Broadcast 2000 is the creation of Devon born multi-instrumentalist Joe Steer. On his debut Building Blocks, he combines cello, double bass, guitar, ukulele, glockenspiel, banjo, percussion and his own layered vocals. Written, recorded, mixed and mastered in Joe’s north London flat, Building Blocks is a warm-hearted, sincere collection of tiny little pop songs in the tradition of early Paul Simon.
This record is full of catchy tunes that simply won’t go out of your head, be it the forward-turned optimism in Don’t Weigh me Down, the twisted rhythm on Get Up And Go or the fleet-footed Viennese waltz of Run.
26-year old Steer has been writing songs since his early teens, "recording on a tascam four track casette recorder at first", and used to play in a number of different bands previously. It was only last year, when long time co-writer and Artisan band mate Lee Schofield decided to live in Africa that Joe decided "it might be worth putting my own record together. I’ve always enjoyed experimenting with recording just for my own kicks."
The songs are borne firstly by Steer's charming tenor voice, which has been compared to Sufjan Stevens and Chris Martin and secondly by the beautiful arrangements, "although I’ve never really thought of myself as a vocalist. I started writing the Broadcast 2000 songs always thinking I’d just put some vocals on as a guide, then get a proper singer to sing them once I was happy with the tune", he explains. The fact that he has got a musical degree might have been a help: "I did things like composing for demodulated traffic noise, to be performed using multi-speaker 'diffusion' around a concert hall. Whilst also playing in the university orchestra and doing all the classical music theory stuff."
Steer's rural origin also had a huge impact on his musical development: "Growing up the middle of Devon means you have little else that could possibly occupy your time apart from music. No football teams to support, no high street/shopping centre to hang around in. In fact the majority of my school buddies were in bands."
When playing live, Steer is joined by Tom and Chris of great up and coming band Lady and the Lost Boys, who are mainly employed "for their haircuts actually. They are very young, 18/19 and I feel like their weird old uncle."
Building Blocks will be released in late summer 2008 on Groenland Records. The Groenland family welcomes Broadcast 2000, stick their heads together and pray that we all will hear more in the future of this weird old uncle!