I’ve been wandering around the history of electronic music recently, and spent a good deal of time dwelling on the work of Delia Derbyshire and the rest of the BBC Radiophonic workshop. My interest stemmed mostly from the incredible slew of releases and re-releases coming out of Trunk Records, the indisputable masters of this realm. Bernard Herrmann’s spectacular ‘The Day The Earth Stood Still‘ soundtrack, especially the pieces that include his theremin work, have contributed to my recent fascination with early electronics. Well, while “working’ today, I came across a wonderful BBC Four documentary covering the workshop, Alchemists of Sound, on the youtubes. Apparently the documentary hasn’t been released properly on dvd, so I don’t feel so guilty watching such a wonderful program for free. The documentary is a wonderful look back at the atmosphere within the BBC that allowed the Radiophonic Workshop to develop, and shortly after its creation, create some of the pioneering tape, electronic and experimental music of the era.
WFMU’s blog featured one of the more interesting snippets investigated by the AoS documentary, namely the otherworldly pop single from ‘Ray Cathode‘, an imaginary artist dreamed up by George Martin of the Radiophonic Workshop. The post includes mp3s for the A&B sides of that single, which has apparently become quite the collectible.
Before the video, I also just wanted to note for you, my non-existent readers & listeners, that I’ll be more active shortly. New show should be up shortly, with more postings coming on a regular basis from now on.
Radiophonic Workshop -Alchemists of Sound -Part 1 of 7:
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