Fascinating audio from a 1963 BBC “Sound’ Documentary about the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. The fact it’s on vinyl is because the BBC transcribed many of their works onto vinyl for safe-keeping and future re-use – the B-side is actually repeats of the A-side.
It’s a fascinating look at the early Workshop, and features Desmond Briscoe, Dick Mills and Brian Hodgson sounding exactly the same as he does now except a little younger! I learnt about this via Ray White’s excellent White Files site. It is a good primer on the Radiophonic and Musique concrète techniques of the day, going in-depth and technical for those wanting to ‘try it at home’ – yes the start of the DIY home remixer! Many other early broadcast features on the Workshop tend to hand-wave it all as magic and/or dumb down the information, so it’s refreshing to hear something useful and educational for once.
Also mentioned on there is this rather strange collaboration where Soft Machine use the Workshop studio in ‘Analysis Of A Session With Soft Machine’ broadcast in October 1970 to recreate one of their tracks called ‘Eamonn Andrews’. I am not making this up! It all feels like listening in on someone else’s homework….also Robert Wyatt is still in the band at this point – just?
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