Conceptual pop proggers Public Service Broadcasting have released a video for their brand new single Blue Heaven, which you can watch below.
It's taken from the band's upcoming fourth album, Bright Magic which is released through Play It Again Sam on September 24 via Play It Again Sam. An album in three parts (Building A City / Building A Myth / Bright Magic), it's their most ambitious undertaking yet and even includes vocals from Einstürzende Neubauten leader Blixa Bargeld. It brings the listener to Europe’s heart and de facto capital, the cultural and political metropolis that is the ‘Hauptstadt’ of the Federal Republic of Germany – Berlin.
Blue Heaven has been inspired by Marlene Dietrich, who according to the band’s J. Willgoose, Esq. was “a self-made myth to come out of Berlin”. He explains, “the lyrics highlight her power of self-manipulation, her ambition, her bravery and her lack of compromise on vital matters of character - 'I am all my own invention / I'm in my blue heaven' and so on. It's named after the jazz number My Blue Heaven which she sang regularly and which she said first made her dream of America.”
In keeping with the conceptual nature of Public Service Brodcvasting's work,
Willgoose moved to Berlin from April 2019 to January 2020.
“I walked up and down recording electrical currents and interference,” he laughs. “You can hear a few of these little frequency buzzes, clicks and impulses in Im Licht (a song inspired in part by pioneering lightbulb manufacturers AEG and Siemens). It’s what I was trying to do in the wider sense, I suppose – to capture those tiny little pulses you pick up while walking through a city.”
He wrote and recorded in Kreuzberg’s famous Hansa Tonstudio recording complex. Where Depeche Mode’s classic eighties triumvirate, U2’s Achtung Baby and, crucially, Bowie’s “Heroes” and Low were recorded.
“The whole shape and structure of the record is very much in debt to Low,” says Willgoose. "[Bowie] viewed himself as this vessel for synthesizing and refracting other influences, and presenting avant-garde influences to the mainstream. We tried to absorb a bit of that spirit.”
Public Service Broadcasting will tour the UK this October and November with a show at London’s O2 Brixton Academy on November 10, 2021. You can view the dates below.
Public Service Broadcasting 2021 UK tour
Oct 24: Cardiff University Great Hall
Oct 25: Brighton Dome
Oct 26: Bristol O2 Academy
Oct 27: Exeter The Great Hall
Oct 28: Southampton O2 Guildhall
Oct 30: Aylesbury Friars Waterside
Oct 31: Birmingham O2 Institute
Nov 01: Leeds O2 Academy
Nov 02: Llandudno Venue Cymru
Nov 04: Manchester O2 Apollo
Nov 05: Newcastle O2 City Hall
Nov 06: Aberdeen Music Hall
Nov 07 Glasgow Barrowland
Nov 09: Nottingham Rock City
Nov 10: London O2 Brixton Academy
Nov 11: Cambridge Corn Exchange
