The Delian Mode - Delia Derbyshire Documentary

Published on May 5, 2015 mprobs

"The Delian Mode (Kara Blake, 2009) is a a short experimental documentary revolving around the life and work of electronic music pioneer Delia Derbyshire, best known for her groundbreaking sound treatment of the Doctor Who theme music. A collage of sound and image created in the spirit of Derbyshire’s unique approach to audio creation and manipulation, this film illuminates such soundscapes onscreen while paying tribute to a woman whose work has influenced electronic musicians for decades.

http://thedelianmode.com"

And a couple of videos from the Delia Derbyshire YouTube channel:

Delia at Queen Elizabeth Hall on 18 1 1968

Published on Sep 23, 2015 Delia Derbyshire

"Delia Derbyshire starts the computer playing Zinovieff's "Partita for Unattended Computer" at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, London on 18th Jan 1968"

Max Träger's "diagrams" video of Delia Derbyshire's papers

Published on Aug 31, 2015 Delia Derbyshire

"This is a first demo version of a video Max was doing in July 2011 to display some scans of Delia's diagrams and diagrammatic scores for her electronic music.The accompanying music is "The Wizard's Laboratory" from the album Electrosonic.

Questa è la prima versione dimostrativa di un video che Max stava facendo a luglio 2011 per presentare alcuni scan dei diagrammi e degli spartiti diagramattici preparati da Delia mentre componeva la sua musica elettronica. La musica che l'accompagna è "The Wizard's Laboratory" dall'album 'Electrosonic'."

Check out previous posts featuring Delia Derbyshire in the archives here.

Delia Derbyshire

YouTube via iiishtar

videos:
Delia Derbyshire/Blue Veils and Golden Sand
Delia Derbyshire/Nightwalker
Delia Derbyshire/Freeze Frame
Delia Derbyshire/Frontier to Knowledge
Delia Derbyshire/Air - 1971
Delia Derbyshire/Depression - 1971
Delia Derbyshire/Pot Au Feu

Delia Derbyshire Honored with Posthumous PhD

via theguardian

"The under-appreciated electronic music pioneer behind the Doctor Who theme is to be honoured posthumously with a doctorate from her hometown university as the programme gears up for the debut of its first female lead.

Largely ignored in life and barred from working in studios because she was a woman, Delia Derbyshire, will be awarded an honorary PhD from Coventry University on Monday."

---

This one was sent in via MATRIXSYNTH Reader Gareth.

An interesting side note is that I once almost picked up Delia Derbyshire's EMS VCS3/Putney. Peter Kember, aka Sonic Boom of Spectrum and Spacemen 3 fame, was selling it along with a Synton Syrinx years ago, before I started this format of MATRIXSYNTH. I seem to remember he wanted around $7k or so for it at the time, but I might wrong. I didn't have the funds so I passed. Also, a little unknown bit of synth history is that EMS sent the BBC an EMS SYNTHI 100 during the time Delia Derbyshire was there, and she actually did not take to it. It is my understanding that she preferred to work with tape. Curious what she might have thought of a Buchla, as the focus of Buchla was to compliment electronic music composition on tape.

Sorrell Hays, Doris Hays & Delia Derbyshire

Update3 8/27/13: We have confirmation from Sorrell Hays herself.  It indeed was her that composed Doris Hays - Scared Trip [1971] in the video below and not Delia Derbyshire.  It was composed using the Buchla 101 keyboard pictured below. I'll see if I can get the WikiDelia article mentioning Delia updated. As a side note, for those on Facebook there's some conversation going on regarding this post here. Laurie Spiegel chimed in as well.

Start of original post before we had confirmation from Sorrell Hays:

This post can be a little confusing, so I thought I'd try and clear it up front.  I spotted this post on It's Full of Stars on Sorell Hays, an electronic artist that used a Buchla keyboard.  I clicked through the link in the post and found that the video directly below wasn't actually by Sorrell Hays, but by Delia Derbyshire.  Apparently Delia produced the tracks under the pseudonym Doris Hays.  The real Doris Hays went by Sorrell Hays and is pictured further below.  I have no idea if there was a connection between the two or if it was all just coincidence, but there you have it.

Update1 via eben in the comments: "hi Matrix thanks for reposting. it is quite a confusing situation! did you see the original post over on toys&techniques from a while back? it seems to suggest that the tracks on the Southern LP 'electronic music' might actually be sorrel and NOT delia - see also the comments to the post:

http://toysandtechniques.blogspot.co.uk/2010/06/sorrel-hays.html

to me it sounds more buchla than ems!

its all very intriguing..."

Doris Hays - Scared Trip [1971]

Uploaded on May 21, 2011 TheCoffeeShopShop·2,525 videos
Re-Published on Nov 21, 2014 Doris Hays - Topic

I'm guessing this is a mix of tape and EMS based on the year.  Click here for more posts featuring Delia and EMS at the time.

via WikiDelia: "It is claimed that in 1971 Delia produced 14 tracks of electronic music for the British record label Southern Library of Recorded Music, published as Electronic Music with catalogue number MQ/LP 38[1] under the pseudonym Doris Hays.[2] The other four track on the album are credited to John Matthews, claimed to be John Baker[1] and included on the album 'The John Baker Tapes'."

There is a real Doris Hays who is also a electronic and musique concrète composer, also active in 1971, born in Memphis, Tennessee in 1941.[3]"

Pictured here is Doris Hays [not Delia] who went by Sorrel Hays.  Via her last.fm site: "Sorrel Hays was born Doris Hays in Memphis, Tennessee, but being a “sound” person she decided that “Sorrel” sings (her maternal grandmother’s family name was Sorrels) so in 1985 she adopted the name Sorrel.

In 1971 Hays won first prize at the Gaudeamus Competition for Interpreters of New Music in Rotterdam, and began her international career as a performer of contemporary music. She performed concerts at broadcasting stations in Germany, Holland, Italy and Yugoslavia, appeared at the Como Festival and Pro Musica Nova Bremen, and was invited to celebrate John Cage’s 60th birthday by performing his Concerto for Prepared Piano and Orchestra with the Orchestra at the Hague. She gave the first performance in Europe of her own music at the Gaudeamus Composers Week in Holland in 1972, a composition called Hands and Lights for piano strings with photocell activated switches and flashlights beamed across the interior of a grand piano, a composition which she later performed for the Chattanooga Debutante Cotton Ball.

During 1989-1990 Sorrel Hays was a resident artist at the Yamaha Communications and Research Center in New York City, commissioned to create music for the Yamaha MIDI Grand Piano. These pieces, 90’s, A Calendar Bracelet , for MIDI Grand and tone generator, are recorded by Loretta Goldberg on the CD “Soundbridge” from Opus One."

Buchla at 1:13: Update2: the Buchla is the 200 101 keyboard as seen in this video.

Southern Voices: A Composer's Exploration - PREVIEW

Uploaded on Jun 4, 2009 docued·648 videos

"Purchase: http://www.der.org/films/southern-voi... and on Amazon.

This documentary traces the development and premiere performance of an avant-garde symphonic work by Southern composer Sorrel Doris Hays. Commissioned by the Chattanooga Symphony Orchestra, Hays' piece is based on the sounds and rhythms of Southern speech and musical traditions. It is a journey into childhood memories via the melodies and rhythms of Southern dialect. Stoney combines analysis of her work with interviews in which Hays discusses her struggle with racism and paternalism of Southern culture.

a film by George Stoney with Sorrel Doris Hays
distributed by Documentary Educational Resources"

I did a quick search on YouTube to see if I could find anything else and found the following:

Invasion of the Love Drones (1977)

Uploaded on Sep 19, 2009
Invasion of the Love Drones, 1977 sci-fi movie from Jerome Hamlin. Soundtrack by Sorrel Hays, Mike Michaels, Richard Lavsky's Music House and Barry Forgie (uncredited). Additional dialogue by Charles Flowers (uncredited).

Review & more information:
http://atagong.com/archives/2009/09/e..."

Delia Derbyshire - Love Without Sound (1969)

YouTube via audiolemon
"Delia Derbyshire is well known for her work with the BBC Radiophonic Workshop and her help in creating the Dr.Who theme. Of all the BBC Radiophonic musicians I've heard I always found Delia's music to be more aesthetically mature than that of the others. While many were content to create mathematically structured enharmonic noise she looked for the ghost in the machine, creating haunting, off kilter and often sexually charged music. This track is from the 1969 The White Noise - Electric Storm LP. To me it sounds 30 years ahead of it's time. I hope you like it.

If you want to read more: http://www.delia-derbyshire.org/"

Delia Derbyshire to Have Road Named After Her in Coventry

via BBC Local Live:

"The composer who helped craft the Doctor Who theme tune is set to be honoured by having a road named after her.

Delia Derbyshire, a music pioneer from Coventry, became the uncredited creator of the famous theme while working in the BBC Radiophonic Workshop.

Her contribution to popular culture will be marked by Derbyshire Way in her native city.

Pete Chambers BEM, director of The Coventry Music Museum, was among those to campaign for the recognition. He said: 'Originally it was to be named Derbyshire Road, but I suggested 'Way' instead, so it gave a double meaning, as Delia was a genius and strong personality and really did do things in her own way.'"

How cool is that?

Pierre Schaeffer T-Shirt

available at Analog Industries
image description via Wikipedia:
"Pierre Schaeffer working in his studio with an electronic instrument known as the phonogene; circa 1948."

See this Wikipedia article for more info on Pierre Schaeffer.
"Pierre Henri Marie Schaeffer (Pierre Schaeffer {{{2}}} (help·info); August 14, 1910 – August 19, 1995) was a French composer, writer, broadcaster, and engineer most widely recognized as the chief pioneer of musique concrète,[1] a unique form of experimental music that began in Europe during the mid-1900s."

Bottom image is of Delia Derbyshire, Analog Industries' previous T-Shirt run. You can find more info on Delia Derbyshire here on Wikipedia where you'll find the source of the image for the T. "Delia Derbyshire at the BBC Radiophonic Workshop" Of course be sure to see these previous posts including video.

DELIA DERBYSHIRE- "The Wizards Laboratory" (1972)

YouTube via funknroll

"The Women of ELECTRONIC MUSIC! From the 30's to the 70's!

Before synthesizers, electronic music was honed the hard way in universities, by splicing tape loops, distorting sounds, endless dubbing, and blind instinct. Here are the timeless women of future music who created our present...

Since the 1930's, CLARA ROCKMORE was the master of the notoriously difficult Theremin, and later championed by synthesizer-creator Bob Moog; LOUIS & BEBE BARRON created the first all-electronic score for the film "FORBIDDEN PLANET" (1957), using oscillated sounds and tape loops; //STUDIO d'ASSAI (Paris): Danish ELSE MARIE PADE studied under musique concrete founder Pierre Schaeffer, becoming a noted composer; ELAINE RADIGUE used the Buchla and Arp synthesizers in her work, heavily influenced by Buddhist meditation, and records now with laptop improv group The Lappetites; MICHELE BOKANOWSKI has composed for film, televison, and theatre; //BBC RADIOPHONIC WORKSHOP (London): ...was created and directed by DAPHNE ORAM, inventor and sonic pioneer; she was followed by DELIA DERBYSHIRE, who brought Ron Grainer's "DR. WHO" theme to brilliant, eerie life with her studio wizardry; MADDALENA FAGANDINI co-created the proto-Techno single "Time Beat/ Waltz In Space" (1962) with young producer George Martin under the alias 'Ray Cathode'; GLYNIS JONES produced some of the Workshop's classic albums like "Out Of This World" (1976); ELIZABETH PARKER scored many BBC shows including "BLAKE'S 7", and was the person to see the Workshop out in its 1998 finale; //Fluxus performance artist YOKO ONO expanded John Lennon's mind and range with electronic music, musique concrete, and 'happening' experiments; //COLUMBIA-PRINCETON ELECTRONIC MUSIC CENTER (New York): A premiere focal point for international composers since the 50's, including composer and Associate Director PRIL SMILEY; ALICE SHIELDS combined her operatic voice and poetry with the revolutionary synthesizers of the late 60's and early 70's; teacher DARIA SEMEGEN wrote traditional classical music as well as electronic; WENDY CARLOS had massive mainstream success with the all-synth "Switched On Bach", before writing groundbreaking film scores for "A CLOCKWORK ORANGE," "THE SHINING" and 'TRON"; nearby at Bell Labs, LAURIE SPIEGEL spearheaded computer graphics and software design as well as new music; maverick ANNETTE PEACOCK went from Free Jazz piano to the first synthesizers, threading her early 70's raps and rock with freeform electronics; //Argentinian BEATRIZ FERREYRA, who also studied with Schaeffer, is an esteemed composer and teacher; //SAN FRANCISCO TAPE MUSIC CENTER: The crucial West Coast electronic center, including Morton Subotnick, Terry Riley, Steve Reich and PAULINE OLIVEROS in 1962; it moved across the Bay to become the... //CENTER FOR CONTEMPORARY MUSIC (Mills College, Oakland, CA): Oliveros was the first Director, perfecting her signal processing system for live performance; student and now Co-Director MAGGI PAYNE trailblazed video imagery and record engineering along with her music; alum CYNTHIA WEBSTER played in the early synth band Triode, founded electro mag SYNAPSE, and now runs Cyndustries designing software for electronic music, such as the Zeroscillator.

Their innovations led to Progressiv Rock, Krautrock, New Wave, Coldwave, Darkwave, Electro Funk, Industrial, Techno, and Electroclash. Their fringe future music is now the soundtrack of today.

DELIA DERBYSHIRE: This song is from a 1972 LP called "Ultrasonic", collecting music library pieces Delia scored for use in TV shows. It was recently issued on CD, as was "Oramics" by Daphne Oram:
http://www.boomkat.com/item.cfm?id=89395
http://www.boomkat.com/item.cfm?id=35793

See also:
ALICE SHIELDS -"STUDY FOR VOICE AND TAPE" (1968)


"Sound, the infinite frontier! Science had chopped the world into atoms, components from which to build. Modern art deconstructed reality, reconstructing our perceptions of it. And the first Electronic Music likewise took apart sound and turned it inside out for new compositions. Vladimir Ussachevsky founded the first Electronic Music Center jointly with Columbian and Princeton universities in 1952. He brought in avant composers from countries worldwide with new perspectives and radical expirementation. This included women like Daria Semegen, Pril Smiley, Wendy Carlos, and Alice Shields. In the 50's, Electronic Music was distortions of recordings. Sounds on a tape recorder would be manipulated by feedback, repeated spliced loops, overlapping tracks with multiple recorders, and using oscillators and reverb to sculpt the tempo, tone, or texture. This prevailed in continually advancing ways well through the 1960s. Alice used these techniques in creating this composition. A gifted mezzesoprano, she first sang a poem she'd written. She accompanied this with the first analog Buchla synthesizer, a rare and recent device only beginning to draw the attention of the hippest pop musicians. She then manipulated pitch and speed in textural patterns to supplement the freeform song. This was the cutting edge music of the future, usually heard only in academic circles. But it made its way into film soundtracks (from FORBIDDEN PLANET to Wendy Carlos' A CLOCKWORK ORANGE), Fusion Jazz (Miles Davis, Herbie Hancock), Progressive Rock (from George Harrison's 1969 ELECTRONIC SOUND to Krautrock and Kraftwerk), Funk (Stevie Wonder's T.O.N.T.O., Bernie Worrell), on to the synthesizer explosion of New Wave, then Hip Hop (from Bambaataa's ElectroFunk to Public Enemy's radical sculptures of noise), Industrial (synthetic abrasion), and the Electronica music of today; as such, Alice Shields is a godmother of Le Tigre, Peaches, Chicks On Speed, Lesbians On Ecstasy, and Ladytron, to name a few."

MALARIA! -"Your Turn To Run" (1982)

"The Women of 80's ELECTRO! Coldwave, Darkwave, Synthpop, Industrial!

As synthesizers got smaller and cheaper through the 70's, 'future music' went from acedemia to the street. Punk, PostPunk, Funk, and HipHop artists brought attitude and new styles into the pop vocabulary throughout the 80's that forged the music of today. Here are many women from the first Electro rock era..."

http://www.cyndustries.com/woman.cfm
http://www.newyorkwomencomposers.org/...
http://www.aliceshields.com/
http://www.imtheone.net/annettepeacoc...
http://whitefiles.org/rwg/index.htm"

A Petition to Publish Delia Derbyshire's music from the BBC Sound Archive

Sign the petition here.

"Most of electronic music pioneer Delia Derbyshire's music exists in a single copy in the archives of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. Many dozens, if not hundreds, of pieces of her beautiful work are mouldering unheard.

Delia's music broke new ground on several fronts: technological as she pushed what was possible with the equipment of her time, rhythmical as she experimented 11- and 13-note bars, and tonal as she freed herself from the 12-tone scale and voyaged into soundscapes and pure sound. Of Delia's work, only a tiny percentage is known to the public, whereas by far the majority of it is on tape in the Archive of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop in the custody of Mark Ayres.

We petition the BBC Trust to apply pressure to the BBC so that these recordings be swiftly published on traditional audio media (CD, DVD) so that the public, and in particular the British public who paid for it to be produced, be able to learn from and develop this woman's amazing musical visionary style.

The petition's closing date, the 5th of May 2014, is Delia's 77th birthday."

The Seventh Wave Festival of Electronic Music #7 w/ Delia Derbyshire Collaborator David Vorhaus

David Vorhaus Analogue Electronic Music 1979 Published on Sep 13, 2009 JeffreyPlaide

Update: Festival info further below. Thought I would start with a couple of videos featuring David Vorhaus.

"In this historical video excerpt, David Vorhaus talks about two of his analogue inventions - the MANIAC analogue sequencer, and the Kaleidophon from 1979.

The MANIAC (Multiphasic Analog Inter-Active Chromataphonic (sequencer)) was an analogue sequencer having variable step lengths, and the ability to split sequences into several smaller groupings giving considerable sonic potentiality. Addition and subtraction of events was possible, as well as the possibility to chromatically correct the output during performance. David could program his MANIAC sequencer to play a background rhythm or combination of musical events, to then improvise over the top with another instrument or synthesizer.

The Kaleidophon was a double-bass-like instrument using four velocity-sensitive ribbon controllers instead of strings. The instrument is played entirely using the left hand, leaving the right hand free to manipulate the sound via a number of controllers and a joystick.

David speaks about the processes of making electronic music, and the developments that such possibilities can provide for the imaginative electronic musician. This excerpt is taken from the BBC 1979 documentary entitled "The New Sound of Music" hosted by Michael Rodd."

WHITE NOISE Electric Storm in Hell [not quite Full Album]

Published on Mar 9, 2013 musick2138

"The Seventh Wave presents

White Noise - a Fifty Years Celebration of An Electric Storm & Other Sonic Adventures

Voyd - live set / White Noise - live set / White Noise - talk and q&a

Friday 14 June 2019 Doors 6.30 pm.

Curfew 10.00 pm.

The Blue Orange Theatre, 118 Great Hampton Street, Jewellery Quarter, Birmingham B18 6AD.

White Noise - An Electric Storm - Review

When White Noise's debut album, An Electric Storm, landed on Island Records in 1969, it must have sounded like nothing else. Packaged in a striking black and white sleeve that pictured a spark of lightning streaking across a black sky, this was an album that - quite rightly as it turned out - resembled as much a scientific experiment as any conventional musical document.

White Noise came into being when David Vorhaus, an American electronics student with a passion for experimental sound and classical music attended a lecture by Delia Derbyshire, a sound scientist at the BBC's Radiophonic Workshop whose claim to fame was writing the original Doctor Who theme tune. With the help of fellow Radiophonic Workshop composer Brian Hodgeson, Vorhaus and Derbyshire hunkered down at Kaleidophon Studios in Camden to pen an album that reconciled pop music with the experimental avant-garde. The result is a set of eerie, delightful songs that, for all their surface simplicity, shimmer with vestigial synthesiser swells, strange echoes, disembodied voices, and distant music-box trills.

Outside of a few equally adventurous '60s releases - the debut album from US psychedelic pioneers The United States Of America, for instance - this is pretty much uncharted territory, particularly for a major label release. On ''My Game Of Loving'', a dozen multi-tracked voices built to a panting orgasm, while the closing ''Black Mass An Electric Storm In Hell'' ushers the record to a freeform close in a clatter of freeform drums, cavernous echo and chilling, animalistic screams. Perhaps unsurprisingly, An Electric Storm would struggle to find an audience on its release, and in the following years, great leaps in synthesiser technology somewhat diminished White Noise's experimental achievements. One thing that would remain timeless, however, were the songs themselves. An Electric Storm would later become a key inspiration on bands like Add (N) To X and Broadcast, synthesiser explorers who picked through these primitive, vestigial sound experiments, took careful notes, and eventually, set out to craft their own futuristic pop lullabies.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/music/reviews/pq9x/

The other two dates of the festival feature:

Banco de Gaia (Toby Marks) - he will once again be accompanied by Patrick Dunn on visuals (Patrick produces visual content for Tangerine Dream!!!).

The Black Dog is a British electronic music group, founded by Ken Downie along with Ed Handley and Andy Turner. The group are considered pioneers who, along with acts like Autechre, Aphex Twin, LFO et al came to define the UK techno movement in the early 1990's.

For further information email theseventhwave@btinternet.com

Tickets available at https://www.skiddle.com/groups/theseventhwave/"

Delia Derbyshire - Alchemists of Sound

YouTube via tarabusch.
"Courtesy of this wonderful documentary, The Alchemists of Sound - find more great Delia bits here:
http://delia-derbyshire.dyndns.org/
Beautiful!!!

analogsuicide.com
tarabusch.com"
See this post for the 6 Part series.

The First EMS VCS3 - SN 001

Apparently, you are looking at the very first EMS VCS3 aka The Putney and sibling to the EMS SYNTHI. Red Bull Music Academy has an excellent post up on White Noise with the history of this particular synth.

"Perched on top of a speaker in another corner sits the synthesizer used on the early White Noise albums, The EMS VCS3, serial number 001.

'That was the very first one he ever made,' Vorhaus says. 'He turned up with a bottle of Dom Pérignon, which cost probably more than the synthesizer.” The ‘he’ in question is Peter Zinovieff, who created the VCS3 with Tristram Cary and David Cockerell in 1969. If it wasn’t for Zinovieff, Vorhaus might never have met his two principal collaborators on An Electric Storm, Brian Hodgson and Delia Derbyshire, of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. 'Delia Derbyshire was my girlfriend. She showed me everything that was known about electronic music in a couple of weeks,' Vorhaus explains, adding, 'There wasn’t much more to know than that then.'"

On a separate note, one of my biggest regrets was missing the opportunity to purchase Delia Derbyshires' VCS3 several years back. Sonic Boom of Spectrum was selling it along with a Synton Syrinx. Two dream synths I would have loved to own.

A Delia Darbyshire Moment on the Make Noise Morphagene

Published on Nov 23, 2018 mylarmelodies

"Happy Delia Darbyshire day (23rd Nov! https://deliaderbyshireday.com/) - Here's a bonus clip I've never uploaded here before, from when I made the Morphagene Demo - inspired by how Delia Darbyshire used piano to tune her vocals for 'Blue Veils and Golden Sands', which she turned into a reedy instrument sound (using 1960's tape studio magic, not really what I'm doing here...)."

Delia Derbyshire/Blue Veils and Golden Sand

Published on Apr 17, 2009 iiishtar

Blue Veils & Golden Sands

Published on Jun 17, 2012 Dave Kahn

"Martyn Wade's radio play about the composer and electronic music pioneer Delia Debyshire."

Sculptress of Sound: The Lost Works of Delia Derbyshire

"The broadcaster and Doctor Who fan MATTHEW SWEET travels to The University of Manchester - home of Delia Derbyshire's private collection of audio recordings - to learn more about the wider career and working methods of the woman who realised Ron Grainer's original theme to Doctor Who."

via VICMOD, whom BTW "is having a record label launch tonight if anyone is in Melbourne , Australia and wants to see the VICMOD ENSemble perform alongside Cray, Steve Law and Rod Cooper.

The label as of today has 6 releases.
http://vicmod.blogspot.com/2010/03/tonight-tuesday-30-march-vicmod-records.html"

Side note: I originally thought it was this Matthew Sweet. Turns out it is this one. Thanks to STG for catching it.

RIP Stephen Howell of Hollow Sun

We lost another. Some sad news in via Atomic Shadow:

"I learned this morning of the passing of my best friend, Stephen Howell. Many of you know of his work as Hollow Sun. He was a well respected sound designer who had worked for Peter Gabriel and many others. He was a long time fixture at Akai Professional where he designed the UI for many of their top products as well as producing the sample content.

Stephen was my mentor and gave me the nudge to take my music in to a totally abstract direction. Without him there would have been no Atomic Shadow project. I plan to write a bit more about him when I can think more clearly. I am closing down yesterday's world of tomorrow, at least for now.

We only produced one piece of music together. I always tried to get him to do more of his own music, but he said that making music did not pay the bills. He was correct of course. I cut together a video to go with it at the time. Please enjoy it and share it with anyone that you know who may have known Stephen, or had their musical experience made more alive by using one of his instruments."


Mid Century Electronica from Atomic Shadow on Vimeo.

"A short piece featuring my vintage, tube HP sine wave generators, tape loops and ring modulators with a photographic homage to the early pioneers of electronica.... Daphne Oram in twin set, the impish Delia Derbyshire of the early BBC Radiophonic Workshop, several tweedy boffins in their music labs, Karlheinz Stockhausen and so many others. A different age when innovation and ingenuity triumphed over the many technical limitations of the age.

Abstract music soundtrack re-mixed and produced by Stephen Howell of Hollow Sun using traditional techniques in a digital age."

You can find an interview with Stephen Howell on SoundBytes here.

"I was always huge fan of early electronica and the BBC Radiophonic Workshop (Dr Who, Delia Derbyshire and all that as a six-year-old), Louis and Bebe Barron (who did the ‘electronic tonalities’ for the classic sci-fi movie ‘Forbidden Planet’) and loved the weird old gear they used to make/use, so Mario and I were able to design and create, using Kontakt, weird and wonderful things that flew in the face of, shall we say, more ‘conventional’ modern synths and sampler instruments..."

Indeed. Click here for all posts featuring Hollow Sun on MATRIXSYNTH. Each post is a tribute to his spirit. He will be sorely missed.

Update: Failed Muso has set up a condolence page here.

And on KVR here.

Update2:


Stephen Howell and the Subharchord from Ina Pillat on Vimeo.

"December 2011 at the Museum of Technology (Deutsches Technikmuseum) in Berlin. Stephen Howell takes recordings of the instrument. Per Platou, founder and leader of www.pnek.org, has invited him to create a sound library and helps him with the recordings. Inventor Gerd Steinke in conversation with Stephen Howell.

Photography: Jenny Barth
Sound: Johannes Schmelzer-Ziringer
Director: Ina Pillat
Production: Norwegian Arts Council // Per Platou, Ina Pillat"

BBC RADIOPHONIC WORKSHOP - A Retrospective

"50TH ANNIVERSARY RELEASE

DOUBLE CD, RELEASE DATE: 3rd NOVEMBER 2008

Mute are proud to announce the release of a 50th Anniversary Retrospective double CD from the Radiophonic Workshop. This brand new compilation features classic, extremely rare and previously unavailable sounds and music by the legendary BBC organisation. Presented in chronological order, the CD includes works from stalwarts of the Radiophonic Workshop such as John Baker, Delia Derbyshire, Daphne Oram, Elizabeth Parker, Desmond Briscoe, Paddy Kingsland, Peter Howell and Malcolm Clarke amongst others.

This Retrospective features over 100 pieces of music and sound effects from various BBC TV and Radio shows from 1958 through to 1997. Including work from Quatermass and the Pit, The Goon Show, The Secret War, Blake’s Seven, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Salem’s Lot, The Demon Headmaster, Michael Palin’s Full Circle as well as the original full length Dr Who Theme and the Tardis effects.

Using reel-to-reel tape machines, early heroines such as Daphne Oram and Delia Derbyshire recorded everyday or strange sounds and then manipulated these by speeding up, slowing down or cutting the tape with razor blades and piecing it back together.

The pioneering techniques were created for and used on a myriad of programmes, with Dr Who being their biggest client. The sound of the Tardis in Dr Who was a sound engineer's front door key scraped across the bass strings on a broken piano. Other impromptu props included a lampshade, champagne corks and assorted cutlery.

Ten years ago the workshop was disbanded due to costs but its reputation as a Heath Robinson-style, pioneering force in sound is as strong as ever, acknowledged as possibly the greatest influence on UK electronic music, influencing the likes of Jon Spencer, Aphex Twin, Daniel Miller, Add N to (x)…. The corporation initially only offered its founders a six-month contract, because it feared any longer in the throes of such creative and experimental exercises might make them ill.

Also released on the same day are the albums BBC Radiophonic Workshop and BBC Radiophonic Music, The BBC Radiophonic Music CD concentrates on the more musical output of the legendary organisation while BBC Radiophonic Workshop deals with the pioneering sound effects and methods used to achieve them.

These releases continue a series that began on The Grey Area of Mute with the release of Doctor Who at the BBC Radiophonic Workshop Volume 1: The Early Years 1963-1969 and Volume 2: New Beginnings 1970-1980."

EMS Putney Improvisations - Tribute to Delia Derbyshire

Full details here.

"Delia Derbyshire was one of the pioneers of electronic music during and after her tenure at the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. She was both a gifted composer and an audacious and precise engineer. Since seeing her in documentaries, and hearing her music I’m both awed by her and have a synth-geek’s crush on her. She was on my mind as I recorded these pieces, and I dedicate them to her memory.

The 5 parts of this piece were recorded in one evening, with no editing or overdubbing. The Putney was plugged into the Stereo Memory Man pedal, and the pedal was plugged into my computer."

The Delian Mode - trailer - Delia Derbyshire Documentary

The Delian Mode - trailer from Philtre Films on Vimeo.

"A short documentary exploring the life and work of electronic music pioneer Delia Derbyshire.

directed by Kara Blake
produced by Philtre Films

see thedelianmode.com for more information"

Inside Out: Delia Derbyshire

YouTube via UnmWit | November 17, 2010
http://matrixsynth.blogspot.com/search?q=delia+derbyshire

Delia Derbyshire - Sculptress of Sound documentary 1 - 7

YouTube Uploaded by straypixel on Apr 5, 2010

"The broadcaster and Doctor Who fan Matthew Sweet travels to The University of Manchester - home of Delia Derbyshire's private collection of audio recordings - to learn more about the wider career and working methods of the woman who realised Ron Grainer's original theme to Doctor Who.

Further details from http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00rl2ky

This is part 1 of 7; the programme is divided into chunks to fit YouTube's 10 minute length limit.

Photographs are BBC/public domain. Used, by permission, from Ray White's 'Radiophonic Gallery', http://whitefiles.org/rwg/."

Previously posted but not embedded here.