Three blogs, ‘Toys and Techniques’, ‘A Sound Awareness’ and Unman-Wittering devoted the whole of May as ‘Radiophonic Month‘ and have been posting all kinds of Radiophonic extremely rare gems such as the David Cain Seasons album that Jarvis Cocker has been err ‘rinsing’ on his excellent 6Music show and more importantly for me Amor Dei (here and here) by Delia Derbyshire and Barry Bermange – I have been looking for this online for years.

I would gladly pay for that and the other Inventions and a proper Delia boxset/release but amazingly BBC and now the University of Manchester seem to be dragging their heels in that regard, so MP3s it is. But so glad to actually get to hear it…like the original poster I’d love to hear the other Inventions (I have a low quality copy of Dreams…are there any HQ versions out there?).

Saw this via Akira the Don and assumed it was the Alchemists of Sound but it’s actually from 1993 ’30 Years of the Tardis’ which I’d never seen (although much quoted second hand) – I’d love to have a copy of this! Can you get it?

And I love the bit at the end – yes Delia is totally right, the music to Doctor Who IS sacrosanct, as all ‘remade’ versions prove, the off-beat non 4/4 groove,

The runthrough I was talking about is also on YouTube, start from from 5:38 (it earlier also mentions the Wobulator which was a homebrew simple electronic noisemaker, not even a synth!) where Mark Ayres runs through each tape loop, track by track showing how it was built up.

P.S. yes I saw End of Time which was the departure of David Tennant – the last 20 minutes were devastating; not too sure about the Timelords return, it had leaked months ago – but the actual ending with Wilf was very sad. Shame he did the Dying Swan bit a la The Trocks and extended his goodbye out FAR too much. But anyway, remains to see whether the Goofy Floppy Haired ‘Gosh’ Doctor of Matt Smith is going to be better, seeing the new trailer really am not sure about the gun and return of Daleks…again.

The BBC Radiophonic Workshop turned 50 this year, and I pay tribute to the amazing work of this innovative electronic and electroacoustic music studio that created the music and sound effects for such radio and TV shows as Dr Who, Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, The Changes, Blake’s 7, Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, Quatermass and the Pit, Goon Show, Planet Earth and various BBC for Schools programmes and idents – along the way helping to develop many early electronic music techniques, and promoting electronic music in the UK and abroad.

Happy Birthday Radiophonic Workshop! (63Mb, 94mins)

Tracklist:

• John Baker – Woman’s Hour (reading your letters)
• Delia Derbyshire – Happy Birthday
• Ray Cathode – Waltz In Orbit
• Brian Hodgson – Tardis
• Delia Derbyshire – Doctor Who
• John Baker – Festival Time
• David Cain – Radio Sheffield
• Delia Derbyshire – Door to Door
• Maddelena Fagandini – The Chem Lab Mystery
• John Baker – Time and Tune
• John Baker – New Worlds
• John Baker – John Baker Interview – Radio Nottingham
• John Baker – Dial M For Murder
• John Baker – The Chase
• Delia Derbyshire – Mattachin
• John Baker – Factors
• Delia Derbyshire – Environmental Studies
• John Baker – Scene (Never Never)
• Delia Derbyshire & Brian Hodgson – Lure Of The Space Goddess
• John Baker – Structures
• Glynis Johns – Veils and Mirrors
• John Baker – 20th Century Focus
• Glynis Jones – Schlum Rooli
• Dick Mills – Dandelion Countdown (Pictures in Your Mind)
• Paddy Kingsland – Scene & Heard
• Paddy Kingsland – Colour Radio
• Paddy Kingsland – The Changes (Suite)
• John Baker – Brio
• John Baker – Barnacle Bill
• Malcolm Clarke – Bath Time
• Paddy Kingsland – Brighton Pier
• Dick Mills – Seascape
• Peter Howell and Dick Mills – Fancy Fish (“Aquarium”)
• Paddy Kingsland- The Whale
• Malcolm Clarke – The Milonga
• Peter Howell – Greenwich Chorus
• Tomorrow’s World
• Jonathan Gibbs – Computer in the Real World
• Elizabeth Parker – Planet Earth (Scenes from “The Living Planet”)
• John Baker – The Invasion – Muzak II (from “Time in Advance”)
• Elizabeth Parker – The Lost Gardens of Heligan
• John Baker – Spin Off

BBC Radiophonic Workshop (something that regular listeners and readers to the show shouldn’t need any introduction to) hit 50 this year, and you might have seen or heard various events at the Electric Proms relating to this (listening to Coldcut remixing the works of the Workshop as I type this).

What you might not know is that next Monday 3rd November (despite what Stuart Maconie said on the Freak Zone) Mute are releasing a retrospective 2 CD set of the usually hard to find Radiophonic Workshop.


Even better – they’re re-releasing several album including the legendary pink album. This has been changing hands for upto £500 quid (!) as it was only briefly re-released in the early 2000′s. And another album of later work.

Don’t really have the money but guess what I’ve ordered!

Coincidentally I’m working on a Delia Derbyshire and Daphne Oram podcast for digitaldebris; so I will put out a show related to this, hopefully before 2008 is out!

If you don’t know of my love of Delia Derbyshire and the mostly unsung heroes of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, well then start here.

She produced and engineered the famous Dr Who theme (and if you watch the great Alchemists of Sound documentary, Ron Grainer asked  ‘Did I really write that?’ when he heard it, “Most of it” she replied, as she added a lot to his tune and was almost completely unrecognisable) and worked almost purely with tape, not synthesisers. So I’m amazed to find out via many blogs about the tapes she recorded, being catalogued by Manchester University which several excerpts the BBC has posted to hear – including a track which sounds like modern techno:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7512490.stm (someone tell the developers at the BBC of this new technology, it’s called ‘embedding’, it’s all the rage at this young whippersnapper upstart called YouTube).

Amazing stuff, so I want to call for this music to be released – either on CD or publically free – Delia deserves better than stuck in some library somewhere for the odd music historian to come across and the odd clip in TV shows. Sort it out! None of the posts or articles I’ve read, with glowing remarks from many people such as Phil Hartnoll from Orbital – mention what will happen to these tapes. In fact there’s been a dire lack of re-releases of all of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop tracks apart from a double CD set a BBC Records CD (which you can now buy for 85-100 quid it was so limited!) and some Warp 10″s which are equally rare in the early 00s – and some very limited re-releases on small labels such as Electrosonic or the Tomorrow’s People OST. No wonder people don’t know about her.

Isn’t it about time there was a full retrospective compilation CD of all her work? Say a Double or Triple CD Best of – surely all these radio plays, plays, tshirts, documentaries, songs and several sites about her should indicate there is a market for that? Add these new rare tapes and you could have a beautiful tribute to one of the most talented electronic musicians this country has produced. (And ignored).

Oh and Firefox 3 can suck my balls – doesn’t work with the editor in LJ and now WP 2.6. Crap. HTML links put in manually? How, err, sweet. Bless. So RETRO. *eyeroll* Sort it out Moz-developers!