Public Service Broadcasting

Wakefield has played host to a Festival of the Moon to celebrate the 50^th anniversary of the 1969 moon landing. For over 2 weeks the Market Hall in Wakefield has been turned into an arts space with games days, community music evenings, yoga and pilate sessions, arts commissions, theatre pieces, an inter-generational choir, roller derby drills, retro games days, and gigs from the Galaxians and Public Service Broadcasting. All this under a huge 7 metre diameter moon; the Museum of the Moon by Luke Jerram has travelled the world and features the moons surface represented on a scale of 1cm=5km. Tonight it is the centre drop while Public Service Broadcasting play their album ‘Race for Space’ in full. My only criticism here is the stage is crammed into one corner, but I assume that is due to the shape of the rectangular ex-market hall and it having no backstage area. I hope this will be available for an art space for years to come, rather than the proposed cinema (Wakefield already has 2).

With a model of Sputnik (or an overturned stool as my friend said) above their heads which rose during the concert, the four be-spectacled fellows produce sounds to the backdrop of original recordings of the space missions Starting with John F. Kennedy's speech for "change and challenge” the mood and tones vary to cover the ups and downs of the space race. The Russian Moon beeping signal is worked into the sounds of ‘Sputnik’ while Alexei Leonov’s first spacewalk is portrayed with varying tempos in ‘E.V.A.’

 Complete with video visuals and words in the case of the riffy hit ‘Go!’ this 9-track set is a wonder for the ears and eyes. ‘Gagarin’ is played early in the set as apposed to usual, and its easy to see why, with more of a live band set and a move away from the synths, with funky guitar and bass. However the real stars here are the 3-piece brass and woodwind section who come and groove on called ‘The Brassy Gents’.

As it is only 9 songs, of course there is room for more songs, and as we are in Yorkshire the band decide to pull tracks from their album about the coal mining industry ‘Every Valley’ (set in Wales originally). Its documents the rise and fall of the industry again with samples and visuals. ‘People Will Always Need Coal’ and ‘They Gave Me A Lamp’ and others again bring out the brass (but not as bouncy) and memories of the film ‘Brassed Off’. Still there are other songs in there like the great ‘Spitfire’ about the World War 2 plane. It really is like learning history through music, and those guitar sounds were lush. J. Willgoose Esq on synths, guitar, banjo and strings, Wigglesworth on percussion and piano and JF Abraham on bass, flugelhorn, and a load of other instruments really do create an awesome sound covering all bases.