The band name can be applied literally. Broadcast spread their perceptive net wide to produce the beautiful noise that this album encapsulates. They build a contemporaneous semi-detachment on the ethereal foundations of wide-eyed '60s electronic psychedelia. There is much of the childlike innocence and delicate bloom of that pioneering first wave. Their eclecticism also echoes the same open approach - whereby no style or sound is considered off-limits.
Similarities are drawn with Joe Byrd's first band - The United States Of America - and, although there is discernible common ground - the same studied moves and almost scholarly approach - the garden of earthly delights of the late-'60s is superceded here by a journey up into cool atmosphere; and occasionally on upward into a more cynical space - as befits the spirit of less optimistic times.
In their purest noisenik moments they strongly revive the frontier oscillations of Cork Marcheschi' long-lost San Francisco unit the Fifty-Foot Hose, as on their 1967 debut - Cauldron. Trish Keenan generating the same crisp aloofness of vocalist Nancy Blossom: and, at other times, echoing another obscure outpost from the dusty corridors of the past - late-'60s Texas and Cassell Webb's approach with The Children. Whatever strands are invoked, Broadcast stamp their own distinctive perspective on proceedings: The Noise Made By People is the kind of diverse album where an easy involvement stimulates the anorak devotion of sound-spotting.
'Long Was The Year' has a title redolent of English folk music and a booming, stately progress in waltz-time that is indicative of the timeless nature of life and the unflinching turn of the seasons. 'Unchanging Window' is in comparison a more exotic hybrid: dislocated, tangential, and intangible. 'Minus One' is deep and dark; an exploratory and reflective palette mixed on a far-flung planet of zero gravity.
'Come On Let's Go' has Broadcast imbibing the Euro-lite sophisticate sensitivity of Isobel Campbell in Belle and Sebastian offshoot - The Gentle Waves. From shifty, and shifting, mood piece - 'Echo's Answer' - to the plundering jazzy syncopation/reserved minimalism of 'Tower Of Our Tuning;' through the disjointed carnival of souls' zombie dance that is 'Papercuts' - there is an air of accomplishment, precision and intuition that places them above many of their contemporaries in electronic leftfield.
The final four tracks of the album are like a self-contained film score. There's cinematic wide-screen emotion conducted with shuddering, cataclysmic sound through waves breaking on a bleak existentialist shore. Art house movie and popular epic combined; Broadcast's ambition is manifest and mostly realised. If you go to the premiere of this particular movie the dress code is optional: relaxed or formal; spacesuit, jazz tux, or anorak; functionality or earth child abandon - just come as you are. Whatever your hold on humanity you'll find something to satisfy. Broadcast host a broad church. And it's a noise made by most people.