Delia in 1965
Delia in Pink
| Europe: delia-derbyshire.dyndns.org | America: delia-derbyshire.ecol.net |
Version 2.24, 21 October 2008
(what's new?)
| Contents |
Delia in 1965 |
Delia in Pink |
Although her revolutionary sounds are familiar to over a hundred million people through the theme to the television series "Doctor Who" and the seminal album of 1969 "An Electric Storm" she was hardly ever credited and her name is almost unknown. The bulk of her musical production and atmospheric sound for television and radio programmes is on tape in the BBC Sound Archives. Her own personal collection of tapes was also consigned to the archive on her death and since then only three new tracks have been released on compilation albums with music from other composers. Most will probably never be heard again. A catalogue was made of the Archives, but it has not been published.
I compiled this chrononology of what I could find of Delia Derbyshire's music entirely from material found on the web. There is almost nothing new here! For biographical material and lists of commercial albums containing her music consult the canonical site delia-derbyshire.org.
Where I have been able to find a date the order here is chronological, though for many pieces I have only seen a passing mention of their existence and have had to guess roughly where to insert them into the list. Others are inserted at random. I am always pleased to receive suggestions for better ordering, or news of other material of which I am ignorant, as well as reports of errors in the site contents, however minor.
Martin Guy, <martinwguy@yahoo.it>
Actually there is a tiny bit of new stuff here:
"I was always into the theory of sound even in the 6th form. The physics
teacher refused to teach us acoustics but I studied it myself and did very
well. It was always a mixture of the mathematical side and music. Also,
Radio had been my love since childhood because I came from just a humble
background with relatively few books and radio was my education. It was
always my little ambition to get into the BBC.
The only way into the workshop was to be a trainee studio
manager. This is because the workshop was purely a service department
for drama. The BBC made it quite clear that they didn't employ composers
and we weren't supposed to be doing music."
--Delia, in the
Hutton interview, 24 Feb 2000
Delia joined the BBC Radiophonic Workshop in 1962.
Delia at the Workshop |
Delia's BBC Studio |
Delia cutting tape |
BBC Radiophonic Workshop 21 BBC Records & Tapes, REC354 (1979) Tracks by Delia: 12. Time On Our Hands, 1962 13. Arabic Science and History, 1962 15. Know Your Car, 1963 16. Dr. Who, 1963 20. Talk Out, 1964 21. Science and Health, 1964 24. A New View of Politics, 1966 25. Environmental Studies, 1969 26. Chronicle, 1969 27. Great Zoos of the World, 1969 |
"One of her earliest contributions - "Time On Our Hands" - is a
superb subversion of a phrase which would normally evoke (especially
in the context of 1962) new-found affluence, spare time and leisure,
now rendered alienated, distant and isolated."
--Robin Carmody, 11th July / 16th October 2000
Released on "BBC Radiophonic Workshop 21" by BBC Records & Tapes, REC354
(1979).
It also gets called "Arabic Science and Industry".
Released on "BBC Radiophonic Workshop 21" by BBC Records & Tapes,
REC354 (1979).
"a devastatingly effective appropriation of the 1930s hit
"Get Out And Get Under"."
--Robin Carmody, 11th July / 16th October 2000
The original song was by Maurice Abrahms.
Released on "BBC Radiophonic Workshop 21" by BBC Records & Tapes,
REC354 (1979).
"Her recording of Ron Grainer's Doctor Who theme, one of the most famous and instantly recognisable TV themes ever" and ranked as the 76th greatest song of the '60s on the music site Pitchfork.
"In those days people were so cynical about electronic music and so
Doctor Who was my private delight. It proved them all wrong."
--Delia in 1993, according to
The
Millenium Effect
"On the score he'd written "sweeps", "swoops"... beautiful
words... "wind cloud", "wind bubble"... so I got to work and put it
together and when Ron heard the results.. oh he was tickled pink!"
--Delia, in the Boazine interview
"She used concrete sources and sine- and square-wave oscillators,
tuning the results, filtering and treating, cutting so that the
joins were seamless, combining sound on individual tape recorders,
re-recording the results, and repeating the process, over and over
again. When Grainer heard the result, his response was "Did I really
write that?" "Most of it," Delia replied.
--Brian Hodgson
Dick Mills, who helped Delia create the piece, says:
"We started with the bass line. You know those 19-inch jack-bay panels?
You could get blank panels too, to fill in between them. They were slightly
flexible, so Delia found one that made a good musical twang and played it
with her thumb. We recorded it then vari-speeded up and down to different
pitches, copied them across to another tape recorder, then made hundreds of
measured tape edits to give it the rhythm."
And what was the main tune played on? "It was just a load of oscillators
-- signal generators -- that someone had connected to a little keyboard,
one for each note."
But what about that distinctive portamento? "Well, you just twiddled the
frequency knob, of course -- how else?"
Eventually, after some pre-mixing, the elements of the entire composition
existed on three separate reels of tape, which had to be run somehow together
in sync. "Crash-sync'ing the tape recorders was Delia's speciality," says Dick.
"We had three big Phillips machines and she could get them all to run exactly
together. She'd do: one, two, three, go! -- start all three machines, then
tweak until they were exactly in sync, just like multitrack. But with
Doctor Who we had a bum note somewhere and couldn't find it! It wasn't
that a note was out of tune -- there was just one little piece of tape too many,
and it made the whole thing go out of sync. Eventually, after trying for ages,
we completely unwound the three rolls of tape and ran them all side by side
for miles -- all the way down the big, long corridor in Maida Vale.
We compared all three, matching the edits, and eventually found the point where
one tape got a bit longer. When we took that splice out it was back in sync, so
we could mix it all down."
--Steve Marshall interviewing Dick Mills,
"BBC
Radiophonic Workshop" in Sound On Sound magazine, April 2008.
"I did the Dr Who theme music mostly on the Jason valve
oscillators. Ron Grainer brought me the score. He expected to hire a
band to play it, but when he heard what I had done electronically,
he'd never imagined it would be so good. He offered me half of the
royalties, but the BBC wouldn't allow it. I was just on an assistant
studio manager's salary and that was it... and we got a free Radio
Times. The boss wouldn't let anybody have any sort of credit."
--Delia, in
the Hutton interview
"I think every time a new producer came or a new director
came they wanted to tart it up, the title music and they wanted
to put an extra two bars here, put some extra feedback on the high
frequencies. They kept on tarting it up out of existence. I was really
very shocked at what I had to do in the course of so-called duty."
--Delia, in
the BBC Scotland interview.
For a detailed history of its reworking see
"incredible, based almost entirely on studio-recorded voices around 26 seconds of electronic delicacy."
--Robin Carmody, 11th July / 16th October 2000
Released on "BBC Radiophonic Workshop 21" by BBC Records & Tapes, REC354 (1979)
"a succession of tumbling chords, descending with an elegance beyond almost anyone else."
--Robin Carmody, 11th July / 16th October 2000
Released on "BBC Radiophonic Workshop 21" by BBC Records & Tapes,
REC354 (1979).
Derbyshire also worked on Roberto Gerhard's Anger of Achilles,
which won the
Prix Italia
"RAI prize for literary or dramatic programmes with or without music".
An article at
the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid says:
Gerhard put together many works for tape at his house in Cambridge but processed them and did the final mix at the BBC Radiophonic Workshop in London. His first work was the 1954 incidental music for Bridget Boland's The Prisoner for chamber orchestra and tape [. . .] and he would be honoured with the Prix Italia in 1965 for The Anger of Achilles for orchestra and tape, created and presented by the BBC.
The BBC Programme Catalogue describes the work as an
"epic for radio in three parts by Robert Graves, from his translation
of Homer's Iliad. [. . .]
Music specially composed for the programme by Roberto Gerhard,
with special effects by the B.B.C. Radiophonic Workshop."
Part I was
first
broadcast 17 May 1964.
"Her collaborations with the poet and dramatist Barry Bermange for
the Third Programme showed her at her elegant best. He put together
The Dreams (1964), a collage of people describing their dreams.
It was set by Delia into a background of pure electronic sound."
--Brian Hodgson
They are listed in
the
doollee.com article on Barry Bermange.
"This programme of sounds and voices is an attempt to re-create in
five movements some sensations of dreaming - running away, falling,
landscape, underwater and colour. All the voices were recorded from
life (by Barry Bermange) and arranged in a setting of pure electronic
sounds." (RT) -Produced by David Thomson.
Note also BBC RADIO 3 19.10.93 "Between the Ears: The Dreams by
Barry Bermange An invention for radio: people talking about recurring
elements in their dreams; ethereal electronic sounds. Introduced by
Mark Russell in conversation with Barry Bermange."
--Nigel Deacon
"Part of the four programme "Inventions for Radio" series,
created in collaboration with Barry Bermange, Dreams is a collection
of spliced/reassembled interviews with people describing their
dreams. Delia's editing and repetition, together with her dissonant,
often terrifying musique concrete soundbeds, make this distinctly
uneasy bedtime listening. The entire piece is 45 minutes in length."
-- delia-derbyshire.org
It also gets called "Within Dreams".
Broadcast
5 Jan 1964 on the Third Programme and
21:45-22:45 19 Oct 1993 on BBC Radio 3.
"A second invention for radio by Barry Bermange, in collaboration
with the B.B.C.'s Radiophonic Workshop, with talk recorded in
co-operation with the Old People's Welfare Council, Hornsey. Producer:
David Thomson. An attempt to describe God in human terms, and to
create, in the manner of a religious painting, an overall impression
of man's love for Him. The voices were recorded from life and arranged
by the author in a setting of radiophonic sound. Plainsong Antiphon
John Hahessy (boy soprano) - unacc. 16-Nov-1964."
--Nigel Deacon
"In a second 1964 Bermange piece about people's experience of God
and the devil, Amor Dei, he asked her to create a gothic altarpiece
of sound. She composed this with snippets of archive and voices,
again with only the simplest of equipment and facilities, often
working through the night, for weeks on end."
--Brian Hodgson
"He drew me a beautiful Gothic altar piece and said 'that's the sort of sound
I want'"
--Delia, cited by Mike Brown
A shortened version was played in the Unit Delta Plus Concert of Electronic
Music, Watermill Theatre, Bagnor, 10th September 1966:
"The foreground speech was recorded from life, the recordings being subsequently edited and re-arranged though not in any way electronically treated. The composition of the music was done by electronic means using voices as a basic element."
--from the Watermill Theatre Farm concert programme
The British Library Sound Archive has a recording of this,
with catalogue number T1604R BD 1, which can be heard
for free by going to the British Library in London.
Broadcast by the BBC Third Programme on
16
November 1964.
"The third in a cycle of inventions for radio by Barry Bermange,
in collaboration with the BBC's Radiophonic Workshop. Produced by
David Thomson. "This programme is an attempt to reconstruct in sound
the spiritualistic vision of Death and Eternity. It is conceived
as a dream of Death. Using the montage process of his earlier
programmes, 'The Dreams' and 'Amor Dei', the author has arranged in
settings of electronic sound a collection of voices recorded from
life. There are four movements." Radio Times. "Actuality" voices
recorded in co-operation with the Old People's Welfare Council,
Hornsey. 1-Apr-1965."
--Nigel Deacon
Broadcast
1
April 1965.
"A fourth invention for radio by Barry Bermange in collaboration with
the B.B.C.'s Radiophonic Workshop.
An attempt to reconstruct with sounds and voices some of the hazards of growing old."
Broadcast
15
September 1965.
I have no date for the next 13 pieces
so I've placed them here in the mid-sixties.
Please get in touch if you know more about any of them.
BBC Radiophonic Music "The Pink Album" BBC Records REC25M (1971, 2003) and REC25MCD (2002, remastered by Mark Ayres with 2 extra tracks) Tracks by Delia: 4. Mattachin 5. Pot Au Feu 9. Blue Veils And Golden Sands 15. The Delian Mode 16* Happy Birthday 21. Ziwzih Ziwzih OO-OO-OO 24. Towards Tomorrow 28. Door To Door 32. Air 33* Time To Go *) Two extra tracks on REC25MCD |
Music From The BBC Radiphonic Workshop "The Rephlex Album" Rephlex CAT147LP (2003), 4 x 10" E.P. A1 Mattachin A2 Happy Birthday A3 Air A4 Ziwzih Ziwzih Oo-Oo-Oo A5 Door To Door A6 Pot Au Feu A7 Time To Go B1 Blue Veils And Golden Sands B2 The Delian Mode B3 Towards Tomorrow |
"a fine reworking / extension of the structure of her "Talk Out"."
--Robin Carmody, 11th July / 16th October 2000
Released on 10" vinyl "Music from The BBC Radiophonic Workshop" by Rephlex as CAT147LP (2003)
Released on vinyl "BBC Radiophonic Music" by BBC Records as REC25M (1971 and 19 May 2003) and on CD as REC25MC (26 November 2002D)
"pretty much defies description and is all the better for it; you don't
want to have to resort to mere words to describe such a perfect sound,
utterly deserving the self-definitive title Delia so knowingly gave it."
--Robin Carmody, 11th July / 16th October 2000
Released on 10" vinyl "Music from The BBC Radiophonic Workshop" by Rephlex as CAT147LP (2003)
Released on vinyl "BBC Radiophonic Music" by BBC Records as REC25M
(1971 and 19 May 2003) and on CD as REC25MCD (26 November 2002)
Released on "Doctor Who Volume 2: New Beginnings"
Released on 10" vinyl "Music from The BBC Radiophonic Workshop" by Rephlex as CAT147LP (2003)
Included in CD "BBC Radiophonic Music" by BBC Records as REC25MCD (26 November 2002)
"Shows that she could also do the upbeat promotional thing well;
the rings and knocks are worked perfectly into the perfect 60s
advertising campaign soundtrack."
--Robin Carmody, 11th July / 16th October 2000
"reduced her to fits of giggles when played during a BBC Radio Scotland
interview"
"Well, I think that's really at the more trivial end of what I did.
Yes, isn't it jolly?"
-- Delia in
the Radio Scotland
interview
Released on 10" vinyl "Music from The BBC Radiophonic Workshop" by Rephlex as CAT147LP (2003)
Released on vinyl "BBC Radiophonic Music" by BBC Records as REC25M
(1971 and 19 May 2003) and on CD as REC25MCD (26 November 2002)
A version of Bach's "Air on a G String,
"which she dismissed as "rubbish", though it has a fair number of admirers."
Released on 10" vinyl "Music from The BBC Radiophonic Workshop" by Rephlex as CAT147LP (2003)
Released on vinyl "BBC Radiophonic Music" by BBC Records as REC25M
(1971 and 19 May 2003) and on CD as REC25MCD (26 November 2002)
Released on 10" vinyl "Music from The BBC Radiophonic Workshop" by Rephlex as CAT147LP (2003)
Included in CD "BBC Radiophonic Music" by BBC Records as REC25MCD
(26 November 2002)
"written by Dudley Simpson and realised by Delia.
It isn't a classic Delia moment by any means [. . .]
it sounds rather end-of-pier [. . .]
although a distinctive DD rhythm track redeems it somewhat."
Released on "Doctor Who Volume 1: The Early Years 1963-1969" (BBC Music WMSF 6023-2)
"Delia always managed to soften her purist mathematical approach
with a sensitive interpretative touch - 'very sexy' said Michael
Bakewell on first hearing her electronic music for Cyprian
Queen."
--delia-derbyshire.org
|
Five pieces were released on vinyl on
"Out Of This World: Atmospheric Sound Effects from the Radiophonic Workshop"
("OOTW") by BBC Records & Tapes REC255 (1976),
for which a complete track listing is available
at
mb21.co.uk.
The album was re-released as
"Essential Science Fiction Sound Effects, vol. 2" ("ESFSE2")
on audio cassette as BBC 855 (1993) and on CD as BBC CD855.
The track numberings differ because the first album listed several sounds
as a single track ("Door opening - door closing"), whereas the reissue
numbered them separately.
Released as track 17 of OOTW, track 22 of ESFSE2.
Released as track 31 of OOTW, track 39 of ESFSE2.
Released as track 50 of OOTW, track 58 of ESFSE2.
Also gets called "Icy Peaks".
Released as track 51 of OOTW, track 59 of ESFSE2.
"devastatingly effective (and perfect for the optimism of early BBC2, for whom the piece was written)".
--Robin Carmody, 11th July / 16th October 2000
The programme, an interview with Jo Grimond on the reasons for his resignation
from the leadership of the Liberal Party, was
broadcast on 5 Feb 1967.
Released on "BBC Radiophonic Workshop 21" by BBC Records & Tapes, REC354 (1979)
|
"written as theme for an episode of "Out of the Unknown" based around
an Isaac Asimov story in which automata rebel against humans and
worship God in an energy converter"
--Ian Burdon
"based around a resplicing of "Science and Health", is her most
terrifying moment, tumbling into a nightmare, the sound of childhood
at its most chilling."
--Robin Carmody, 11th July / 16th October 2000
"Most of the programs that I did were either in the far distant
future, the far distant past or in the mind. I think this was the
climax of a science fiction play called "The Prophet". It ended up
with all these robots and they sang a song of praise to this bloke,
presumably the prophet, and this was the song they sang."
-- Delia in
the Radio Scotland interview
"I did the music for the whole programme. It was probably in the mid
'60s. [...] I never watched the stuff. I had a script, that's all.
The actors, I got them to chant. The words they were singing were,
"Praise to the master, his wisdom and his [reason]" [...]
I turned it backwards first, then chose the best bits
that sounded good backwards and would fit into a rhythm, and then
speed-changed the voices. Then I used just this one bar repeated which
had [previously] been rejected from a science and health program for
being too lascivious for the schoolchildren. It was like a science
program... it was supposed to be about sex, but under another name.
And then the producer had the nerve to turn down my music, saying it
was too lascivious. It was just twangy things with electronic pick-ups,
and I just used a single note and then did little glissandos on it and
pitched it and treated it. But the 'Ooh-ooh-ooh' isn't me... that's
wobbulator, pure wobbulator. That's a piece of test equipment that does
wave sweeps."
--Delia, in
the Surface interview
"the voices are reversed but actually say
"Praise to the Master/His Wisdom and His Reason/Praise to the Master/Forever
and OO-OO-OO-OO/His Wis.../His Wis.../OO-OO-OO-OO/"."
--Peter Marsh, BBC
An image of the Radio Times lists the TV
programme as
"Out of the Unknown: The Prophet, from Reason by Isaac Asimov"
for BBC-2 on Sunday 1st January at 10.05 but the year is missing.
An analysis of
the BBC Programme Catalogue for the series
suggests that was a
1 Jan 1967
retransmission of
the 29 Dec 1966 episode.
Released on 10" vinyl "Music from The BBC Radiophonic Workshop"
by Rephlex as CAT147LP (2003)
Released on vinyl "BBC Radiophonic Music" by BBC Records as REC25M
(1971 and 19 May 2003) and on CD as REC25MCD (26 November 2002)
Lyrics
"An unreleased perv-pop classic in the 1966 novelty
vein, recorded with Anthony Newley. The future Mr Joan
Collins was after an electronic backing track and called in
Delia (he wasn't alone - Paul McCartney considered using
Delia's electronic backing for Yesterday before using a
string quartet).
-- delia-derbyshire.org
It was played at the
Unit Delta Plus Concert of
Electronic Music, 10th September 1966, then went unheard until 2001.
"This electronic pop song is sung by Anthony Newley who also
wrote the words. The piece is composed in a traditional
musical way with melody, rhythm and harmony, and the musical
parameters are all totally predetermined. The sources of
sound are simple sine tones."
--from the concert programme
"The late Anthony Newley told his label that he wanted
to do something electronic. So they got on to me. So I
produced this bloopy track and he loved it so much he
double-tracked his voice and he used my little tune.
The winking knees in the rain, and their
mini-skirts. I'd done it as a lovely little innocent love
song, because he said to me that the only songs are, "I love
you, I love you" or songs saying "you've gone, you've gone."
I'd written this beautiful little innocent
tune, all sensitive love and innocence, and he made it into
a dirty old raincoat song. But he was really chuffed! Joan
and Jackie Collins dropped him off in a limousine at my
lovely little flat above a flower shop, and he said "If
you can write songs like this, I'll get you out of this
place"! It was only a single-track demo tape. So he rang up
his record company saying "We want to move to a multi-track
studio". Unfortunately the boss of the record company was on
holiday, and by the time he returned Anthony Newley had gone
to America with Joan Collins, so it was never released."
--Delia, in
the Surface interview
"Delia was initially disappointed with the recording, but as
the years passed she became exceptionally fond of it."
-- delia-derbyshire.org
|
| Unit Delta Plus studio, 1966 |
"Delia became involved in an early electronic music concert at the
New Mill Theatre in Newbury that also featured a pioneering light projection
show by Hornsey College of Art and magnetic sculptures by Paul Takis."
--Brian Hodgson
They put on the Unit Delta Plus Concert of Electronic Music, Watermill Theatre, Bagnor, near Newbury, 10th September 1966, featuring:
A tape of Unit Delta Plus music was also performed at the Beatles-powered Million Volt Sound Rave, 28 Jan and 4th Feb 1967 at London's Roundhouse in Chalk Farm Road.
"perfect subversion of a classic brave-new-world dynamism phrase. The
"tomorrow" I imagine here is the antithesis of that which the BBC in
the 60s made much play of promoting to its audience; instead, it could
easily be some kind of dystopia, a state of decay or de-evolution."
--Robin Carmody, 11th July / 16th October 2000
The TV series for which it was written was
first
broadcast 7 December 1967.
Released on 10" vinyl "Music from The BBC Radiophonic Workshop" by Rephlex as CAT147LP (2003)
Released on vinyl "BBC Radiophonic Music" by BBC Records as REC25M
(1971 and 19 May 2003) and on CD as REC25MCD (26 November 2002)
"This was a documentary program about the Tuareg tribe. The
Tuareg tribe are nomads in the Sahara desert and I think they live
by bartering, taking salt, I think it was, across the desert. In
the piece, the extract you're going to hear, I tried to convey the
distance of the horizon and the heat haze and then there's this very
high, slow reedy sound. That indicates the strand of camels seen
at a distance, wandering across the desert. That in fact was made
from square waves on the valve oscillators we've just talked about,
but square waves put though every filter I could possibly find to
take out all the bass frequencies and so one just hears the very
high frequencies. It had to be something out of this world."
-- Delia in
the Radio Scotland interview
"mostly created using electronic oscillators - severely high-pass
filtered - to give the "shimmering heat haze" backdrop to the Tuareg
tribesmen weaving slowly across the screen of a period documentary.
Delia has since referred to the piece as including her "castrated oboe",
but the only non-electronic source really recorded is her voice, cut up
and re-pieced."
-- delia-derbyshire.org
"phenomenally atmospheric; such is its surround-sound quality that it
totally transcends the narrow constraints of simply coming from my
speakers, instead filling the room, my consciousness, the air itself.
And yet virtually nothing happens..."
--Robin Carmody, 11th July / 16th October 2000
"Among her outstanding television work, one of her favourites was
composed for a documentary for The World About Us on the Tuareg people
of the Sahara desert. It still haunts me. She used her own voice for
the sound of the hooves, cut up into an obbligato rhythm, and she added
a thin, high electronic sound using virtually all the filters and
oscillators in the workshop.
"My most beautiful sound at the time was a tatty green BBC lampshade,"
she recalled.
"It was the wrong colour, but it had a beautiful ringing sound to it.
I hit the lampshade, recorded that, faded it up into the ringing part
without the percussive start.
"I analysed the sound into all of its partials and frequencies, and
took the 12 strongest, and reconstructed the sound on the workshop's
famous 12 oscillators to give a whooshing sound. So the camels rode off
into the sunset with my voice in their hooves and a green lampshade on
their backs."
--Brian Hodgson's Guardian obituary
Few could disagree with Delia's own remark on recently hearing Blue Veils:
"Doesn't it just melt you!"
The lampshade in question is the Coolicon Utility Lighting Shade,
British Patent No 419602, Registered Design No 777912; they
sometimes appear for sale on ebay.
Released on 10" vinyl "Music from The BBC Radiophonic Workshop" by Rephlex as CAT147LP (2003)
Released on vinyl "BBC Radiophonic Music" by BBC Records as REC25M
(1971 and 19 May 2003) and on CD as REC25MCD (26 November 2002)
Released on "Doctor Who Volume 2: New Beginnings"
"she was responsible for the music in Yoko Ono's "Lions" film".
--pansiecola.com
"I did a film soundtrack for Yoko Ono, while she slept on my floor.
[. . .] It would be '67 or '68. It was about the same time
that she met John Lennon [. . .] So yes, she did her
Bottoms film. And we did the soundtrack for the shorter film,
which was the wrapping of the lions in Trafalgar Square, which was
a happening."
--Delia, in the
Surface interview
The film was shown at the ICA in London in 2004
but the film had no soundtrack and "A friend at the ICA asked
the curator of the exhibition and film festival, someone with an
exhaustive knowledge of Yoko Ono's work, who said that he had no
knowledge of a film of the wrapping with an existing soundtrack."
"angular robot jazz crammed with incident"
--Peter Marsh
"the real masterpiece is "Pot Au Feu". This is three minutes and
nineteen seconds of paranoia, virtually a rave track circa 1991 in its
structure; a stattering, pounding teleprinter-paced bassline worthy of
Timbaland as the tension builds, then a moment of chaos and crisis,
an alarm-bell of a hook recalling the "panic / excitement" lines so
prevalent in early 90s hardcore."
--Robin Carmody, 11th July / 16th October 2000
"A pounding, fantastically rhythmical track - it's unsettling enough
to have a speedfreak running to get the breadknives in the kitchen"
Released on 10" vinyl "Music from The BBC Radiophonic Workshop" by Rephlex as CAT147LP (2003)
Released on vinyl "BBC Radiophonic Music" by BBC Records as REC25M
(1971 and 19 May 2003) and on CD as REC25MCD (26 November 2002)
Cover, 1968 edition
|
"I think my forte is, well, apart from having an analytical
mind to do electronic sound, at the opposite end I'm very
good at writing extended melody for which there was not
really an opening at the BBC. And so I met this guy, I was
giving a lecture at Morley College in London and he came up
to me afterwards. He played the double bass, the same as I did,
and he was already doing tracks for the Ballet Rambert and we
got together and started this album."
--Delia in the
BBC Radio Scotland
interview.
"Many sounds have never been heard - by humans. Some soundwaves
you don't hear - but they reach you. 'Storm-Stereo' techniques
combine singers, instrumentalists and complex electronic
sound. Welcome to the world of the Frequency Shifter, Signal
Generator and Azimuth Co-ordinator. A world that existed before
the dawn of the synthesizer, when a 'sample' was a length of
recording-tape delicately and skillfully spliced in place."
-- So begins the sleeve-note introduction
Track list [the track times in square brackets are those stated on the sleeves]
More details on the web page geocities.com/CapitolHill
Released on vinyl 1968, Island Records, Cat: 510 948-2.
Released on vinyl 1969, Island Records, Cat: ILPS9099.
Released on CD, 28 July 1992 by Island Records.
Released on CD, 28 Dec 1999 by Polygram Int'l.
"has, I believe, been reissued in Sweden of late"
-- the
BBC Radio Scotland interview
|
There are two versions of this in circulation;
one with attack on the bell hits and one with the attack removed.
Released on "BBC Radiophonic Workshop 21" by BBC Records & Tapes, REC354 (1979)
Released on "BBC Radiophonic Workshop 21" by BBC Records & Tapes, REC354 (1979)
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Treated by Delia and Brian Hodgson.
This snippet is a treat for a compilation album of songs by different artists.
Released on John Peel Presents Top Gear, BBC: REC52S (1969)
"When asked to "make some TV title music using only animal sounds" - much thought and ingenuity resulted in Great Zoos of the World."
--delia-derbyshire.org
"including the most accurate set of animal noises ever created electronically."
--Robin Carmody, 11th July / 16th October 2000
Released on "BBC Radiophonic Workshop 21" by BBC Records & Tapes, REC354 (1979)
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| Cover, 1969 edition |
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| Cover, 2006 edition |
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"Recorded while Delia was still employed at the Radiophonic Workshop
and working on the White Noise LP. [...] originally released under the
pseudonym Russe (a.k.a. Li De la Russe - or "Of the Red" - a reference
to her auburn red hair) also features work from David Vorhaus and Brian
Hodgson (aka St. George - he was also still under contract to the
Beeb!)"
-- delia-derbyshire.org
This rare mono record was used extensively to provide the music for the
'70s BBC television series "The Tomorrow People".
Performed at London's Roundhouse featuring Nicol Williamson as Hamlet,
A short sample is included in the BBC News article
"Lost Tapes of the Dr Who composer"
EMS LP 1 sleeve |
"While the air-raid sirens and bombing sounds of Delia's youth in
wartime Coventry certainly shaped her music, this piece makes that
influence explicit. This rare recording has only ever been released
on an EMS promotional record."
-- delia-derbyshire.org
"I was there [in Coventry] in the blitz and it's come to me, relatively
recently, that my love for abstract sounds [came from] the air-raid
sirens: that's a sound you hear and you don't know the source of as a
young child... then the sound of the "all clear" - that was electronic
music."
--Delia, in the Boazine interview
Released on promotional LP "EMS LP 1" by Zinovieff, circa 1971.
A short sample of the backing track is included in the BBC News article
"Lost Tapes
of the Dr Who composer",
which is discussed on the
Create Digital Music forum.
Released on promotional LP "EMS LP 1" by Zinovieff, circa 1971.
Released on Flexidisc "EMS FLEXI 1" given away with EMS Synthi brochures.
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Music for the series "Tutenkhamun's Egypt" written by Cyril Aldred,
first
broadcast 2 April 1972.
"It's a full-on Delian trip... starting with trumpet calls from a 1939
recording of the silver trumpet found in Tutankhamun's burial chamber,
it then enters the mesmerising desert territory Delia mapped out so
memorably in Blue Veils & Golden Sands."
-- delia-derbyshire.org
"isolationist ambience some 25 years ahead of its time."
--Peter Marsh
Released on "The Music of Africa", BBC Record REC130M (1971)
According to
an
entry in the Internet Movie Database,
she did the music for the film "Oh Fat White Woman",
written by William Trevor and directed by Philip Saville,
also broadcast on TV in the UK as
"Play for Today: Oh Fat White Woman (1971)".
Running time: 80 minutes.
Broadcast by the BBC as Play For Today: 4 November 1971.
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"Library samples of electronic music for radio, TV and film industry"
All tracks are credited to Harper/Russe/St George.
Harper = Don Harper, Li De La Russe = Delia Derbyshire, Nikki St George = Brian Hodgson.
Read the sleeve notes by
John Cavanagh for a loving and entertaining portrait of Delia
and the circumstances surrounding the album's creation.
It used to be available from
Boa Melody Bar
but they only have
the T-shirt now.
You can order the vinyl and hear some samples at
Boomkat.
Released on vinyl by KPM Music Library as KPM1104 (1972)
Reissued in limited editions of 500 copies on 180gm audiophile green vinyl
by Glo-spot as GLOSPOT1104.
Available as a 40MB RAR archive at RapidShare.
This is the electronic soundtrack realised with Elsa Stansfield
for the 32-minute film "Circle of Light: The Photography of Pamela Bone"
directed by Anthony Roland, which won the Short Film Art Section of the
17th
Cork Film Festival in 1972.
The music is a gentle half hour of real and electronic seascapes and birdsong
on a evolving background of shaped noise, introduced
and signed off by variants of the "lampshade" sound used in Golden Veils.
(The accompanying film is a sequence of wobbly zooms and pans on bleak
seaside and woodland photographs, some of them beautiful.)
This is by far the longest surviving single piece of her music.
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"Brian Hodgson and Delia Derbyshire recorded the music for this
1973 horror movie at Electrophon in London."
One recognisably Delian element in the soundtrack
is a rhythmic tamtam backing.
Details at imbd.com.
According to
her entry in the Internet Movie Database,
she did the music for the short film "Een van die Dagen"
("One of These Days")
written and directed by Else Madelon Hooykaas and Elsa Stansfield
although the film entry in the database does not mention her.
Running time: 30 minutes.
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Sonic Boom - Editing, mixing & effects inc. SMS tools 0.8 analysis/resynthesis software.
Delia Derbyshire - liquid paper sounds generated using fourier synthesis
of sound based on photo/pixel info (B2wav - bitmap to sound programme).
Released as track 37 of
"Grain"
by Dot Dot Dot Music.
Released on "The Electronic Bible - Hymn Book" (White Label Music, WLM 004)
according to the
BBC.
Available here as an
MP3 audio download
courtesy of Sonic Boom.
"Something serious happened around '72, '73, '74: the world went out of tune
with itself and the BBC went out of tune with itself... I think, probably, when
they had an accountant as director general.
I didn't like the music business."
--Delia, in the Boazine interview
"I still haven't worked out why I left - self preservation I think."
--Delia, in the
Hutton interview, 24 Feb 2000
She has mentioned doing special works and soundtracks for
and, according to www.ex-sounds.net, she is given special thanks on Sonic Boom's albums:
"A number of recordings by Delia Derbyshire and Maddalena Fagandini are
available on the Cadenza catalogue at the National Sound Archive Listening
Department, at the British Library."
--the
Hutton interview.
Apart from the Doctor Who Theme and the tracks from the Electric Storm album, the Archive catalogue lists:
Delia died on the 3rd of July 2001 in hospital of liver/kidney failure.
Several musical tributes have been made to her:
A theatrical production by Nicola McCartney, based on Delia's life, was put on 7-23 October 2004 at the Tron theatre in Glasgow. The music from the production and a series of musical tributes by other composers including Drew Mulholland used to be available for free download from their site.
The review site for the production contains a few biographical snippets: "a brief and disastrous marriage to a striking Yorkshire miner" in 1974 when "at only 37, she was beginning the long battle with alcohol and depression that would shadow the remaining three decades of her life."
A radio play based on her life written by Martyn Wade and directed by Cherry Cookson, was broadcast on BBC Radio 7 on 8 November 2005 and is included on the CD "Doctor Who at the BBC: The Plays", ISBN 18460 70440, from the BBC Radio Collection series.
Kara Blake is preparing a half-hour documentary about Delia'a life and work. It is described in an article in the Montreal Mirror.
Delia in a
3.4-second video clip from the BBC's "Alchemists of Sound" (DivX5, 600KB)
If you only have Windows Media Player, use
this version
(MPEG1, 900KB)
Delia putting Pot au Feu together from tape loops in a
77-second video clip from the BBC's "Alchemists of Sound" (XviD, 9.4MB)
If you only have Windows Media Player, use
this version (MPEG1, 8.8MB)
This is also on You Tube.
"[Hardly] anything of it was done in real time. It was done either at half-speed
or chopped together from little bits of tape..."
28-second slow-motion video clip from the BBC's "Alchemists of Sound" (XviD, 3.0MB)
If you only have Windows Media Player, use
this version (MPEG1, 2.9MB)
A 98MB AVI file containing 289.0 seconds of:
a talking head (who?);
Delia explaining waveforms;
Delia making Pot Au Feu (long version);
Delia talking, with glimpses of John Baker and others.
A 35 MB AVI file containing only the first
61.4 seconds of Delia's 1st bit in the above clip, with a larger image.
Andy Votel says: "Bradford Museum of Film and Television has a vintage episode of Tomorrow's World featuring Delia Derbyshire explaining the musique-concrete methods adopted at the Radiophonic Workshop when creating those inimitable TV soundtracks. DD almost started dancing at one point. It was incredible..."
The Museum's "TV Heaven" archive used to list this item as "Tomorrow's World (Radiophonic Workshop), 1965, 30 mins" but doesn't any more but there is a local copy of the index card here. To book a viewing, call the TV Heaven desk directly on (01274) 203433, although booking is not always necessary.
Sunday 18 November, 1.10am BBC's "Classic Britannia" EPISODE 2: MODERNISM AND MINIMALISM, 1962 to 1980 Archive Interviews: DAPHNE ORAM & DELIA DERBYSHIRE - Composers, BBC Radiophonic Workshop
This site was created with the logistical support of
medien.kunstlabor.at
and the personal kindness of
Franz Xaver.
The research was made possible by the hard work involved in the making of
the sites listed above, as well as the various sources listed throughout
the chronology. The research was aided by information, leads and personal
effort from Sonic Boom, Mark the Bus, Ian Burdon, Mike Brown, Peter Marsh,
Ray White, Dick Mills, Andrew Harrison and Mark Ayres as well as numerous
subscribers to the Delia
Derbyshire mailing list.
Thanks also to you if you make a donation or visit our advertisers.
| Compiled by Martin Guy <martinwguy@yahoo.it> |
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