Broadcast - Berberian Sound Studio OST

The undeniable stately dignity of Broadcast’s soundtrack to the giallo homage of Berberian Sound Studio has far more to do with what we have lost rather than what we have. The soundtrack is the last completed work by Broadcast’s duo of James Cargill and Trish Keenan prior to the latter’s sudden death in early 2011.

The soundtrack is as beguiling and bewitching as any Broadcast studio album proper yet is incredibly fragmented and seemingly on the verge of merging with the film itself at any given time. The snippets of dialogue and horror samples are immersed in a distinctly analogue, monochromatic cloak – organ and synths trills creep around the fragmented tracks, taking their cue from Goblin’s infamous soundtrack to the Suspiria film from the mid-1970s.

It never really leaves the sound production studio which, in turn, begins to increasingly resemble a madhouse – screams and snippets of Italian dialogue appear from nowhere, distant voices pan from left to right, wonky funereal elegies and bursts of heavily treated sound effects punctuate the weirdness.

Broadcast’s soundtrack for ‘Berberian Sound Studio’ is a triumph not just because it is inescapably aware of itself as a soundtrack but also serves as a fitting epitaph for the band’s singularity and vision throughout their all-too-brief career.