Warp
For Broadcast the lead-up to their soundtrack for Berberian Sound Studio couldn’t have been more tragic. While Peter Strickland’s film came out in 2012 the previous year saw the death of Trish Keenan who along with James Cargill was the driving force behind the band’s decade-plus career of retro-futuristic experimental pop. Containing the pair’s final work together the album as you could imagine comes with some seriously eerie undertones — something that’s amplified by the film’s subject matter.
Following a U.K. sound engineer who travels to Italy to work on a ’70s giallo horror flick Strickland’s movie is a cinematic head trip of the highest order offering an isolationist bit of eye candy that idolizes Italian horror greats like Dario Argento and Lucio Fulci. So it’s no surprise that Keenan and Cargill’s soundtrack follows suit and embraces the bone-chilling sounds of giallo film scorers Goblin Ennio Morricone and above all Fabio Frizzi.
Much like Broadcast’s last release 2009’s Investigate Witch Cults of the Radio Age the soundtrack is cut into a long string of song vignettes with 39 tracks in all and most under a minute. Mixed in with cinematic sound snippets of voice actors emulating goblins ghouls and witches the songs tread a fine line between claustrophobic creep-outs — ripe with funeral organs harpsichord and dark synth washes — and tripped-out beauty most often thanks to rare vocal appearances from Keenan like on poignant highlight “Teresa Lark of Ascension.”
Despite being a consistently fascinating listen Keenan and Cargill’s efforts still come with Strickland’s film very much in mind. And while that may not result in the proper-album swan song some Broadcast fans are surely hoping for it does make for a stellar cinematic companion piece.
