Tag: The Radiophonic Workshop (Page 2 of 2)

THE RADIOPHONIC WORKSHOP Burials In Several Earths

THE RADIOPHONIC WORKSHOP was the legendary group of musicians / engineers that were set up in a BBC department ‘Room 13’ to provide music and sonic effects for radio and television programmes.

Most famous for Delia Derbyshire’s iconic interpretation of Ron Grainer’s ‘Dr Who Theme’, the collective also scored the music for ‘The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’ and ‘The Living Planet’. Due to financial constraints, the Workshop was wound down in 1998, but in 2009 several ex-members including Peter Howell, Roger Limb, Dr Dick Mills and Paddy Kingsland, along with “long-time associate composer” Mark Ayres reunited for some live shows.

‘Burial In Several Earths’ sees the first official studio release since 1985 with the music being inspired by an unfinished poem by Sir Francis Bacon. The spirit of Workshop co-founder Daphne Oram lives on within the album as she once treated a section of the Bacon work as a manifesto for the operation and its commitment to producing innovative electronic avant-garde sound.

The reunited collective’s manifesto for ‘Burials In Several Earths’ was to “…see what happened if we allowed people to react together with their machines in a very unplanned and spontaneous way” with “the computers and sequencers switched off” leading to a “very human interaction between all of us”.

The album also features guest appearances from Martyn Ware and Grammy-award winning mixing engineer for THE CHEMICAL BROTHERS, UNKLE, and NEW ORDER, Steve ‘Dub’ Jones.

Ware discussed the making of the album with ELECTRICITYCLUB.CO.UK recently and the very improvised nature of most of the compositions featured, saying “No words were spoken as to what we were going to do, it was completely spontaneous. At first, it felt incredibly awkward and childish in a strange sort of way, but as things loosened up a bit and we played off each other in a classic ‘jazz’ style, what emerged was spasmodically transcendental.”

With the opening eponymous track clocking in at close to nineteen minutes and a subsequent pair of twenty plus minute tracks, you know that this album isn’t going to be one that requires a cursory listening. The epic piece seamlessly moves through several sections from peaceful piano through to howling EMS synth freakouts.

Cyclical piano starts ‘Things Buried in Water’ with background siren-like synths, and an echoed guitar texture adding to the atmosphere. At this point, this appears to be the most melodic track so far until a huge blast of white noise materialises at around the four minute mark to disturb the peace. Halfway through, an octave / filtered arpeggiator riff comes in with an ever-increasing tempo, but drops out of the mix pretty much as quickly as it appears.

‘Some Hope of Land’ is another challenging piece, constantly evolving with a mix of JOHN CAGE inspired ambience and blippy sequencer parts. The ending of the track is almost an electro-blues section, with the kind of guitar riff that Martin Gore would be more than happy to rock out.

In comparison, the short four minute ‘Not Come To Light’ is more concise and is split between full-on analogue distortion, through to a beautifully pristine synthetic aesthetic.

‘The Stranger’s House’ starts with an echoed Virgin-era TANGERINE DREAM-style sequencer pattern; short fragments of electronic sound punctuate before a deep JOHN CARPENTER-esque bass joins the mix. Three minutes in and a thinly EQ’d guitar helps to give the track a Krautrock feel, whilst the bass reveals itself as a sequencer pattern itself when other notes are additionally triggered. The additional of more real piano really evokes the playing of Edgar Froese and the mixture of live instrumentation and synthetics works brilliantly here.

With acts like Tim Gane’s CAVERN OF ANTI-MATTER perpetuating the influence and sound of THE RADIOPHONIC WORKSHOP in recent releases, it’s undeniably brilliant to still have several original members creating vibrant and challenging electronic work.

In places this is not an easy listen, but with repeated revisits ‘Burials In Several Earths’ is a rewarding album and one can imagine the makers of the album having a huge amount of fun making it.


‘Burials In Several Earths’ is released by Room 13 Records as a 4 x 10” vinyl boxset, double CD and download

THE RADIOPHONIC WORKSHOP play live in Surround Sound at the IMAX Theatre in London’s Science Museum on Friday 16th June 2017. The evening will also feature an onstage panel Q&A hosted by Dr Tim Boon – tickets are available from http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/visitmuseum/Plan_your_visit/events/exhibition_events/radiophonic-workshop

http://www.theradiophonicworkshop.co.uk/

https://www.facebook.com/theradiophonicworkshop/


Text by Paul Boddy
20th May 2017

MARTYN WARE Discusses THE RADIOPHONIC WORKSHOP + More

THE RADIOPHONIC WORKSHOP are to release ‘Burials In Several Earths’, a brand new work which will be their first commercial available product since 1985.

The veteran sonic architects behind the soundtracks of classic BBC TV shows such as ‘Doctor Who’ and ‘The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’ recently gave a mind-blowing live performance as part of the ‘Picasso By Night’ evening curated by Martyn Ware of HEAVEN 17.

So it is fitting that he features on the album along with Steve ‘Dub’ Jones, best known for his engineering work for THE CHEMICAL BORTHERS and UNKLE.

Martyn Ware kindly chatted about his contribution to ‘Burials In Several Earths’ and about what is happening with the new, long awaited HEAVEN 17 long player ‘Not For Public Broadcast’.

Your musical history with THE RADIOPHONIC WORKSHOP goes back performing the ‘Dr Who Theme’ in with Ian Craig Marsh?

Yes, we did in the earliest band we ever formed! It was in D-K & THE STUDS, Glenn was D-K, the singer and it was a supergroup with various members of CABARET VOLTAIRE, CLOCK DVA and 2.3 before we started THE HUMAN LEAGUE or anything. We only played it once and it was terrible.

What kind of influence were they on you during your phase in THE HUMAN LEAGUE and how did they exploits fuel your zest for experimentation?

It was in the zeitgeist really. David Vorhaus, who I’ve just done some work with recently, was perhaps more of an influence. He created WHITE NOISE with Delia Derbyshire and Brian Hodgson from THE RADIOPHONIC WORKSHOP.

I met them through Clifford Jones who was their manager. I’ve always been a fan of their work, so having a chance to meet them and do something with them was too good a chance to miss. I did a lecture with Peter Howell on the South Bank in 2013.

You and Peter Howell made a good double act in your ‘A Journey In 20 Synths’ presentation…

Ha ha! It was like a synth version of ‘Grumpy Old Men’… or ‘Last Of The Midsummer Synths’! ‘

I thought it was interesting that you both differed slightly in your views on the Yamaha DX7?

I don’t like the sound of digital synths, when things started moving into the FM world, I wasn’t so happy. I had the DX7, Roland D50, Korg M1, an SP12 drum machine, that period I went through loads of stuff. Funnily enough, I’ve gone back to samples from the Emulator II OMI Universe of Sounds package and I prefer those to anything I’ve just mentioned.

I’ve now got all the virtual packages but there’s something about the sonic philosophy that’s too far down that Japanese clean path, it’s all shiny and lacking in warmth. There’s a narrative arc that leads through the inception of domestic level synthesizers from the mid-70s to the birth of digital synthesis right through to the current day, it’s not ever really reversed, and this over-digitalisation of sound is a problem. That’s why there’s so many plug-ins and filters designed to counter that and reintroduce the artificial sound of tape or vinyl.

So how did the collaboration come about?

Although we were all busy with other projects and playing live, Mark Ayres called and suggested we go into a studio he’d booked in South London on this date at ten in the morning. It was a bit ad hoc, but I’m a great believer in just doing stuff rather than theorising about it, so I thought I’d better walk the walk.

I turned up with no instruments and there was nobody there apart from the engineer who opened up and let me in. About an hour later, people started drifting in and various synths started arriving including a Moog Modular, a Jupiter 8, a Korg MS20, pedals and a Teenage Engineering OP-1.

So I suggested we started improvising, which is so unlike me and right outside my comfort zone… I haven’t done that since the mid-70s. The one instrument there which I really knew inside out was the Jupiter 8 so I played that, Mark played the Moog Modular, Steve ‘Dub’ Jones played piano and the OP-1 while Paddy Kingsland played treated guitars and pedals.

No words were spoken as to what we were going to do, it was completely spontaneous. At first, it felt incredibly awkward and childish in a strange sort of way, but as things loosened up a bit and we played off each other in a classic ‘jazz’ style, what emerged was spasmodically transcendental. We did about 2-3 hours onto Pro-Tools and at the end, I had no idea if very much of it was any good.

We went from the live room into the studio and started listening to it… even without any mixing, we were astonished how interesting and unique it sounded. I have never done an improvised album ever, it was a four way jam with a genuine equal split.

The title ‘Burials In Several Earths’ is Mark Ayres’ idea and he was leading on the whole thing, doing the editing and mixing.

Meanwhile, HEAVEN 17’s ‘Not For Public Broadcast’ became available to Bowers & Wilkins Society of Sound members as a work-in-progress. What was your strategy with regards this approach to launch the album?

I’ve been sponsored in kind with products by Bowers & Wilkins for over a decade and they started this online Society of Sound. I was asked to be an ambassador for it and Danny Wilkins from Bowers & Wilkins asked if I’d release some new HEAVEN 17 material on it via this subscription.

We’re not really sure about the digital world at all as you know, but the idea that it was only available for a month with the rights reverting back to us, and we’d get paid, appealed to us… so it was like a sonic Snapchat release.

We didn’t want to do the whole album but to get people off our backs, we thought it would be good to release a half-finished album as a kind of study into where we are heading and to expose the process via social media, as well as to discuss our theory of ‘Not For Public Broadcast’ on how to release stuff to people who actually care about music, as opposed to just giving it away for free.

Hopefully people liked it, I know to gain access one had to fully subscribe, but I do genuinely believe that it’s an amazing thing to subscribe to. It’s all looked after by Real World Records, Peter Gabriel’s label and there are some amazing recordings there. It was up to people if they wanted to do it or not… it’s all going to be on the forthcoming album anyway, so it’s not like we’re denying people anything.

So is the album going to be ready for the forthcoming tour with BLANCMANGE?

In reality, we’ll have more tracks ready for the Autumns show but the album will be finished Spring next year. The problem we have is time because Glenn is out on tour with HOLY HOLY, he’s writing the music for an upcoming ITV series while there’s all the summer festival stuff too.

HEAVEN 17 are touring with BLANCMANGE again?

Yes, we really like each other’s company and music, so I think it’s a good match, but it was the promoter’s idea to do it. It went so well in 2014, they wanted to do it again. So that’s what we’re doing.


ELECTRICITYCLUB.CO.UK gives its grateful thanks to Martyn Ware

THE RADIOPHONIC WORKSHOP ‘Burials In Several Earths’ is released by Room 13 Records on 19th May 2017 as a double CD, 4 x 10” vinyl boxset and download

http://www.theradiophonicworkshop.co.uk/

https://www.facebook.com/theradiophonicworkshop/

Details of the forthcoming HEAVEN 17 live dates with BLANCMANGE can be found at http://www.heaven17.com/

Martyn Ware’s recently released solo album ‘Electronically Yours Classical’ is available via the usual digital outlets

https://twitter.com/martynware


Text and Interview by Chi Ming Lai
4th April 2017

THE REST IS NOISE – 19 eighties: the rhythm of a decade

Photo by Mark Allan/BBC

The decade you either love, or love to hate…

The Southbank Centre’s year long ‘The Rest Is Noise’ festival concluded its musical journey through the 20th century with a special event entitled ‘19 eighties: the rhythm of a decade’ which saw classical meet synthpop. Broadcast live by BBC Radio3, the evening was hosted by journalist, cultural commentator and ZTT strategist Paul Morley in the company of the BBC Concert Orchestra.

Featuring the work of contemporary composers such as Andrew Poppy, Sir John Tavener, Steve Martland and Michael Nyman as well as tracks from THE ART OF NOISE and the synthpop era arranged in a special orchestral suite by Anne Dudley, it was billed as “a one-off documentary soundtrack to the decade you either love, or love to hate”.

It is well documented how ELECTRICITYCLUB.CO.UK feels about that decade, or rather how it has been generalised. While some of the greatest and most innovative pop music ever produced came from between 1980-1989, the decade also gave rise to some of the worst.

So to have lazy journalists glamourise about how it was one wonderful party for all is not only ignorant, but extremely insensitive to those who suffered in the era.

Music was often an escape for these troubles and for every pioneer who pursued artistic values as a reaction to the system, like today in our X-Factor / Heat magazine driven society, there were corporations and aspiring celebrities prepared to go to the lowest common denominator in order to get rich quick.

But the biggest gripe ELECTRICITYCLUB.CO.UK particularly has is how the synthesizer has been marginalised as a by-product of that era, only be used now as an instrument to reflect nostalgic intent or mock rather than pushing boundaries and encouraging forward thinking. Comments from unenlightened observers who think of Alison Moyet’s ‘the minutes’ album as being “80s sounding”, rather than a songwriter’s experiment in modern electronica, are an example of the imbecilic attitude at large.

So it was apt that to start the evening in the foyer of Southbank Centre’s Queen Elizabeth Hall, HEAVEN 17 and BEF’s Martyn Ware gave a talk entitled ‘A Journey In 20 Synths’.

The Nile Rodgers of Synth Britannia was joined by the BBC Radiophonic Workshop’s Peter Howell with the pair leading an informative and lively discussion about the electronic music decade. Interestingly, most of the chat focussed around equipment from the decade before.

It all started with an instrument that was first launched in 1971, the Stylophone 350s. Ware commented that he thought he was Brian Eno when he got one. Next up was the EMS Synthi 100, one of those huge telephone exchange beasts that have gone down in legend; Howell recalled it had a knob called ‘Option4’ which wasn’t actually connected to anything and often used by members of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop to trick difficult TV producers into accepting their soundtracks by offering tweaks in their presence… ”Oh! Hang on, it just needs some more Option4”!

Ware then gleefully talked about the Korg 700s and Roland System 100, the two synths which effectively helped realise his post-punk musical vision. First manufactured in 1974 and 1975 respectively, these two were the rhythmical powerhouse of THE HUMAN LEAGUE’s first single ‘Being Boiled’ in 1978.

Affection was also bestowed on Roland’s Jupiter 4 from 1978 (described by Ware as his “dream synth”) and the Linn LM1 which Ware said was the “best drum machine ever”.

Asked by a member of the audience whether he liked Oberheim gear, Ware commented that he was not a big fan of American synths as they were designed for musicians, with the filters not being particularly extreme enough for experimentalists. Howell highlighted that one of the beauties of synthesizers was being able to change timbre and tones mid-composition, thus enabling the creation process to be taken into a direction that would not have been possible using acoustic instruments such as guitar or piano.

After adding that he had three Roland TB303 Basslines which were all stolen from the studio because they were pocket sized, Ware groaned as the subject headed towards digital synths of the period.

The Roland D50 from 1987 provoked an interesting debate with Howell in favour of its possibilities while Ware bemoaned the fact that he traded in his Jupiter 8 for a Yamaha DX7!!! Howell then admitted that he used the DX7 as a controller keyboard for the recent Radiophonic Workshop live shows. But both agreed that with FM synthesis, everyone fell into the preset trap and started to use the same sounds… the result inevitably being that pop music became much more homogenised in the latter part of the decade.

Following a comment that the Korg M1 was the worst synth ever designed, Ware walked over to fire up the Roland System 100 and Korg 700s he had brought with him to demonstrate to the receptive audience.

Using the original patches from ‘Being Boiled’, the familiar industrialised rhythm poured from the expanded System 100 driven by its 104 sequencer module. After some temporary 103 Mixer glitches, Ware stood behind the Korg 700s for a run through of the song’s distinctive bass riff

TheKorg 700s’ dual oscillators rumbled the plush confines of the Queen Elizabeth Hall. It was an entertaining and accessible presentation with Ware and Howell articulating their thoughts without too much technical talk in a humourous manner.

Photo by Mark Allan/BBC

And so onto the main event; Paul Morley introduced the evening’s proceedings as “using words and music to summon up memories of that decade, to eradicate some others” and “to try and work out what the hell happened there…”

The ‘rhythm of a decade’ concert itself began with ’32 Frames For Orchestra’, a piece conceived by one time ZTT artist Andrew Poppy as “merging Beethoven with The Velvet Underground”.

In an onstage chat with Morley, Poppy reflected a spirit of adventure that shared an affinity with the innovators of Synth Britannia before taking to the piano himself for a rendition of ‘Almost The Same Shame’. There then followed touching tributes to the recently departed composers Sir John Tavener and Steve Martland. The solemn tranquillity of Tavener’s ‘The Lamb’ captured the sadness of the era eloquently while Martland’s powerfully rhythmic ‘Remix’ represented how he felt classical music could be given a broader audience, a stance reflected in his commitment to music education and as a curator of the short lived Factory Classical label.

Celebrating THE ART OF NOISE and ZTT’s 30th Anniversary, an announcement came forth via Morley in his usual, wittily provocative style: “thirty years after our first record ‘Into Battle’ which was neither an album nor a single, which was really a series of musical movements in the abstract, each of which lasted different lengths from the quite short to the fairly long, the time has perhaps come for a reunion… this is our reunion, hidden in the middle of something else altogether!”

Photo by Mark Allan/BBC

The orchestral premiere of THE ART NOISE’s debut 1983 EP ‘Into Battle’ specially arranged by Anne Dudley was a delight, coming over at times like a lost Bond film soundtrack. The EPs two best known tracks ‘Moments In Love’ and ‘Beatbox’ each had their component parts reinterpreted by classical instruments as “memory of a memory”; the distinctive bassline of ‘Beat Box’ was represented by French horns while the iconic vocal samples of ‘Moments In Love’ had their places taken by an ensemble of violins.

After the interlude, classical music’s link to synthpop was emphasised further before the Grand Finale with a recital of Michael Nyman’s ‘Chasing Sheep’. Itself based on Purcell’s ‘Prelude to Act III, Scene 2’ from ‘King Arthur’, it was recently used by PET SHOP BOYS as the basis of their ‘Love Is a Bourgeois Construct’. A duo with links to many involved in THE ART OF NOISE including Anne Dudley, plus of course Trevor Horn and JJ Jeczalik, all were in attendance for this spirited evening. Engineer Gary Langan was in the audience too, making it a full reunion of THE ART OF NOISE in spirit if not performance.

Photo by Mark Allan/BBC

To conclude the concert, Anne Dudley took to the piano for the much anticipated ‘rhythm of a decade’. While Paul Morley narrated his musings on Thatcher’s Britain, he was accompanied by an orchestral soundtrack arranged by Dudley… and what a soundtrack! Beginning with her own familiar intro to ‘Two Tribes’ before segueing into the beautiful pentatonic melodies of ‘Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence’, there then followed a significant number of synth classics transcribed for everyone’s listening pleasure.

From the dystopian shrills of ‘Underpass’ and ‘Fade To Grey’ to the euphoric club tunes of ‘Pump Up The Volume’ and ‘Pacific State’, each had been carefully chosen by Dudley for their distinctive riff laden elements to complement the dynamics of Morley’s monologue.

The biggest surprise came with a blast of SOFT CELL’s ‘Sex Dwarf’ while ‘Mad World’, ‘Situation’, ‘Love Action’, ‘True Faith’ and ‘Blue Monday’ all figured in proceedings alongside more conventional numbers of the period such as ‘Back To Life’, ‘Let’s Dance’, ‘Ghost Town’ and ‘Running Up That Hill’. It all worked together marvellously for what was slowly emerging effectively as a spoken word art piece accompanied by music.

Overall, Anne Dudley’s orchestral interpretations were a great success, much more so than say OMD’s hit and miss experiment with the Liverpool Philharmonic immortalised on the ironically titled ‘Electricity’ DVD. As for Morley’s narration, for those who have loved his commentary over the years, this was perfect entertainment but for those who have found him an irritant, this would have been an intrusion to the music.

The evening was a triumph that reflected on that decade as not being the cheesefest it has often been portrayed as by the media and the public at large.

The fact that these synthesizer tunes (which have often been derided as not being real music) have been able to be orchestrated by one of modern pop’s most successful arrangers is a testament to their value and integrity. Yes, the rhythm to a decade but also a rhythm to many more…


Special thanks to Victoria Taylor and Camilla Dervan at the BBC

http://www.annedudley.co.uk/

http://www.ztt.com/

http://martynwareblog.blogspot.co.uk/

https://www.peterhowell-media.co.uk/

http://www.theradiophonicworkshop.co.uk/


Text by Chi Ming Lai
2nd December 2013

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