Ever wondered what it might sound like if The Avalanches remade Brian Eno’s Apollo: Atmospheres and Soundscapes? No, me neither, but the upcoming second album from London’s Public Service Broadcaster pretty much fills this brief. As per their 2013 debut Inform – Educate – Entertain, The Race For Space integrates archival footage sourced from the British Film Institute into their compositions. The ‘60s fascination with conquering space that fuelled the ego wars between the US and Russia informs the dialogue that’s spliced across their retro-futurist style of music, and the results are hardly exploratory.
The Race For Space veers from ambient cuts that simmer beneath spoken word sound bites to full blown, funk-driven jams, and the album’s two strongest tracks, Sputnik and Go!, sit somewhere between these two styles. The duo strive to continue the first album’s brief – to inform, educate and entertain – yet there’s little here that challenges, enlightens or charms. The archival snippets should intrigue, but too often they’re buried among middling compositions that play things extremely safe. The themes pay tribute to the past and the music sounds like it’s plucked from the more recent past, but it’s a frustratingly tentative step toward treading new ground.
BY CHRIS GIRDLER
