Joe Meek? Joe Schmeek! Delia Dee's the one for me!

[UlricvonCatalyst]

Following on from yesterday's BBC radio documentary, I figure there may be some interest on here in the formidable Delia Darbyshire, one of the UK's most criminally under-appreciated musical pioneers, late of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop and the groop White Noise.
Like many others I absorbed her amazing arrangement of Ron Grainer's Dr. Who Theme as a kid, without really appreciating the fact that it will probably always sound as futuristic at any given point in time as it did the day it was first broadcast. An insight into how Delia put it together on this BBC TV documentary fuelled my interest in discovering ever more Delia, as did the play Standing Waves which was put on a couple of years ago at my local theatre.
As Delia's recently-discovered personal archive has now been turned over to Manchester University, things are looking up for those of us who have found the hunt for Delia's works frustrating up till now.
Time for a major DD retrospective compilation along the lines of the impossible-to-find Rephlex 4 x 10" Radiophonic Workshop compilation!

[shadowplay]

As Delia's recently-discovered personal archive has now been turned over to Manchester University, things are looking up for those of us who have found the hunt for Delia's works frustrating up till now.
Time for a major DD retrospective compilation along the lines of the impossible-to-find Rephlex 4 x 10" Radiophonic Workshop compilation!

I'm a long term admirer and my friend Nicola wrote the play you mentioned.

Btw that Rephlex comp has been repressed a couple of times and Boomkat had them recently. I bought three sets the first time round because Rephlex lied and said there would only be one pressing. Delia is only featured on disc one but it's all good stuff.

I've got a few bootleg records of Radiophonic stuff and I was lucky enough to pick up most of the original BBC releases when nobody wanted them.

A quirky wee BBC related release is Edward Williams music for Life On Earth. It never got a proper release but Trunk pressed some last year.


D

[Slow-Pop]

It's slow at work so I just finished a documentary on youtube about Joe Meek. Now I have something to follow it!

Thanks

[UlricvonCatalyst]

Time this old thread was dug up, since I just discoverd The Delian Mode documentary.

[DaveC]

Yeah I'm a fan too, really like the white noise stuff, like nothing else I've heard, modern or old.

[shadowplay]

Do you know about the Daphne Oram/Walls collaboration'Sound Houses'that's due out in a couple of weeks? Sounds amazing, I'd pre-order it for safety because I think they will fly out the door quickstyle (only 500). Walls are a great choice for this, not only are their records great but they are ace crate diggers and DJ's, as evidenced by Mutazione - Italian Electronic & New Wave Underground 1980 - 1988 Compiled By Alessio Natalizia of Walls. Normally I see such compilations and I'm actually embarrassed for the compiler but this was a work of deep understanding. I really know my shit in this area and even I got something out of it.

Incidentally if anyone is into left of the dial soundtracks, electro manipulation and folk oddities my I direct you to Finders Keepers but law dictates the following; WARNING CLICKING THIS LINK CAN EMPTY YOUR WALLET.

I could point folk to all sorts of stuff in this field but anyone checking out Robin The Fog - The Ghosts Of Bush. I had a look about, there are still some white copies of pressing three or you could go digital)

Pop Video

Blurb follows-

'I think its fair to say that this may be the very last piece of true Radiophonics that will ever be produced' – Jim Jupp of Ghostbox(actually anyone into this sort of stuff should pay Jims label a visit too and check the Belbury Parish Magazine for all sort fo great leads and pointers.)

‘The Ghosts Of Bush’ was created entirely using the natural acoustic sounds of Bush House, the iconic home for the past seven decades of the BBC World Service which closed its doors for the last time on July 12th 2012. All of the sounds were captured in the small hours of the morning in empty offices, corridors, stairwells and other hidden corners by a Studio Manager working overnight. These recordings were then dubbed onto quarter-inch tape in the basement studio deep in the bowels of the South-East wing using two of the surviving reel-to-reel machines.

Adjusting the playback speed of the spools and ‘bouncing’ the recordings between the two tape machines lead to the discovery of a number of interesting phrases and sound textures which were then looped, layered and fashioned into rough compositions. Over time the tape would start to degrade and alter the nature of the sounds, while occasional echo was created by recording and playing various loops simultaneously, feeding the sound back into itself. The entire album was produced using these simple methods, and no other effects or studio trickery have been used. Thanks to the sonorous quality of Bush House’s Portland stone walls and high ceilings, the natural resonance of the space was all that was needed.

These are the sounds the building makes when it thinks no-one is listening, the sounds of many sleepless nights spent isolated in a labyrinthine basement surrounding by a crepuscular soundtrack of creaks and crackles. It’s an attempted homage to the work of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop who crafted the most incredible of sound-worlds from the most basic of sources. But mostly it’s my way of saying goodbye to a building that I and so many people have loved.

When talking of historic structures, the old clichéd approach is to wonder what one might hear if the ‘walls could speak’. I like to think that with ‘The Ghosts Of Bush’ we come closer to hearing them sing: One last song about the passage of time and the impermanence of all things, with the ghosts of the machines joining in. The last hurrah of a bygone era, of obsolete equipment and of a studio that has since fallen silent forever.

Robin The Fog

[Gazzmaster]

Why the Joe Meek dis?

[shadowplay]

Ulrich, have you heard Carter Tutti - Coolicon, which is to me amazing? They used the Coolicon lampshade that Delia used.

You can get it digital and as a green 10'.

D

[invisible man]

I just got bit with this bug. I nice collection of free and legit downloads:
http://ubu.com/sound/derbyshire.html

[shadowplay]

Btw White Noise An Electric Storm has been repressed if anyone doesn't own it already. Here's a looksee on Boomkat.

D

[shadowplay]

FYI Radiophonic Live!

Moar info!

D

[UlricvonCatalyst]

Why the Joe Meek dis?

No disrespect intended. It's just that his name gets dropped so often as a maverick sonic innovator of the era while Delia is far less celebrated.

Ulrich, have you heard Carter Tutti - Coolicon, which is to me amazing? They used the Coolicon lampshade that Delia used.

You can get it digital and as a green 10'.

D

Just had a listen and quite enjoyed it. Maybe it's just because I was listening to it last night for the first time in years, but I sense a loose kinship with Voodoo Ray.

May well attend the Radiophonic gig, though I'm not sure how much of a live element to expect from such a thing. Thanks for the tip.

Now, what is this coolicon lampshade?

[slavemaster]

Btw White Noise An Electric Storm has been repressed if anyone doesn't own it already. Here's a looksee on Boomkat.

D

So much repression going on

[shadowplay]

Btw a new and IMO mustmustmustmustmustmustmustmustmustmustmustmustmustmustmust have recording artefact and IMO probably the best Trunk release since Cults Percussion Ensemble.

it's the soundtrack to this (brilliant) film; Circle of Light - The Photography Of Pamela Bone


On the Trunk website

Delia Derbyshire and Elsa Stansfield - Circle of Light (Original Electronic Soundtrack Recording)

There is nothing quite like Circle Of Light. It’s a 32 minute colour film shot in 1972 by Anthony Roland, featuring the photography of Pamela Bone, with a groundbreaking soundtrack by Delia Derbyshire and Elsa Stansfield.

The origins of the film can be traced back to 1952 when Pamela Bone, a student at Guildford School Of Art, bought her first camera for £6. This was the start of a long symbiotic journey with photography, Bone developing peculiar techniques, adapting cameras and always trying to somehow replicate the visions she had in her mind’s eye. She would enlarge shots, combine images and transparencies, fiddle with exposures, learn her trade.

After briefly studying with André Thévenet in Paris and having work published in Photomonde, she returned to the UK and started approaching advertising companies. Working in that business she had to fully understand all modern Agfacolour print processes, but Bone always felt her work faired better left as transparencies, not as prints. In 1959, and having had work featured in Vogue, Queen and House And Garden, she was invited to stay with a student friend in Calcutta. It was her escape.

The trip enabled Bone to travel and photograph extensively in exotic locations across India, including Sikkim and Kashmir. On returning home, she began working on a conceptual slide show of her travels and transparencies, one that began to slowly morph over the next seven years into a show of slides influenced by travel, the seasons, children, still life studies and landscapes. The working title of the show was Circle Of Light. Her slides and techniques were unique; she’d blow up images to use as textures behind other images, she’d put black and white images behind colour ones. The results were often extraordinary, baffling, and deeply engaging. She took lessons in sound recording too, but things took an unexpected turn in 1969 when she was introduced to Anthony Roland by art critic Marjorie Bruce-Milne. Roland was an art collector, a cutting edge director and had opened his 400-seater Art Film Centre, at 6 Leicester Place in London. He’d gained quite a reputation for not only his own productions but for long programmes of important art films and premiers.

On the winter’s evening they met Bone presented her work to Roland, and they spent hours stood under a street light in nearby Leicester Square – a very different place to the one you may know now – gazing at her glass slides. Roland was quite overwhelmed by the images in many ways and suggested he made a film with them. Together they began work on Circle Of Light.

Bone had also written poetry and wanted this narrated over the film. But Roland knew that the images needed something a little more abstract. So for a soundtrack Roland commissioned Delia Derbyshire (moonlighting from the Radiophonic Workshop). They had recently met via designer Lucienne Roberts, and with the help of artist Elsa Stansfield (pre their founding of Electrophon Studios in 1973) Derbyshire brought together numerous elements for the soundtrack. Roland wanted something new, different, mysterious.

The finished film has no narration apart from Bone’s introduction, and focuses intensely on her unique glass transparencies. The narrative is controlled by Roland’s signature slow tracking style; with calming drifts across glorious, intense images of beaches, trees, forests – landscapes and still lives too, with gradual mixes and all perfectly accompanied by Derbyshire’s collaborative electronic soundtrack with effects.

Circle Of Light premièred at the Academy Cinema in Oxford Street on 28th March 1972, and three months later was selected to represent Great Britain in the Art Film class at the very well respected Cork International Festival. It won first prize, the soundtrack credited in the festival programme to “Delia Derbyshire and Elsa Stansfield”.

The film was again chosen that year to run at the Melbourne Festival, as well as Buenos Aires, Chicago, Locarno and Lyon. It kept running in London, and has since been added to national film collections in the UK (at the BFI and V&A), Paris, Berlin, Jerusalem as well as libraries and universities across the USA.

There have been very occasional sightings of the film over the last few decades, but it has come into focus more recently because of the unreleased music and the dramatic rise in interest for all things Delia.

Thankfully here we now have the first ever release of what is believed to be the longest of all surviving Derbyshire works. Although made in 1972 it feels staggeringly contemporary today. Derbyshire followers will immediately spot the characteristic use of her “lampshade” sound, but here it’s subtly and unexpectedly interwoven with field recordings and full of most unusual - dare I say - proto “ambient” ideas and techniques. What’s so perfect is that Roland put Bone and Derbyshire together, both women were pioneering in their chosen fields and employed similar techniques of sampling, mixing and alteration to create new and different results.

As far as I’m concerned this soundtrack is a recording unlike any other of the time – a sonic tapestry of taped drone, delicate shaped electronics, birdsong (including an owl), other field noises and all “sound designed” to fit the Bone photography and Roland’s aesthetic linking. Other artists such as Basil Kirchin were also experimenting with tape and natural sounds around the same time, but there is something altogether different about the Derbyshire / Stansfield approach, which may have been influenced by the Bone imagery, but could well be down to their fabulously modern feminine take on sound and its future. Sadly both are no longer with us so we will never know how they made it or how they worked together, but luckily now we can just turn it on, enjoy it and drift away speculating.

Thanks for listening

Jonny Trunk 2016

Curated and released by the fabulous Jonny Trunk this is quite simply one of the best records I have ever heard.

Some of the black still available at Boomkat and as an digitalmagick science file too. Also available from the Trunk Greedbag

Stunning, life affirming stuff.

D

[wingnutkj]

Delia Derbyshire and Elsa Stansfield - Circle of Light (Original Electronic Soundtrack Recording)

Totally read that as Delia Derbyshire and Lisa Stansfield.