From some eerie laundromat/wind tunnel of orange-tinted 1960’s production aesthetics, this indefinable album lands somewhere between electronic and rock. A series of songs and sound fragments that is deeply listenable, highly adventurous, and ecstatically unpredictable.

Witch Cults is Birmingham, UK pop group Broadcast’s collaboration with electronic artist The Focus Group. Whatever sonic raw material here has been mutated into something utterly other, yet non-artificial. This is electronic music with a focus on acoustics, and the feedback squalls and echo chambers, organs and vocal harmonies come through as a rich blend of analog and digital.

I’ve been giving this repeated listenings along with another album I bought recently, the Rolling Stones’ most psychedelic outing Their Satanic Majesties Request. While very different, Witch Cults seems to be in some way a distant answer to that album, an inheritor of British psychedelia, cryptic pagan fantasy under a cool modern surface.

A few tracks seem to be redigesting the shuffling turntable-crunchy beats and flute loops of Portishead, but for the most part this album scorns trip-hop tropes in favor of bold explorations in sound: amazing atmospheres ranging from ethereal folk to sci-fi soundtrack.

On Warp.

-Justin Allen

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So, I heard the Halloween [at 555 Haight Street] party was off the hook this year?

Yeah, that was a rager, we had a lot of fun.  Me and [DJ] 87 had people goin’, bitches getting naked on the dance floor and shit.  Solid dance floor, too.  It was packed the whole time and between the two of us we played like a 6 or 7 hour set til like 7 AM.

Was it the craziest party you’ve ever played?

Oh, yeah with that many people in such a small space.  I’ve never played in front of that many people and still had so much fun.  There were probably 250 people through the house that night.  Randoms started coming in off the street, at one point there was a line around the block and my homie had to go down and play like a doorman.  He was wearing a panda suit so it was even funnier.

What was your first party?

The first party I played at was when my buddy’s mom owned this school and on the weekends it would be closed.  They had big speakers and a mixing board and stuff, like for putting on plays and stuff.  So we would go in there on the weekends and throw parties.  We’d set up a little bar and everything, get a bunch of randoms in.  It was pretty cool.

(Laughing) Shit man, I never asked you the important stuff.  Who are you and where are you from?

(Laughs) Yeah, you skipped that.  My name is Matt Spencer, I DJ under the name Basspop, and I am originally from Orange County, which is a fucking hellhole.  Such a disturbing place.

And you’ve been living in the city for….?

Like almost 2 years, and I love it.

Why is it so much better than Orange County?

Just the people.  I love weird and open minded people and they seem to come to San Francisco in droves.  Also, this city really lets you do your thing.  As long as you’re not hurting anyone, you can be as weird as you want, express yourself any way you want.  I see crazies all the time walking around screaming at the sidewalk.  No one even cares.  In Orange County that same guy would have had 12 cops on him, you’d never see the guy again.  They’d drive him out and drop him off in Riverside or something. (Laughs)

You’re also an illustration major?

Yeah, I take illustration at AAU.  I’ve been doing that forever, drawing and stuff.  I love to draw…and I’m fairly serious about that.

I hate to sound like a stereotype machine, but aren’t the ones who groove the hardest usually on the largest amount of drugs?

(Laughs) Which I condone, by the way.  I think more people should do them.

So you usually get pretty lit before a show, too?

No, man I think it’s actually better to be sober when you’re playing live.  It’s like there’s so much going on and you have to pay attention to so many things.  In the lab it’s all good though.  Experiment, ya know.

What about when drawing or painting?

(Laughs) Oh, anything goes.

What’s the craziest thing you’ve seen at Burning Man?

Craziest thing?  Actually one of our last days in camp this last year some Russian guy that didn’t speak any English wandered into our camp at like 6AM.  We don’t know what he was on or anything but he came up and grabbed a gallon of water off of our bar and chugged it.  Then he like doubled over and shit his pants, took his pants off and started screaming and woke everyone up.

(Laughing) Dude shit his pants?

Yeah, I don’t know if he got some kind of toxic shock from the water, or he just couldn’t handle it but he shit his pants and just started screaming in Russian.  That was probably the craziest thing.

So where do you think this electronic music thing is going?

Where is this going?

Yeah, is it gonna fall off like disco?

No way man.  It’s huge in other countries, all across the globe.  Not as much in the US but… I don’t know the west coast has it’s own sound when it comes to Breaks or Electro and Hip Hop and stuff is moving in that direction.  Like Dubstep is HUGE right now, especially in San Francisco, but I can’t really see Dubstep being huge in the Midwest, and maybe it is, I don’t know.  As far as the west cost goes though I think a blend of Hip Hop with a G Funk sound, like with more of a Breaksy kinda sound is really popular and I think it’s gonna continue to build steam.

Until the world ends in 2012, right?

I kinda hope it does, like I wanna be around to see it happen when it happens.

Erik Estrada or Harry Connick, Jr.?

(Laughs) That’s a good one!  I don’t even know if I can answer that.

Would you take death or an eternity of TJ Hooker?

What’s that?  Like you can’t stop fuckin’ a Tijuana hooker for eternity?

No, TJ Hooker is an old TV show….

(Laughing) Oh shit, I totally took that wrong.

Interview by Frank Summa
Pictures & Illustrations courtesy Matt Spencer

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Listen to “Midnight Blossom”
For shows, music, and art, visit Basspop on Facebook.

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So what exactly is this eponymous duo all about? Imagine giving two Ritalin-infused kids carte blanche on a Casio keyboard, drum kit, and a couple of microphones. The end result is exactly what you’d expect but far too funky to be created by somebody who didn’t know exactly what they were doing. It’s an electro art-punk clash that’s rough, loud, and totally “out-there”, but it just may have you dancing all night long. Definitely worth checking out for something different that’ll surprise you.

-Alexander Zeddemore

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myspace.com/casyandbrian

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