Every Valley

Public Service Broadcasting formed in London in 2009 when the pseudonymous J. Willgoose, Esq. (whose stage name was adopted in honour of his uncle George Willgoose, who died at Dunkirk) and the mononymous Wrigglesworth teamed up and began to develop an ingenious technique of laying classic cinema clips and evocative excerpts from old Public Information Films from the British Film Institute's archives over sleek, streamlined, Krautrock-inspired instrumental backing tracks. As more than one wag would put it, you've heard of Math Rock: this was History Rock.

'Every Valley', the band's third studio album , Its narrative, though more localised than the grand, sweeping topics of the grand, sweeping currents of the Second World War and the Space Race, is no less dramatic. The story of the South Wales coal industry is one of spectacular success and tragic decline. Welsh coal was the engine of the British Empire: a hundred years ago, it is said that there were more millionaires on the floor of the Cardiff Coal Exchange than the London Stock Exchange. On 21 April 2017, Britain had its first-ever coal-free day, in terms of energy production, since the Industrial Revolution. The tale of the intervening century, in the Welsh valleys, is one of pride, resilience, betrayal, false promises, bitter conflict, and occasionally, like diamonds in the anthracite seam, the slightest glimmerings of hope.

'Every Valley' may be about industrial decline in South Wales, but Willgoose believes it is analogous to many other places. "It tells that specific story but I hope it tells it in a way that's applicable to industries all over the western world and possibly beyond, in the way that the Industrial Revolution generated these communities that were so dependent on one particular industry, and what happens to that community when you remove that industry from it, and where that leaves us now."