From an Earlier Age to Today’s Stage

Journalist Ian Harrison talks to PSB band-members about bringing This New Noise from concept to performance at the Royal Albert Hall

In 1922, the BBC’s founding General Manager, John Reith, declared the new broadcaster’s remit was to “Inform-Educate-Entertain”. Ninety-one years later, history-minded electronic rock ensemble Public Service Broadcasting used Reith’s formula as the title for their debut album. “When you do that”, says PSB principal and songwriter J. Willgoose, Esq., “you’re directly inviting certain parallels, aren’t you?”

It’s apt, then, that tonight Public Service Broadcasting marks the BBC’s centenary with their new song-suite, This New Noise, which they perform with the BBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Jules Buckley.

Few other groups would have been up to the challenge in quite the same way. Formed in south London in 2009, PSB have abided by their own founding credo – “teaching the lessons of the past through the music of the future” – on a series of releases that have incorporated vintage audio samples into vivid musical portraits of, variously, the Second World War (The War Room, 2012), the rise and fall of the British coal industry (Every Valley, 2017), and the city of Berlin and the modern metropolis (Bright Magic, 2021). Meanwhile, a new version of 2015’s The Race For Space, a stirring evocation of the superpowers’ Cold War rivalry in orbit, was memorably played at the 2019 Proms with Peckham’s Multi-Story Orchestra.

But how to encapsulate 100 years of the national broadcaster in all its aspects? As ever with PSB, the approach is indirect. “It covers the years 1922 to possibly 1937”, says Willgoose, who began writing the music early this year. “In terms of the technological and almost spiritual leaps that were made, and the kind of evangelical spread of the BBC, it’s almost entirely pre-war and pre-television. Trying to fit in everything the Beeb’s done in 100 years, you’d end up doing some kind of montage of things, with, I don’t know, the Jackanory theme tune or something. That would be in danger of just becoming nostalgic, and we’re not interested in that.”

Bringing lives and ideas that seem far removed from our own age into focus involved immersion and study. “I’ve been reading back issues of the Radio Times from 1927, cover to cover”, says Willgoose cheerily: other reference works included Broadcasting (1933) by pioneering producer Hilda Matheson, The Story of Broadcasting (1924) by Arthur Burrows – the announcer who read the BBC’s first ever news bulletin on 14 November 1922 – and the memoirs of founding genius Lord Reith, who envisaged the service as “the citizen’s guide, philosopher and friend”.

“The idea”, says Willgoose, “is to take it back to where it started, and just ask, Why was it set up in this way? Who was behind it? What did they think they had with this new technology of radio? What role did they think it fulfilled? What did they think it shouldn’t do? It’s also about the magic of this box that just appeared in people’s living rooms and suddenly voices were coming out of it at all times of day – it’s pretty mind-blowing.”

In gathering his raw samples, he had to navigate what actually exists and what is possible to license, though he received, he says, invaluable help from Simon Rooks of BBC Archives. This being a Prom, there was also an orchestra to think about. Handily, PSB’s bassist and horn player JFAbraham serves as orchestrator and arranger, building upon Willgoose’s polished demos: other preparation involved the two sharing online playlists, listening to Ravel and Debussy, and attending concerts including Korngold’s Violin Concerto, Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 6 and Steve Reich’s Music For 18 Musicians. “JF is very helpfully bridging the gap between my ignorance and the skill and proficiency of an orchestra,” says Willgoose. “Reading notation often isn’t the way that pop musicians learn songs”, says JF diplomatically.

“When we did The Race For Space Prom, the material was pre-existing”, says JF, who studied orchestral trumpet for five years and has also arranged for Bastille and Jessie Ware. “But this is all new material that’s been conceived for orchestra and the band. J is playing guitar, Wrigglesworth is playing drums and this time I’m only playing piano. It’s a much more scaled-down version of what we usually do as a band, because we’ve also got this enormous 80-piece beast of an orchestra.”

“I’m a sort of closet romantic”, says Willgoose of writing for strings, woodwind and brass. “It comes out in our music, even if it definitely doesn’t come out in daily life. This piece needs to have the soaring moments and the big themes that are going to hopefully get people roused. That’s part of the point of it, get them proud of this thing that their country has created.”

“The physical feeling of being close to an orchestra of this size and level of artistry, and the dynamic range that they can produce – it changes the air around you”, says JF. “When it’s working at its best, it’s just this one huge organism with a common purpose, of realising a greater work”.

So it is with This New Noise, as pivotal moments in the BBC’s early history are evoked in eight sound-paintings which blend the antique and futuristic. These include advances in technology: A Cello Sings in Daventry refers to the huge transmitting station in Northamptonshire that began transmitting in 1927, while The Microphone (The Fleet Is Lit Up) includes advice for politicians from George Bernard Shaw and revisits Lit Up from PSB’s first album, featuring Lt Cdr Thomas Woodrooffe, who was loquaciously drunk while commentating on the Coronotation Review of the Fleet at Spithead in 1937 (the official explanation involved the first use of the euphemism “tired and emotional”). The articles of faith upon which the new service was founded are also invoked, with A Candle Which Will Not Be Put Out articulating the lofty ideals of broadcasting “the complete range of human thought and activity expressed… to the best possible standard”. There is a sense of awe and wonder when Ripples in the Ether (Towards The Infinite) looks to an unlimited future in clipped received pronunciation, accompanied by etheric radio waves and the hiss and crackle of ancient transcription discs.

Reith himself takes centre stage in the shimmering, staccato An Unusual Man. “He was only there for a relatively short period, from 1922 to 1938”, says Willgoose, “but he’s key to the whole thing – his voice and ideas are all across the BBC, and he’s still the dominant force in its history. They were days of high adventure, they were learning constantly, but because of Reith’s background there was a quasi-religious kind of bent to it – he was quite “sermon on the mount” in terms of his delivery. And the idea that a system designed to make a profit for shareholders would be counter to the interests of the media, and that broadcasting without public service is aimless and pointless… you think, yeah, he might have had a point.”

Willgoose and JF both promise that the performance will include theatrical elements: such is the dearth of original audio sources, some material, such as the words of Hilda Matheson, spoken by Reeta Chakrabarti, while Devon-born folk singer Seth Lakeman will guest on one song. PSB’s stage visuals specialist, Mr B, says Willgoose, archly, has got some “bits and bobs, though not much contemporary video stuff exists. But he did get hold of an old, big, radio set, and I wanted to start with that being brought on and plugged in and humming into life, as the signal starts to pass through the ether. And I wanted to end with it fading down to nothing and being carried off in an empty stage, to make people pose the question of, well, if the BBC vanishes, as some people want it to, what’s going take its place? Because it’s certainly not going be something that funds things like the Proms.”

Incidentally, Willgoose bristles when asked what BBC services he consumes: “That word consume is indicative of how this public service ethos has been corrupted by commerce”, he says. “I don’t consume anything, I watch and listen to various things, and enjoy them! Which are Radio 4, BBC Four, Radio 6 Music and, increasingly, Radio 3. Charlotte Higgins, whose 2015 book This New Noise. The Extraordinary Birth And Troubled Life Of The BBC our work is name after, called the BBC the greatest cultural institution this country has ever known. I believe it’s a force for good, despite its missteps.”

Concerned with practicalities, JF is anticipatiing an unforgettable night. “At the Royal Albert Hall, all you have to do is walk backstage and see all the pictires of gigs and concerts and pageants that have happened there, and it gives you that massive sense of occasion. You’re just putting so much into one evening’s worth of music, because we might not get the chance to do it again.”

As well as marking a new frontier for Public Service Broadcasting, the night promises to restate the band’s – and the BBC’s – first principles. We will be informed. We will be educated. And we will be entertained. Lord Reith would be proud.