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It's been three years since your last album ('The Noise Made By People') - how has your music changed?

Broadcast

Trish: I think it’s gone more folky – I think the extremes of what we do have been stretched.

Tim (holding a red ‘Citta Notte’ LP): this is a guy from an Italian improvisation group?

Jam: Yeah – Italian – he worked with (Ennio) Morricone.

Jam:The one thing about all of these records – they’re all library LPs – they’re all production music…

Have you got any references that people will have heard of?

Jam: No.

Trish laughs.

Jam: Our main inspiration for the band was ‘United States of America’ (1960’s electronic music pioneers).

Trish: Vashti Bunyan, the folk singer.

What do you think of Gareth Gates?

Jam: Have you ever listened to Gareth Gates? His music – without seeing him? I don’t know anyone who’s done that. Even my nan – who loves Gareth Gates won’t sit down and listen to his music. She just watches it on telly.

Trish: It’s TV – it’s almost like a separate thing to music. You don’t hear good music on telly, ever – unless it’s an occasional advert or special programme.

Jam: It’s the difference between looking at a Christmas card and a Francis Bacon painting.

What questions should I be asking?

Jam in the studio

Jam: How do you think you (Broadcast) are perceived by the public?

Tim: I don’t think the public give a sh**.

Tim: Groovy, 6o’s, er…

Jam: I think people see you as elitist.

Tim (laughing) . What’s wrong with being elite? It’s good to be elite – cos they are the best.

(Laughter)

Jam: Are you just trying to be awkward?

Tim: I am awkward.

Trish: You’re made awkward.

Jam: What do you think of Radiohead?

Tim: I think they’re professional.

What’s wrong with Radiohead?

Jam and Tim: Nothing – they are professional.

Tim: I’d take that as a compliment.

They are a packaged version of what you do?

Jam: No.

Jam: They are generally a good band – sometimes when you’re in a band like this and you struggle to record yourself in your bedroom and stuff…

Sometimes when you see other bands who’ve got the money to have a nice producer, who’s going to do a lot of the tedious work for them.

You do kind of think – I’d like that and you feel because you’ve struggled harder – you do feel a bit of resentment, I suppose. No not resentment…

Trish: I don’t think so. I don’t want to say that. We’ve never shown any resentment.

Jam: I’d love to have someone to do the sh** jobs for me. Which are what bands like Radiohead have got.

Trish: But they also had to do a lot of conventional rock songs to be able to get to that.

Tim: And that goes for any bands – it’s not just Radiohead. It’s just that they’re seen as…

Trish : They turned a corner and it was quite a courageous thing for them to do.

Jam: I think they’re great – I’m not slagging them.

Do you have any celebrity fans?

Trish: Apparently Bert Jansch thought we were all right.

Tim: Courtney Love and that other woman – Chrissie Hynde.

Jam: Yeah, Chrissie Hynde.

You could start making up fans, now if you want.

Jam: These are true actually.

Tim and Jam

Tim: Yeah Saddam Hussein - he quite likes the band.

Jam: These are people who have mentioned us, seriously.

Tim: Alvin Stardust – no he didn’t. Who else? Beck, he’s a fan.

Jam: Radiohead, are as well, funnily enough – he had our album in his top…

Tim: Five.

Are you happy?

Trish: More money. That’s it – everything's lovely, we want more money. That’s it. But money always costs something and we can’t make those payments in the studio.

Jam: We don’t want more money to buy a Mercedes or jacuzzis.

Trish: Just to buy a studio would be good and more gear would be good.

Jam: So we could do more things towards the music.

Trish: But it’s that catch 22 thing – you have to start making more commercial decisions in the studio.

Jam: And we’re not going to, are we?

Trish

Trish: When it come to the crunch – if it sounds too commercial – it will get changed and that’s an honest reaction in the studio.

You can’t complain – you make these decisions and you know what they mean.

Jam: I don’t think it’s about sounding too commercial, though, is it? It’s about going down that predictable – beaten path.

Trish: Yeah – that’s what I mean.

Tim: Yeah – it doesn’t mean all sugary.

You draw large crowds when you play in the USA – do you consider yourselves a ‘best kept secret’ in the UK?

Tim: We don’t sit here thinking that we’re a best kept secret.

Jam (laughing): You do think that.

Trish: It’s a funny thing because people see you in a different way.

Jam: We’re not trying to be secretive are we?

Trish: If you were coming from an improvisational background – you wouldn’t think there was anything secret about what we do.

Tim: Or anything difficult or weird.

Trish: We’re quite commercial – quite rock pop.

Tim: It’s musicians music – rather than cheesy exploitation music… sorry.

Jam: The kinda level that we’re at - sometimes if you’re into a band and they didn’t get that massive... Then by the third album they’re all over the TV. A bit like Nirvana were or something… it almost kills the band – it takes it away.

Trish: I don’t think so.

Jam: That happened with me and Nirvana.

Trish: It put them into that legend category…

Tell us about the tracks on your new EP – ‘Pendulum’....