If somebody had to turn cult UK horror movie The Wicker Man into a radio play, then it would sound like this. ‘Witch Cults Of The Radio Age’ is an unusual and very addictive album.
Broadcast have teamed up with The Focus Group to give you a dreamy, disorienting and positively creepy radio play. The story of our hero investigating some unnamed witch cult is told in songs and short instrumentals that get weirder as the plot unfolds. Broadcast and The Focus Group use a range of psychedelic sound effects that would have made the BBC’s Radiophonic Workshop proud: Field recordings, speech and instruments played backward, sick electronic sounds and plenty of reverb.
What makes ‘Investigate Witch Cults Of The Radio Age’ so intriguing is the seamless mix of pretty, Folk inspired pop songs and the eerie instrumental skits. It’s also a remarkably consistent album that never loses the plot but whisks you through the entire journey from normality to freaky goings-on and back to normality.
Watch Broadcast’s Video For A Taste of ‘Witch Cults’
References to the Wicker Man, intended or not, are plenty: The folk songs, a dreamy girls voice, dark signs of an underlying threat. If you haven’t seen the 1973 movie, it’s about police seargant Howie investigating the disappearance of a little girl on a remote island off the Scottish coast. What starts as a regular crime caper slowly turns into something more evil as the locals claim the girl didn’t exist and our plodding sergeant is confronted with ancient, heathen rituals and signs of witch craft. Needless to say, Sgt. Howie never returns to the mainland.
Unlike the Wicker Man, ‘Investigate Witch Cults Of The Radio Age’ has a happy ending. But things get pretty hairy until you get there. The vinyl version of the album adds a classic cliff hanger for extra tension, as things just build up to a climax when you get to the end of side one. Well, I dashed to my turntable in record time to flip this thing over and hear the rest of it.
Listen To The ‘Witch Cults’ Album Trailer
‘Investigate Witch Cults Of The Radio Age’ is out on Warp Records now.
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