compared with in their early years.
• Peter Cat Recording Co.: the home-scene pick, retro and cinematic.