Broadcast and The Focus Group Investigate Witch Cults of the Radio Age

Reception

Broadcast and The Focus Group Investigate Witch Cults of the Radio Age was voted one of the best 50 albums of 2009 by The Wire. Allmusic reviewed "The whimsy and strangely familiar feel of '60s and '70s library music could also be heard in their music from the beginning, but never more clearly than on this mini-album." The Austin Chronicle was critical stating Witch Cults "has a lot of room for experimentation, but it comes off more like the soundtrack for a 1960s Hammer film."

BBC Music Review reviewed the album favorably stating "Witch Cults Of The Radio Age is laced with enough wonder and intrigue to keep you coming back. It doesn't make perfect sense, but the sense of mystery is a key in itself." Drowned in Sound called the album "chaotic, overstimulating, like opening a dusty wardrobe and having an entire childhood tumble down on your head" as well as carrying "the same trapped-on-the-wrong-side-of-the-mirror allure as Tender Buttons, with Keenan channelling some inner kaleidoscope through her outwardly blank, coolly regretful vocals. In their retrospective on Warp Records, Noisey of Vice reviewed Witch Cults as "perhaps Broadcast's finest achievement, with intimations of Pink Floyd circa Piper At The Gates Of Dawn, as well as the horror film The Innocents and a whole, macabre toybox of colourful, arcane devices."

Pitchfork critiqued the album "predictable" and the collaboration between Broadcast and The Focus Group like "trying to cast their spells at the same time: Some of the record is great, plenty of it is cross-chatter." PopMatters reviewed Witch Cults with "The entire album is an exorcism of an dead universe. Nothing can stay together here. It’s hauntology as a pasture of incidental tones and half-ripped photographs. The video footage is unable to focus. The lens’s view is eternally obstructed. The wild blurs of compounded biographies come off like a fever dream of a memory play." Rookie praised Witch Cults with "The vast array of chopped and screwed samples–drawn from horror movies, nursery rhymes, and something that sounds like a long lost mantra-like ritual from some faraway place a hundred years ago–create a dynamic, haunting, but still pleasant mood, which is what makes it so thrilling. It’s dark, but you kind of want to savor that darkness."

Tiny Mix Tapes commented "Witch Cults goes even further, drifting between fleeting moments of obscured 'songs' and strange haunted house soundscapes. Melodic themes are introduced and later reprised in various forms, but more importantly they often sound as if they’re coming from some out-of-sync universe."