Broadcaster's album, Folksploitation, is an interesting one. Featuring vocals by Peggy Seeger it revisits songs such as The First Time Ever http://youtu.be/M_rLjYll85Q and completely slashes them to pieces and rebuilds them... bionically. For instance this one now has a rather sinister feel to it and the words take on (for me) an entirely different meaning. I shouldn't like it but it's wonderful! Whereas I would run a mile before listening to Gary Barlow sing Forever Autumn, Blue singing Sorry Seems To Be The Hardest Word, or even any of Jeff Lynne's pointless reworkings of his old ELO hits, this is something I love. If you are going to re-do something, then COMPLETELY re-do. What we have at the end is something that bears absolutely no comparison to the original song.
Peggy herself completely re did all the vocals on these songs and was completely open to the challenge of them being sung over dub, groove and techno beats. “This is as far from traditional folk music as you can get,” she says, ”but these are impossible musical recipes that work despite everything. I feel like I’ve been musically ‘outed’ – this is certainly further out than I’ve ever been! I think Ewan would be fascinated.”
And as for Broadcaster? “I love pushing a song to its extremes – I take all the crispy bits and see what I can do to reinvent them. Subverting songs is a long process and naturally there’s a lot that ends up on the cutting room floor. But I think we’ve achieved something unusual that challenges the notion of genres and pushes a boundary or two.”
http://broadcasteruk.com/folksploitation/
