An odd pick saved for last - Broadcast’s 2005 songbook is a wildly leftfield take on dream pop, one that makes use of electronics more than any other artist before or since. At times pinching the eardrums with its low-res feedback, Tender Buttons can appear very standoffish and deliberately obtuse from the outside (it should be noted that it shares its title with an experimental book of cubist poetry). However, getting to know this LP will reveal a charming early-internet digiscape, the artwork itself basking in all of its webcam-quality glory. The merits of this album shine in its abstraction of conventional instrumentation, making it one of the most raw and bare dream pop LPs to still be considered part of the genre. In fact, it’s very much like a dream pop record deconstructed.



While this is the extreme example, traces of synthetic instruments in dream pop have increased over time, from the synth-wave in M83’s work to the drum machines seen on Beach House records. Electric dreams are still dreams, people. Instead of crescent moons and candle flames, leading lady Trish Keenan is backlit with flashing power indicator lights and sawtooth waves on analogue synthesizers. ‘Corporeal’ is a sombre piece of dream pop built with electro-static pulses, and many other tracks merge Keenan’s shadowy vocals with broken-SNES-cartridge buzzes (‘Black Cat’, ‘Michael a Grammar’). The underlying tenderness in Keenan’s rippling voice is obscured with bitcrushed electronics, yet she and co-producer James Cargill maintain that element of psychedelia, just in a more lateral way.



Beats are timid and mechanical, and that’s even if they can be bothered to show up, like on the fluttering ditty ‘Tears in the Typing Pool’. It leaves a stale air around the music that gives it this odd stillness, this paranormal tension that feels like a void affecting every aspect of the music; a void that was likely left after the departure of several band members in the transition from their previous record. It’s very anti-dream pop, a complete subversion of what the style means, but a common theme of the records in this list is not just its trippy immersion. Its artists are always evolving the genre’s definition, moving its boundaries and breaking its rules. In dream pop’s history so far, Broadcast is the biggest rule-breaker of them all. In an interview with Wire magazine, Keenan said that psychedelia is not “a world only reachable by hallucinogens, but obtainable by questioning what we think is real and right, by challenging the conventions of form and temper”.

If you like, try: Sweet Trip - You Will Never Know Why