This is the truly unique Oramics machine, designed by electronic music pioneer Daphne Oram. It will go on display at the Science Museum later this year. There was a great report on Friday’s PM programme about it.

Daphne Oram was a founding member of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop in 1958. There are many people that are called pioneers of electronic music. But Daphne Oram is surely one person that genuinely fits the bill.

Delia Derbyshire has a mass following for her work with the Radiophonic Workshop, and rightly so. But Daphne Oram, “the unsung pioneer of techno”, deserves just as much of a following.

The sounds that were made by Oram over 50 years ago — and the methods of making them — are almost unfathomable. The Oramics machine worked using “drawn sound”. The composer would feed a piece of music drawn on graph paper into the machine, which would then convert it into its signature otherworldly, haunting sounds. Daphne Oram thought of herself as “a ‘painter’ in sound”.

A couple of years ago a 2CD set of Daphne Oram’s work, called Oramics, was released. If you are interested in electronic music, I would strongly recommend you check it out.

Update: There is now an article about Daphne Oram on the BBC News website, complete with video and the full original radio report.

Warp20

A series of posts

1. 20 years of Warp Records
2. 20 Warp albums — part 1
3. 20 Warp albums — part 2
4. 20 Warp albums — part 3
5. 20 Warp albums — part 4
6. 20 Warp albums — part 5
7. Warp20 (Box Set)

This is the fourth group Warp albums that I am looking at, celebrating 20 years of the seminal record label. To read the other parts of this series, check out the table of contents on the right.

Pulp — Intro

Surprised? Not many people know that Pulp were given a substantial leg-up by the people behind Warp Records. In fairness, Intro technically isn’t a Warp album. It was released by Island, but is a compilation of the EPs and singles that were released on Gift Records, a spin-off of Warp.

Today, Warp would have no qualms about releasing music by a band like Pulp. But this was way back in 1992, before the “sacrilege” of releasing guitar bands was ever considered by Warp. It didn’t fit, but they wanted to help out their fellow Sheffielders.

Jarvis Cocker had already directed a couple of videos for Warp, and Pulp were stuck in a record deal that wouldn’t work for them. So Gift Records was set up to help Pulp on their way to becoming household names. Gift did release music by other indie bands, but none nearly as notable as Pulp. In the words of Steve Beckett, once Pulp signed to Island, “there really wasn’t any reason to keep [Gift] going.”

Intro is of rather variable quality — not as good as their later albums, but clearly much more accomplished than their previous albums. Indeed, the reason the album was called Intro was to obfuscate the existence of the earlier material.

Signing Pulp was a masterstroke on the part of Warp. Given the band’s past record, as a patchy art school-style rock band which had been around for far too long without notable success, other record companies wouldn’t touch Pulp with a bargepole. But Warp / Gift caught them when they were on the upturn, ready to become one of the best bands of the 1990s.

While parts of Intro lack polish, it also contains some of the band’s strongest material including ‘Babies’, arguably their best song.

Autechre — Confield

Electronic music peaked here. Everything since has been a disappointment. I think this album an extraordinary achievement.

In one sense, Confield may look like a natural progression of Autechre’s sound. They had spent the late 1990s gradually moving away from the ambient and more club-friendly sound of their early days, choosing to become increasingly esoteric and experimental. But even against that backdrop, Confield was a massive leap. It also stands out from their subsequent material, which has been slightly more accessible.

For this reason Confield was, and in many ways still is, a controversial album. When people talk about Warp artists being wilfully difficult, they probably have a album precisely like Confield in mind. I won’t pretend that I found this an easy album to get into. Anything but.

However, I am mighty glad I persevered with it. What at first sounds like an overly complex, jumbled mess eventually starts to make perfect sense after a few listens. Moreover, the music is so full of intricacy and detail, ensuring that the album is a fascinating listen. Even today I will spot new little details that I had never heard before.

Autechre’s music is highly unconventional, yet it somehow all makes perfect sense. For this reason, Autechre have probably done more than almost anything else to change the way I think about music.

At first glance, Confield is a very serious-sounding album; quite chin-strokey. The opening track ‘VI Scose Poise’ is particularly detatched-sounding. But this album is not without its fun moments.

Autechre’s heavy hip-hop influence is fully in evidence in ‘Pen Expers’. This track which begins with a very dense rhythmic cacophony, which gradually — almost invisibly, as though it is the audio equivalent of a Magic Eye puzzle — makes way for an intense, triumphant melody.

My highlight, though, is ‘Cfern’. It sounds like a fantasy jazz piece from 200 years in the future. I think I particularly like this track because it almost sounds like it could be performed live. I was delighted to find out recently that the avant-garde ensemble Alarm Will Sound has recently released a live version of the piece. It sounds absolutely remarkable. I have embedded the original version below.

Plaid — Double Figure

For me, Plaid have a tendency to be formulaic. That is not in the sense that their music is similar to other people’s, but that they seem to have a set template which they work around. They sort of get away with it though, because even though their music often sounds strangely similar to older tracks of theirs, it is still good.

But Double Figure doesn’t have that sense around it. I don’t think to myself, “hmm, I’ve heard that before.” In fairness, maybe it’s because this was the first Plaid album I bought.

But I continue to get immense pleasure from listening to it. It starts off with the poignant track ‘Eyen’, which is arguably their best (and was featured in the Warp20 compilation). It sets a high bar for the rest of the album to reach, but it manages it. Plaid’s style — ambient-techno with a rather natural, almost tropical vibe — is unique and engaging, and it has never sounded stronger than on Double Figure.

It was during this period that they began collaborating with visual artist Bob Jaroc, with whom they later made the DVD release Greedy Baby. This is the video for the Double Figure track ‘New Family’:

LFO — Frequencies

I am slightly too young to remember Frequencies and the hit single ‘LFO’ when they were originally released. But it has gone down in history, and is frequently listed among the highlights of Warp’s 20 years, making it impossible for me to ignore.

Electronic music usually dates extraordinarily badly. But even though ‘LFO’ was released in 1990, it is still immensely exciting to listen to today, as is the rest of the album. It’s great to think that, once upon a time, this sort of music could be a massive hit. When it reached number 12 in the UK singles chart, Steve Wright declared it to be “the worst record ever”.

In that case you might say, mission accomplished. But LFO’s Mark Bell, while not being particularly prolific under the LFO moniker (there have only been two LFO albums since Frequencies), has gone on to become a well-regarded producer, regularly working with Björk.

Warp20

A series of posts

1. 20 years of Warp Records
2. 20 Warp albums — part 1
3. 20 Warp albums — part 2
4. 20 Warp albums — part 3
5. 20 Warp albums — part 4
6. 20 Warp albums — part 5
7. Warp20 (Box Set)

Continuing my look at 20 Warp albums from Warp’s 20 years. For other articles in this series, please see the table of contents to the right. Albums are presented in randomised order.

Broadcast — The Noise Made by People

This was the first Warp album I ever bought, and it remains a favourite of mine to this day. Broadcast’s music is heavily steeped in 1960s influence, and comparisons with Stereolab are commonplace (and not inaccurate). But they sound anything but derivative.

The Noise Made by People has a dark and slightly creepy aesthetic. Most of the album creeps along at a rather slow pace. Then there are Trish Keenan’s almost robotic vocals. The music itself — largely based on 1960s-style electronic instruments — could almost be transmitted directly from that decade, complete with unsettling background noise.

Put together, this all gives the music a rather otherworldly vibe. It is as though you are listening to a ghostly music that has been trapped in the airwaves since the 1960s and has only just escaped.

Funnily enough, the real life story of the recording of this album is similar to the picture I have just described. It is said that Broadcast struggled with the recording of the album, and it took three years to make. Perhaps this is another reason why it sounds clinical, though it’s all the more captivating for it.

Since The Noise Made by People, Broadcast have reduced in size to become just the core duo of Trish Keenan and James Cargill. In turn, the music has become less dense and more raw, and has lost the otherworldly qualities of their earlier material. Although Broadcast is still a good band, I feel that they were definitely at their peak with this album.

This video for ‘Come On Let’s Go’ captures the aesthetic of the album really well:

Tortoise — Standards

Many feel that Tortoise were at their strongest in the 1990s. I did not discover them until 2001, so maybe I am biased in that sense. But I think that the band was at the height of its creative powers with Standards.

Quite simply, it was one of the most unique-sounding albums I had ever heard and remains one of my favourite listens to this day. The effortless fusion of punchy rock, cutting-edge electronic music, multi-layered drumming and jazz makes this an extraordinarily bold album that captivates you from start to finish.

If ever there was an album that was definitively not just ‘going through the motions’, it is surely Standards — despite its title. This record documents Tortoise standing on the very edge of what is possible with rock music. I find it impossible to become bored of this album. There is so much going on in so many layers.

Each instrument would be fascinating to listen to on its own (this was proved when the rhythm section of Tortoise released an album of drums and little else called Bumps). Each band member is doing his own thing. And yet, everything here makes a perfect fit.

Nothing Tortoise have produced since then has come close to reaching the standard of Standards. But then again, few albums by any bad do.

This is the video for the attention-grabbing album opener, ‘Seneca’:

Seefeel – Succour

I only discovered this album a few years ago — probably over a decade after it was originally released. But I am glad I opted to buy it. The music is from the place where ambient, shoegaze, indie and techno all converge. The allure of Seefeel comes from its mixture of ambient-style drones and textures, techno-influenced minimalist drums and guitars, and the dreamy, processed vocals of singer Sarah Peacock.

Although superficially it feels like a pure techno / IDM album, the use of guitars and live drums was unusual for a Warp release at that time. This is what led Steve Beckett to recently single it out as “the first sacreligious move”.

Musically, Succour is a fabulous success. But if you thought this was the evidence that guitars could happily sit in a techno environment, think again. Apparently due to Mark Clifford’s efforts to push the band in a more electronic direction, the old artistic differences emerged and the band only lasted a few years after the release of Succour.

In a way, I feel as though I have missed out by not experiencing this music when it was first released. It must have been so incredibly exciting, at the cutting edge, when it was released. It would be interesting to hear what this band would come up with today.

Incredibly, Seefeel have recently re-formed. Initially this was for a one-off gig as part of the Warp20 celebrations. But there are now hints that Seefeel have also been in the studio. I can’t wait to hear any results that might come out of this.

Chris Morris — Blue Jam

Chris Morris, as one of Britain’s most influential satirists, probably needs little introduction. But few may immediately associate him with Warp Records. But Warp has been the outlet for a lot of his material, including the CD releases of the radio series On the Hour and his Bafta-winning short film My Wrongs #8245-8249 & 117 among other bits and pieces. Warp Films is also backing his current project, Four Lions.

But his first CD on Warp was a compilation of sketches from his experimental radio programme, Blue Jam (which was later turned into the television series Jam). This was a dark comedy, equal parts disturbing and funny. Unusually, the sketches were surrounded by a constant backdrop of ambient music (much of which was originally released on Warp) from the likes of Aphex Twin. Perhaps even more unusually, the show was originally broadcast on Radio 1. It inhabited a late-night slot which fitted with the programme’s surreal, woozy and nightmarish style.

The series contained a mixture of music and comedy; of the surreal and the disturbing; of sketches and monologues. Most of it was a world away from his previous material, though from time to time Morris would drop in one of his infamous interviews. Here, he flummoxes posthumous Diana biographer Andrew Morton.

Warp20

A series of posts

1. 20 years of Warp Records
2. 20 Warp albums — part 1
3. 20 Warp albums — part 2
4. 20 Warp albums — part 3
5. 20 Warp albums — part 4
6. 20 Warp albums — part 5
7. Warp20 (Box Set)

This is the first part of a series in which I will take a brief look at 20 albums from the first 20 years of Warp Records. These are not my 20 favourite Warp albums, or the 20 best Warp albums. But they are 20 of the most interesting — a showcase of the breadth and depth of Warp’s output. They are presented in a randomised order.

Red Snapper — Making Bones

Red Snapper stuck out like a sore thumb on Warp’s roster in the 1990s. While the label was still most famous for its studio-based techno output, Red Snapper are are live-oriented band with a more organic sound. But conventional they are not. Their sound is a heady mix of smoky jazz, funky dance and edgy hip-hop. Although they could be associated with the 1990s trip-hop trend, their music does not sound as dated as some of their contemporaries’.

Making Bones is a thrilling album. From the very first notes — the beefy and wobbly output of Ali Friend’s double bass — you are sucked in. There are high octane tracks like ‘Crease’ and ‘The Tunnel’, the cheeky and playful ‘Bogeyman’, and the more emotional ’4 Dead Monks’.

Red Snapper produced another strong album, Our Aim is to Satisfy Red Snapper, before splitting up in 2002. Happily, last year they re-formed and have already released an EP. They still sound as exciting as they used to.

This video is for one of the singles from Making Bones, ‘Image of You’.

Brothomstates — Claro

Claro was one of the very first IDM albums I bought, and to this day it remains one of my very favourites. He recognises that interesting techno music is not just about making it a bit glitchy-sounding or giving it a funny time signature. There are interesting and unusual sounds and complex drumbeats. But it is still very firmly a dance album, very much in the groove.

Although the experimental rhythms and sounds are very exciting, it is the melodic basis of the music that makes Claro so special. The floaty, ambient, slow-moving melodies sound as though they are being carried by an icy wind. Coupled with what some might consider to be the clinical rhythms, this gives the album quite a wintry feel. This wintry vibe is reflected on the album’s cover, which depicts a rather cold-looking beach. It could as well be my local beach in Kirkcaldy for all I know.

But I call this album wintry, not cold. It is certainly not cold in the sense of emotionless. In fact, the album is packed full of emotion. An album true to the promise of Warp’s Artificial Intelligence project, which posited that electronic by no means lacks feeling.

It is cheesy and clichéd to compare other IDM artists to Autechre. But I will do it. I think Claro, and its accompanying EP Qtio, is the closest anyone has come to matching the sheer awesomeness of Autechre’s best output. For me, the greatest shame is that Brothomstates, real name Lassi Nikko, does not appear to be interested in extending his legacy. Claro was released in 2001, but he has not released another album since, only popping up with the one-off ‘Rktic’ single and a solitary split EP with Blamstrain.

Here is a fan-made video for ‘Kava’:

Boom Bip — Seed to Sun

Technically, this isn’t a Warp album. It was released on Warp’s spin-off hip-hop label, Lex Records (which is now independent of Warp). Seed to Sun was one of the label’s first releases, and arguably remains one of its best.

It presented a fresh, experimental perspective on hip-hop. Boom Bip emerged at the same sort of time as cLOUDDEAD and the Anticon phenomenon, and with a similar outlook. The music is a thrilling fusion of hip-hop, electronic music and alternative rock.

The artwork is fantastic. Like Warp, Lex has a very distinctive visual identity. But while Warp’s was largely shaped by The Designers Republic, Lex opted for the distinctive style of EH Question Mark. All I can say is, this album has the best barcode ever.

This is a collaboration with Dose One, ‘Mannequin Hand Trapdoor I Reminder’:

Squarepusher — Ultravisitor

I was always a little bit iffy about Squarepusher. I wasn’t sure whether I liked him or not. But then Ultravisitor came out, and there was simply no getting away from the fact that Tom Jenkinson is the real deal; a true genius.

Squarepusher’s multi-talent genre-spanning skills were already well known. He has produced excellent albums covering a wide territory. Madcap drum and bass heavily influenced by jazz. Virtuoso bass guitar playing and drumming in addition to his electronic production skills. Then, with Go Plastic, a brief flash of an incredible vision of the a darkly experimental garage music of the future (a precursor to dubstep?).

With Ultravisitor, he moved up a notch by combining all of his skills in all of these genres in one massive album. What Ultravisitor exhibits which his previous albums did not is a heavy prog influence, something which has remained in all of Squarepusher’s subsequent albums.

Something else which makes this album special is the fact that is merges live performances (you can clearly hear the crowd in some tracks) with his studio-based work. This brings the listener into a strange dimension, combining the rawness and intensity of the live performance with the depth and intricacy of the studio output. It is an unusual technique, but strangely it is not unsettling and somehow makes perfect sense. It certainly gives Ultravisitor a unique ambience.

You can hear all of these elements on this incredible track, ‘Tetra-Sync’, probably the best track Squarepusher has made to date.

Warp20

A series of posts

1. 20 years of Warp Records
2. 20 Warp albums — part 1
3. 20 Warp albums — part 2
4. 20 Warp albums — part 3
5. 20 Warp albums — part 4
6. 20 Warp albums — part 5
7. Warp20 (Box Set)

This month the seminal Warp Records label is celebrating its 20th anniversary. There is a heap of festivities planned, and I am expectantly waiting for the very awesome looking Warp20 box set to arrive in the next week or so.

They have a lot to celebrate. The label has personified the cutting-edge of electronic music for most of its existence. Few labels can claim to have been so seminal, and remain so strong for so long.

I discovered Warp at the beginning of this decade. I had already been developing a taste for experimental and electronic music, but before getting internet access I had no way to explore it. I had heard bits and bobs about Warp, but my first real exposure was when I saw the band Broadcast on one of those late-night music programmes on Channel 4. I remember very little about it, but I think the song that mesmerised me so much must have been ‘Illumination’. Here is a video of the band performing it live in 2005.

Once we got the internet, I was able to explore further. When I visited the Warp Records website, ‘Eros’ by Tortoise was playing on its front page. It was one of the most amazing and unique things I had ever heard.

The mixture of soaring sci-fi electronic sounds, intricate multi-layered drumming and funky guitar playing transformed my expectations of what music could achieve. Compared to the standardised indie-rock I had previously been listening to, hearing something as distinctive as this was an utter revelation.

I knew I had to continue on the path of discovery. Given that Tortoise shared the same label as Broadcast, there could be no starting point other than Warp. I was also quickly. attracted by Warp’s striking visual identity, which was largely shaped by The Designers Republic.

As I investigated the artists of Warp on the label’s website, I was surprised and delighted to discover a huge variety of new (to me) and exciting music. It is no surprise that today many of my favourite albums are ones released by Warp in 2001, when I was 14 and discovering all this amazing, diverse music.

But the Warp I discovered was already very different to the Warp that began in 1989. Back then, the promise of label founders Steve Beckett and Rob Mitchell was for the Sheffield-based Warp to be a “recognised, credible, uncompromising dance label”. Inevitably though, a label cannot survive 20 years without evolving.

Between 1992 and 1994 the label released the seminal series of albums including the eponymous compilation Artificial Intelligence. The idea behind the series was to showcase “electronic listening music” which designed more for home listening than the dancefloor, or more for your head than your body. This series contained music by musicians that were later to become huge: Richard D James (best known as Aphex Twin), Autechre, Black Dog Productions (containing the members of Plaid), Alex Paterson (from The Orb), Richie Hawtin among others.

The cover of Artificial Intelligence depicts a robot reclining in an armchair with copies of Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon and Kraftwerk’s Autobahn lying on the floor — an indication of Warp’s ambitions. The label became the most famous outlet of what is known as Intelligent Dance Music or IDM.

The IDM moniker makes everyone cringe. Few of the best IDM artists think of themselves as IDM, and the artists that describe themselves as IDM are usually not worth listening to. Musically, it might be fair to describe it as dance music’s equivalent of progressive rock. It was the necessary next step, but is denigrated by those who think it is too pretentious and impossible to enjoy.

Like prog rock, IDM had a limited shelf-life and it peaked around the turn of the decade. Electronic music as a whole is not the money-maker it once was. So Warp have further diversified. In the words of Steve Beckett, “probably the first sacrilegious move” was to sign Seefeel in the mid-1990s. They are a more conventional band with guitars and drums, associated with shoegaze as much as techno.

More non-techno artists followed, including the jazzy trip-hop act Red Snapper, 1960s-influenced Broadcast and, er, the downright odd Jimi Tenor (I never really got that one). There was also an increased focus on hip-hop with the likes of Prefuse 73 and the Antipop Consortium. Later, there was a distinctive move towards more conventional rock. This was most notable, controversial and successful with the chart-friendly indie-rock band Maxïmo Park.

Today Warp has artists as diverse as its history suggests. It probably remains best-known for electronic music leaders such as Aphex Twin, Autechre, Boards of Canada and Squarepusher. But on the same roster you can find electro-rock shape-shifters Battles, folk-rock bands like Grizzly Bear, the increasingly soul-oriented Jamie Liddell, hip-hopper Prefuse 73, indie band Maxïmo Park and even the satirist Chris Morris. Oh, and in addition to music they also now make films.

This diversity has been good and bad. Undoubtedly Warp lost its way a bit a few years ago as it struggled to find its feet after electronic music waned in popularity. But even after twenty years, Warp remains a path-finding label that anyone interested in experimental pop music should keep an eye on.

When I discovered Warp in 2001, the range of styles on offer was already massive. But each artist was notable for being interesting and innovative. It was easy to view the Warp label as a mark of quality, no matter what the genre was.

Long may it continue. There is absolutely no question that Warp Records transformed my outlook on music more than anything else. I am looking forward to the next 20 years of innovative music.

Over the next week or so I will write about 20 of the most interesting Warp albums from its 20 year history.

My interest in graphic design is not particularly heavy. But the interest I do have in it has all stemmed from my exposure to the work of The Designers Republic. Their work was usually bold and eye-catching; unconventional and experimental. It is exactly the sort of thing I appreciate in all forms of art. They were sometimes uncompromisingly experimental, yet they made it make sense. Their designs were often beautiful and pleasing.

My first exposure to the work of The Designers Republic was probably the elements of Pulp’s visual identity, which tDR produced when the band was at the height of its powers. Like Pulp, The Designers Republic was proud of its Sheffield roots and would often reference the area in its work.

Later, I would come across The Designers Republic again when it created the visual atmosphere for the wipEout series of futuristic racing games. wip3out in particular was exquisitely presented. Even though “futuristic” design typically dates horrendously, ten years on I think wip3out stands the test of time fairly well. To this day it remains my favourite video game ever.

This video below contains the intro sequence to wip3out, introducing the player to the industrial urban world of 2116 and the (anti-gravity) F7200 Race League. There are also striking corporate identities for each of the fictitious teams. There follows a spot of gameplay — a short eliminator round at the Mega Mall circuit — which shows just how important The Designers Republic’s influence was to the game.

An archived version of the wip3out website, also designed by tDR, is still available to browse.

The earlier wipEout games do not stand the test of time quite so well. Perhaps because it used very similar designs throughout the early-to-mid 1990s, most notably for the band Pop Will Eat Itself, the style seems firmly rooted in the 1990s.

My exposure to tDR’s work increased when became interested in electronic music, particularly the output of Warp Records. Warp’s striking visual identity was one of the things that attracted me to the label, and it was a perfect fit for the experimental, forward-looking techno music that Warp used to specialise in.

Like tDR, Warp has its roots in Sheffield, so the original relationship was one of expediency. But the fit was so good that in a lot of ways Warp and tDR are inseparably intertwined in the eyes of some. But in later years, tDR designed very few record sleeves for Warp at all.

In fact, the only one from recent years that I can think of is the artwork for Autechre’s Quaristice, which was recently featured in the excellent music artwork blog Sleevage. The extravagant brushed steel limited edition of Quaristice was probably the last tDR-designed product that I bought. It is a truly exquisite piece of work. I have my own photos of it, but the photographs on Sleevage give a much better idea of the stunning quality of it.

But it was difficult to escape the fact that tDR was producing less and less for one of its most iconic clients. In fact, I had knowingly seen hardly any tDR work at all over the past few years, and a lot of people came to see tDR as lazy. Sometimes their work was a bit too minimalist, to a cheeky extent (see, for instance, the track-by-track artwork for Quaristice).

But a number of their designs were very striking, and I own a lot of t-shirts that were designed by tDR. Since being exposed to their work I have made a conscious effort to make anything I design (like this blog) look good. For a brief period of my life, I even seriously considered going into graphic design as a career (before concluding that I probably wouldn’t be any good at it).

Even though The Designers Republic closed down this month, its influence will always be felt. tDR spawned a million copycats, and the course of artwork related to electronic music in particular has been changed forever by tDR.

Anyway, many of tDR’s best designers over the years have moved on (see, for instance, Universal Everything or Build). And tDR’s founder, Ian Anderson, has pledged that it will return in some form or another. The Designers Republic is dead, long live The Designers Republic indeed.

• The Designers Republic website
• Pho-Ku (archived tDR work)

Over the years, tDR has produced some of my favourite album artwork. I’ve gathered some of them below the fold.

Autechre — Envane (can you spot which famous piece of architecture this is based on?)

Autechre — EP7

Brothomstates — Claro

LFO — Sheath (which appropriately came packaged in a sheath)

Various artists — Warp 10+1: Influences

Jarvis — The Jarvis Cocker Record

Aphex Twin — Windowlicker

Supergrass — Life on Other Planets

Plaid — Spokes

Luke Vibert — YosepH

BBC Radiophonic Workshop after 50 years

A series of posts

1. Fifty years of Radiophonic influence
2. Radiophonic re-releases

One of the Radiophonic Workshop’s most famous composers, Delia Derbyshire, left in the early 1970s partly in dismay at the increasing popularity of synthesisers. Disillusioned with the state of electronic music, she soon stopped composing music altogether, only returning to the scene briefly for a couple of years just before her death in 2001.

In recent times, Delia Derbyshire has probably attracted more attention than any other Radiophonic Workshop composer. But during her life it can’t have felt like that. One story often told is that of her application to work as an engineer at Decca, only to be rejected because Decca did not employ women in their studios.

Meanwhile, she received no official credit for realising perhaps the most famous piece of electronic music in the world, the Doctor Who theme tune. It was her job to convert Ron Grainer’s ideas into an electronic composition, and the result stunned Grainer so much that he insisted that Derbyshire share the credit. The BBC wouldn’t allow it.

But while recognition of her talent largely deserted her during her life, today people are well aware of her important contributions to the development of electronic music. There is a near obsessive clamour for any Delia Derbyshire material that can be unearthed.

Earlier this year a library record called Electrosonic was reissued on CD. Along with Li De la Russe (the pseudonym sometimes used by Delia Derbyshire outside of her BBC work), music on the record was also composed Nikki St. George (fellow Radiophonic Workshop composer Brian Hodgson) and Don Harper — not that you’d know it from most references to the album that I have come across. All retailers are listing it as being by Delia Derbyshire. Quibble aside though, there are some real gems on this album, with my favourite track being the delightfully eccentric ‘The Wizard’s Laboratory’.

Tantalisingly, it was revealed this year that 267 tapes from Delia Derbyshire’s attic have been unearthed. There is a promise to “make the archive available to everyone who wants to hear it”.

Appetites have been whetted by the publication on the BBC website of some of the unearthed recordings. Among them is a spellbinding piece of music that sounds quite like a contemporary experimental techno track. Orbital’s Paul Hartnoll noted, “That could be coming out next week on Warp Records.” Amazing for a recording that is almost certainly around forty years old. Nonetheless, Delia Derbyshire comes across as dismissive on the recording itself, saying, “forget about this — it’s for interest only.”

Meanwhile, a couple of CDs of music from Doctor Who were re-released this year. Delia Derbyshire, of course, provided the theme tune(s), though little in the way of effects or incidental music. Most of that was provided by Brian Hodgson, whose works make up the bulk of Doctor Who at the BBC Radiophonic Workshop: Volume 1: The Early Years 1963-1969. For the most part, this disc is less musical, though no less enjoyable for it.

On Volume 2: New Beginnings 1970-1980, the centrepiece is the series of music created by Malcolm Clarke on the “Delaware” synthesiser in which he specialised. This was the first time the Radiophonic Workshop “officially” created music for the series. The result is quite extraordinary — a set of stabbing, piercing, esoteric electronics that sound like the output of someone working in an extra dimension. It’s all the more amazing considering how weedy the Delaware version of the Doctor Who theme sounds.

The sleevenotes describe it as “undoubtedly some of the most uncompromising electronic music ever to feature in mainstream popular entertainment.” It is certainly hard to imagine today’s Doctor Who featuring such adventurous music.

The album is completed by the inclusion of Peter Howell’s 1980 version of the Doctor Who theme — a nod to a new era that is more fully examined in volumes 3 and 4 (not yet re-released). Of all the tweaks and alternate versions of the legendary theme, Howell’s is probably the most successful with the exception of Delia Derbyshire’s original.

Also re-released this year were old compilations The Radiophonic Workshop and BBC Radiophonic Music, the legendary “pink album”.

But among my favourite Radiophonic Workshop-related treats released this year were two CDs comprised of music by John Baker. His brother, the broadcaster Richard Anthony Baker, owned several reels of tapes containing rare John Baker music going back as far as the 1960s. Fearing that these historical tapes would otherwise have been consigned to the dustbin, Richard Baker passed the tapes on so that they could be painstakingly restored. The two volumes of The John Baker Tapes were released on Trunk Records this year.

John Baker was in fact trained as a jazz musician, but ended up in the BBC Radiophonic Workshop as a result of his interest in tape effects. In the words of Radiophonic Workshop archivist Mark Ayres, he could “make musique concrète swing”. A couple of common themes to his music is the twanging sound of a ruler being transformed into some exotic kind of guitar, and inventive uses of glass bottles.

Working there from 1963 until 1974, John Baker became one of the Workshop’s most prolific composers. But in addition to his work for the BBC, he earned about three times as much making music for commercials and suchlike. All the while he was using complex tape manipulation techniques, the main avenue of electronic music exploration prior to the widespread availability of the synthesiser.

The workload began to take its toll, and John Baker became dependent on alcohol. The BBC persevered with him for a few years, but he was eventually dismissed in 1974, partly because his music had also become weirder and less popular. Like Delia Derbyshire, he made very little music after leaving the Radiophonic Workshop.

Volume 1 of The John Baker Tapes focuses on his work for the Radiophonic Workshop, while volume 2 contains his other work. In addition to his delightful music, there are some wonderful behind-the-scenes gems. You hear John Baker describing the process behind how he made two of his pieces. Volume 2 is peppered with strange electronic experiments that were done at home, along with some wonderful recordings of his jazz piano playing.

The disc concludes with his obituary as broadcast by Richard Anthony Baker on BBC Radio 5 Live’s Brief Lives. More touching, though, is the obituary he wrote for the sleevenotes, which you can also read online. The CDs also come with rare photographs of John Baker and notes for each track. The CDs are both exquisitely packaged, with a beautiful 1960s-influenced design.

One CD I’m waiting to get my hands on is Oramics, a collection of music by the pioneering co-founder of the Radiophonic Workshop, Daphne Oram. I can hardly wait to hear it.

Radiophonic Workshop resources

• Wikipedia (of course)
• BBC News Magazine: Four sound effects that made TV history — watch Dick Mills and Mark Ayres reminisce and re-create famous Radiophonic Workshop sound effects!
• The History of the Radiophonic Workshop
• Delia Derbyshire: An audiological chronography
• The Mark Ayres Doctor Who pages

I also got a lot of the information contained in these two posts from an edition of the Stuart Maconie’s Freak Zone podcast, ‘FreakZone: 26/10/08 The Radiophonic Workshop Special’. It’s not available from the BBC any more, but if you can find it elsewhere I highly recommend it.