Public Service Broadcasting at The O2 Academy, Bournemouth

Public Service Broadcasting returned once again to the South West region playing a vibrant and energetic set, this time at the O2 Academy in Bournemouth. After being nominated and winning the Vanguard Breakthrough Award in the Progressive Music Awards back in 2015, they embarked on a seamless musical journey from playing at a charity festival called Aestival in Suffolk to touring on an international scale in such countries as Spain and Australia. As the band name suggests, sampling old public information, films, archive footage and propaganda soundbites has been the foundation and distinctive trait of the group’s three albums, Inform-Educate-Entertain (2013), The Race of Space (2015) and Every Valley (2017). Having said that, these three albums have proven to be very popular, with each one showing their doubtless musical capabilities to blend technical varieties with experimental flavours of modern electronic sounds.

The band of three Londoners, going by the name of J. Willgoose Esq, Wrigglesworth and JF Abraham, have been making an undeniably niche sound across all three albums, which saw them deliver a retrospective and nostalgic performance at the O2. They somehow managed to find a perfect balance of incorporating numerous tracks from each album throughout their hour and a half live performance. It was notable that all three albums were given an equal amount of playtime, letting the audience experience the subtle transition the band’s instrumentals went through over the years. It was a high-energy show packed with emotional punch giving the audience of mixed demographics a reminiscing feeling of the 80’s indie pop-rock sound. In addition, the production value was definitely raised making it more impactful especially for songs such as Progress, Go and Spitfire; all differ in their emotive impact but needless to say that they were highly effective.

To top it all off, the trio were accompanied by a number of guests including a marvellous three piece-horn section, which added a great deal of dynamic and rhythm to their set. The invigorating show was ended by a loud crowd cheering and stomping their feet as the warm night drew to an inevitable close.

Public Service Broadcasting is undoubtedly hitting the right spots as they progress more and more towards their music career goals where we would hopefully see them doing bigger tours and performing in front of larger crowds. Following the news on Brexit, and the most recent General Election in the UK, the avid fans have a lot to look forward to seeing that their albums are highly influenced by historic events in the world of economics and politics.