ITEM: More mourning for Trish Keenan of Broadcast.
From an interesting obit:
Without delving too deeply I feel it's important to make a small reference to Trish's own very physical song writing process which unconsciously resembled an Ester Krumbachová backdrop or something from an alternative Canadian school room. Without knowing it she was also a conceptual visual expert working and arranging her words in Sister Corita Kent's doppelganger print workshop.
A few times over the years, Trish sent me demos of new album tracks asking for a critical opinion. Naturally they ticked all the right boxes but also put all sorts of new boxes on the matrix. Personally I was flattered that she valued my taste in records although I felt totally unworthy to judge the mighty Broadcast (I felt the same way when I remixed The Booklovers in 1999 - mission impossible) I suppose I'm trying to illustrate her humble nature towards their own music. The fact that they were probably the ONLY band I've ever known to sound even better than their vintage influences is maybe something I should have told her, but she was never digging for compliments.
I've actually posted and made more amateur vids of Broadcast than possibly any other person alive (See here and here.). I happened to have a copy of the only video that Trish Keenan ever directed and starred in, which was done to her song "Black Cat". So I reuploaded that. I also downloaded her last known recording with Prefuse 73, also a star of "The Acid Jazz Channel", and made a video for that. I also made an older video for "Man is not a Bird", but instead of uploading that to Youtube I used it as a background to create a newer and better, or just "busier", version of "Man is not a Bird". My vid making skillz have improved somewhat due to having better computers and better vid making software. Or you can judge for yourself. The old version is here. New version is below:
Bonus: As some people who knew Trish Keenan have remarked upon, she was actually trying her hand at fiction writing. Here's her one short story that you can find online. I hear she was a fan of HG Wells (Actually, a lot of the people who do futuristic music are science fiction fans of some sort or another. Wayne Shorter and John McLaughlin are science fiction readers. Chick Corea believes in a religion created by science fiction not to mention all the Star Trek references from Return to Forever (Vulcan Worlds anyone?)....). Verdict: Not great but passable. I would describe it as a kind of low key surrealism. She would have gotten better had she had more time. Bonus insight: The alt rock n roll icon who should spend a year writing a novel is probably Robyn Hitchcock, whose prose is continuously abstract. He's already been published in a science fiction anthology...
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