Chocks away! Public Service Broadcasting fly high at RAF Museum

WITH songs about Spitfires, the Blitz and Dunkirk, musical duo Public Service Broadcasting capture the spirit of wartime Britain and serve it up as exhilerating electro-rock.

So when it comes to playing live, there can nowhere more appropriate than the hallowed galleries of the RAF Museum at Hendon, North London - in the shadow of Battle of Britain fighter planes and enormous bombers.

The shows - which run from Thursday 15 to Saturday 17 May, are being staged as part of Museums at Night, backed by Culture24.

They will see the duo perform their acclaimed EP The War Room in its entirity, followed by a selection of tunes from their album Inform - Educate-Entertain - which may as well be the band's mission statement.

 "It's a very appropriate place indeed," says the corduroy and bow tie-clad musician known as J Willgoose, Esq.

"The planes are very impressive and should fit well with the music. The Lancaster Bomber particularly is huge. You don't realise how big those things were until you get up close to them.

"We can't wait to play - it's going to be a lot of fun."

To create a more authentic wartime atmosphere, audience members are encouraged to dress up in 1940s atture - either military or civilian. If that doesn't appeal, fans can choose 50s or 60s styles to fit in with the band's other tunes - which cover such subjects as the conquest of Everest, a Dutch ice skating race, the development of colour televisions or the night mail train from London to Edinburgh.

While the subject material is thought-provoking, the music is thrilling; a hypnotic symphony of clips and samples from public information and propaganda films set to soaring guitars, electro-rock and bass-heavy dance beats.

It’s a heady mix and has turned a solo bedroom project for its dapper creator into one of the country's best new bands. The Hendon shows will be followed by appearances at Glastonbury and other festivals, as well as a European tour. They come hot on the heels of a US tour, earlier this spring, which culminated in a packed out show at South by South West in Austin, Texas.

“We are just a two piece electronic outfit who are influenced by heavy rock, indie and all sorts of other stuff,” says J, who is joined on stage by drummer Wrigglesworth (both modestly decline to reveal their true identities revealing only that they met at a lawn bowling club).

“We sample old public information films and archive footage, writing new music around it. With the sound and visuals it does become a full-on audio-visual assault.”

J says the idea came from listening to a Radio 4 documentary about archive material, which he crafted into a song. He says: “I thought it would be great to do a concept album, basing each song on a public information film. Now, four years later, we have a studio album.”

The War Room splices wartime broadcasts - samples of Neville Chamberlain’s speech on the outbreak of war; an entreaty to ‘dig for victory’; and a description of the evacuation from Dunkirk - with trademark electronica and rock. It is a stunning achievement which reminds, and in the case of a younger listeners, tells for the first time, the inspiring story of Britain at war.

It was their tribute to one of the RAF's best-loved exhibits, however, which saw their reputation fly. Spitfire, which coupled footage from the 1942 film The First of the Few, with soaring rock riffs was one of the best tunes of last year, and its championing by BBC 6 Music presenters Marc Riley and Gideon Coe saw PSB become a fixture on national radio.

J admits it struck a chord. “We went from playing to 40-odd people in London to 1,300 in Glastonbury. But I don’t know why. Like other bands we borrow heavily from other people we like, but maybe we are becoming different from others in what we do.

“Perhaps people are tired of the usual set up of guitars, bass and drums and a moody, angsty singer. We are energetic and fun on stage and hopefully people warm to us. There’s nothing we’ve done which hasn’t been done before, but what’s new is the way everything comes together cleverly by accident and hangs together well as a live concept.”

The album sees Willgoose and Wrigglesworth giving the PSB treatment to peacetime public information films. Their song Night Mail interleaves extracts of WH Auden’s rhythmic poem (“This is the night mail crossing the border, bringing the cheque and the postal order...) with a dream-pop soundtrack, chunky beats and footage from the eponymous 1936 GPO film. Traditional set-closer Everest, meanwhile, fuses clips from 1953 documentary The Conquest of Everest to ambient pop, while Late Night Final evokes the gritty despair of the postwar years with samples from the Central Office of Information’s 1948 film of the same name.

“We are bringing these films into the present with the music we are making, and there are interesting parallels by placing it in today’s world,” says J. “London Can Take It, for example, was made during the Blitz but grim things are still happening on a daily basis - yet it can still take it. There is an amazing spirit. And it should work particularly well at the RAF Museum."

Despite their quarrying of the past, J insists there is no nostalgia. Neither is there any “tub thumping”. “It was very studiously not about that,” he says.

“Writing Spitfire with a ‘krautrock’ soundtrack gives it quite an ironic undercurrent. And the sample of Neville Chamberlain saying ‘ this country is at war with Germany’ was changed, after consultation with the missus, to just say ‘this country is at war’.”

And it’s not just going down well with younger listeners here. “There was a 90 year-old man at a gig in Coventry who loved it, and we have played two shows in Germany, and had the same reaction,” says J.

“I am not a historian,” he adds. “I was totally ignorant of the Second World War and had to do some serious reading. Hopefully if other people are interested in what they hear it will prompt them to find out more about it.”

Even the British Film institute, which provides most of the samples, are fans.

“Initially they were a bit confused, which was fair enough,” says J. “But, now they have seen, it they are 100 per cent behind it.”

• Public Service Broadcasting play the RAF Museum at Hendon from 15-17 May. Doors open at 7.30pm. Tickets have sold out.

A night at the museum....

• This weekend sees hundreds of museums, galleries and historic spaces all over UK, opening their doors at night-time for a whole host of unique and exciting events; from participatory events with leading contemporary artists Grayson Perry, Rankin and Spencer Tunick to bands playing in museums; whole city art take overs to museum sleepovers; poetry readings and author talks to star gazing at historic houses.

Full listings can be found at museumsatnight.org.uk