Original subtitles

MUSIC: Another Green World by Brian Eno

LOUD ROARING

INSTRUMENTS PLAY DISCORDANTLY

INDISTINCT SPEECH

And seven. Ah, br... 200...

TAPE RECORDING REWINDS

DISTORTED ALTERNATELY PANNED SPEECH

ATMOSPHERIC MUSIC

SUSTAINED BEEP

Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three.

This is one of my uni...universal mixes, generally useful.

You may have some of this later.

OK. Coming up...

Egypt, lot one.

The same sync points as before, at 230 feet,

when the sun started to emerge from the pyramid.

We can, if we like, go to these the sound generators here,

electronic generators, and we'll listen to three

of the basic electronic sounds.

First is the simplest sound of all, which is a sine wave.

SINE WAVE PLAYS

As you see on the oscilloscope, it has a very simple form

and has a very pure sound.

I once said Delia's a bit like a diamond - it depends

how you shine the light through it

and you get all sorts of different Delias.

Oh, she was sparkling and wonderful, great, terrific fun.

Her great joy was sound.

She'd always talk about somebody having a wonderful pair of ears,

which means they could appreciate sound.

She's fascinating, cos she had all this magic up her sleeve

and she was doing it as a regular job.

Who was Delia Derbyshire for me?

I think she was a friend,

a very talented composer.

Also very curious about other people.

But a tormented soul.

You know, she had lots of problems, unfortunately.

You know, she was always calculating stuff

and she carried around reams and reams of paper.

Usually in a large shopping basket, with a bottle.

A more complex sound still is white noise.

We call it white because it contains all sound frequencies

in the same way as white light contains all frequencies.

WHITE NOISE PLAYS

ATMOSPHERIC ELECTRONIC MUSIC PLAYS

RADIO REPORTER: Now, we actually have some sad news.

The death has just been announced of Delia Derbyshire,

a pioneer of electronic music in Britain

and a prime mover in the BBC's Radiophonic Workshop.

She went on to influence many famous musicians and composers

around the world, but will probably be best known for TV's most famous

them tune - Doctor Who.

It's come to me, but just relevantly recently,

that my love for abstract sounds

were the sounds of the air raid sirens.

Because that is a sound you hear and you don't know the source of it

as a child.

SIRENS BLARE, EXPLOSIONS

And then the sound of the all-clear...

SHE IMITATES SIREN

..that was electronic music.

Seven feet is the beginning of the dissolve into the tunnel.

ATMOSPHERIC ELECTRONIC MUSIC PLAYS

METAL CLANKING

CLANKING

Just think, Delia Derbyshire, me, Cosey Fanni Tutti,

spending our lives immersed in music and art.

I'm so drawn to Delia. There's connections I hadn't expected.

It'd be wonderful to leave Delia and know that she could collect

a point of contact across the dimensions.

The feel of the place makes me speculate about the possibility

of residual sounds being held in the concrete,

trace elements of life.

ELECTRICITY BUZZES

Musique concrete, sourced from concrete.

BICYCLE CLICKS

I wonder how, from what we leave behind,

do expect people to have any understanding

of who we really are or the reasons behind our life choices.

MUSIC: Mattachin by Delia Derbyshire

RADIO PRESENTER: Back in the days when that was recorded,

it was a completely different process.

And that track you've just listened to just now was Mattachin,

put together at the BBC Radiophonic Workshop back in the early '60s

by Delia Derbyshire.

Some time since you heard that track, I guess?

DELIA: Yes, since 1968, I think!

THEY LAUGH

I'm tickled pink by it! It's charming, isn't it?

I think that what you achieved in the Radiophonic Workshop

is something that maybe we should define slightly for people

listening to the programme who maybe don't realise the processes

that actually went into making that kind of music...

Freedom of the spirit.

The gateway to the next phase of life.

A doorway into a new life.

AMBIENT ELECTRONIC MUSIC PLAYS

Perhaps I have a very strange mind,

because I analyse everything - not just music.

I'm drawn so deep into Delia's story.

It's like a map of her life through sound, or a coded message.

There are so many subtleties in the human voice.

I think I've found the language of a shared experience.

Even when I'm listening to the news,

I note every inflection, every comma.

I suppose, in a way, I was experimenting in psychoacoustics.

DISTORTED VOICE SOUNDS PLAY

I came from...

..well, I think what they'd like to call

the upper-working class Catholic background.

Catholic, Roman Catholic... in Coventry.

Delia! You're not going to throw things out, but

you're going to have to take them straight back to Cambridge with you.

I am.

No, you're not. Yes, I am.

Don't make me come up those stairs!

I won't. How can I MAKE you come up on the stairs?

SHE PLAYS GYMNOPEDIE BY ERIK SATIE ON HARPSICHORD

RADIO TUNES

MALE PRESENTER: The BBC presents Private Dreams

and Public Nightmares,

a radiophonic poem by Frederick Bradnum.

The programme is introduced by the producer Donald McWhinnie.

This programme is an experiment, an exploration.

It's been put together with enormous enthusiasm

and equipment designed for other purposes.

It's not a masterpiece, not even a minor one.

And it's not a stunt.

We think it's worth broadcasting as a perfectly serious first attempt

to find out whether we can convey a new kind of emotional

and intellectual experience by means of what we call radiophonic effects.

By radiophonic effects, we mean something

very near to what the French have labelled musique concrete.

The basis of it is an unlimited supply of magnetic tape... Delia?

..recording machine, razorblade... Yes, just organising things!

..and something to stick the bits together with.

And a group of technicians who think nothing is too much trouble

provided it works.

You take a sound, any sound, record it

and then change its nature.

A sort of modern magic.

SHE SNIFFS Hello.

..they've been exploiting it on the Continent for years,

but strangely enough, we've held it aloof.

Partly from distrust,

is it simply a new toy?

Some musicians believe that it can become an art form

complete in itself.

One thought does occur from time to time, not entirely frivolously -

would it not be more illuminating to play the whole thing backwards?

Oh, the radio, the radio, the radio

was the most important thing in my life.

And music, music, music.

I was told in no uncertain terms

that the BBC does not employ composers.

And, so, it was only by gradually sort of infiltrating the system

that I managed to do music.

I think you'd call that music, wouldn't you?

EXPERIMENTAL ELECTRONIC MUSIC PLAYS

Well, what I'm really interested in is sound.

Sound? Yes.

The sound of what?

Well, I'm interested in sound.

Music and acoustics.

I see, Miss Derbyshire. You'd like to combine your interest

in mathematics with your interest in music.

Yes.

As a career choice?

Well, music is just an expression of mathematics.

It's an idea that was established

way back in the 6th century by Pythagoras.

Yes, dear. But this is a careers office - not ancient Greece.

Do you see?

Have you considered a career in deaf aids, Miss Derbyshire?

No, Mr Thompson.

Have you?

Angela! Tea!

Christ alive.

And you are?

Delia. Delia Derbyshire.

And where are you from? Coventry.

Not much of it left, is there?

Well... Totally decimated, wasn't it?

Yeah.

Cambridge - ah!

Girton.

HE LAUGHS

Good old Girton College.

It's rather good, isn't it? Hm? For girls.

I studied music - and mathematics too.

Unusual. But do go on.

Well, my interest is in sound and acoustics.

I'm also a musician.

I play the piano and violin, double bass,

and I'd very much like to work as a sound recordist,

or, well, possibly a music balancer.

Ah, yes. I'll have to stop you there, Miss Derbyshire.

Decca Records does not employ women in its recording studios

or any of its technical departments.

Never has, probably never will.

I see.

And why would that be?

Those are the house rules.

I'm not paid to question them, Miss Derbyshire -

only to observe them.

However, we do have posts for women in our administration department

and there may well be a secretarial position available

at the end of the month.

Cheerio!

Toodle-oo!

He was probably the man who turned down the Beatles.

BLEEPS PLAY

And this comes back to something else I'd like to stress.

You see, there's that sexist thing again.

One director came into the workshop, said to me,

"Oh, you must be an ardent feminist."

But I think I was a post-feminist before feminism was even invented.

I'd prefer to describe myself...

..as an individualist.

DISTORTED: An individualist.

That's me.

Golly, I realise that now.

DISTORTED SPEECH CONTINUES

DISTORTED: An individualist.

An individualist.

FADES: An individualist.

And, so, I went to Geneva to teach English,

and that's when I started bombarding the BBC with endless applications.

And I finally ended up with a three-month placement

as a studio manager.

I'm told you have extraordinary powers.

Oh, really?

CHUCKLES: Yes.

The fellows on Record Review are little in awe.

They tell me you can find a piece of music on an LP

just by looking at it.

How? Magic.

Hm, yes. Witchcraft was mentioned.

I simply hold the disc up to the light

and look for where the groove modulations

break up the light the most.

Trombones and strings are particularly easy to spot.

Mr Harper, could I please have a placement

at the Radiophonic Workshop at Maida Vale?

Are you mad?

No, I'm neither mad nor a witch.

I'm just fascinated by what they do in there

and I'd like to work with tape manipulation.

I must warn you, nobody's ever requested to join

that department before.

People are normally sent there unwillingly.

Like to Coventry, as a punishment?

Yes, in some cases.

It's a... It's a very particular environment

that we're not sure is altogether, er, healthy.

May I ask you why?

I'd like to create sounds that have never existed

in the world before and I'm not sure where else to do it, Mr Harper.

I'll call down.

She joined about two months before I did.

It was around about Christmas time,

cos you were only allowed to stay for three months

in case you went mad.

I think it was a doctor friend of one of the engineers

who said that it could cause psychological problems,

being exposed to all these strange noises.

MUSIC: Time Beat by Ray Cathode

Michael, the producer, was in yesterday,

but I told him not to bother today.

Help me with the screen, would you, please?

Lovely.

HE WOLF WHISTLES Oh! Ignore him.

Set up a mic, would you, Delia?

Yeah. Just about here? Uh-huh.

I was doing this yesterday.

After trying a couple of different methods,

it was by far the best sound for what we needed.

Yet Michael, the producer, kept laughing at me.

In the end, I said, "If I spot you laughing at me one more time,

"I'm going home." And he did, so I left.

Quite right. Shall I? Mm.

ROCKS CRUNCH AND GRIND

That's beautiful. Well, it's music, isn't it?

Oh... Shh, shh. Why...?

It's forbidden, the word.

What word? The M word.

So, what are you supposed to be making in here, then?

Special sounds. Oh, gosh.

As we're seen by some of the music department as charlatans

using sound technology to disguise our lack of musical ability.

Well, I see. So the musical integrity of the nation is at stake?

So, if you're not musicians,

what are you being asked to call yourselves?

Sound assistants, studio technicians.

If a sound isn't notable, then it's not music -

that's the thinking.

But it's the abstract sound that's organised.

That's music, isn't it - abstract music?

ABSTRACT SOUNDS PAN QUICKLY

We have also sound houses where we practise

and demonstrate all sounds and their generation.

We have harmonies, which you have not,

of quarter-sounds and lesser slides of sounds.

KNOCKING Hello?

Brian. Remember me? Yes, of course. Delia. Delia...

Yes, of course I remember, the induction week.

Sorry, I was engrossed.

Have you been posted here, as it were?

Well, yeah. Uh... A long story, but, yes, yes, in a way.

This is extraordinary, isn't it?

It's 1620

and he's talking about reverberation and delays.

Look - "artificial echoes, reflecting the voice many times".

Mm, mm.

It's incredible, yes.

Look - "sounds in trunks and pipes".

Sounds like microphone leads, do you think? Mm.

"In strange lines and distances".

Well, that could be broadcasting.

It's Francis Bacon's vision for a utopian society

called New Atlantis.

Apparently, Daphne Oram put this up the day

the workshop opened in 1958.

She said that Bacon's premonition had inspired her to persuade the BBC

they needed to create a space to experiment with sound.

Of course, if we were in France or Germany...

Oh, they'd have given up an entire department to it. Yeah! Yes.

It's curious, isn't it, how terrified people are of this place,

like it might be the root of some hideous Continental sound invasion.

Do we have to whisper? Possibly, yes.

They don't want composers making...

WHISPERS: ..music...

..in here, apparently.

Look, look.

This is magnificent.

I know. Look.

It's the Crystal Palace.

Oh, look - and this 1887 harmonium with mouse-proof pedals.

See, look. "Mouse-proof"!

THEY CHUCKLE Super.

It's a good job, as they're plagued with mice in here, I believe.

But do you think they can read? Well, some of them.

But they're usually the ones that cause the most trouble, aren't they?

At least, in my experience.

OBJECT CLATTERS Oh, dear! Sorry! Sorry.

Christ! What the blazes...?

Desmond, so sorry.

This is, um...Brian. Hello.

Yes, I was going to introduce myself. Brian.

Well, you've certainly made an impression already.

Where's your tie, man? Well, I prefer to wear a cravat, actually.

Hodgson, isn't it? Yes, that's right, sir.

Yes. Well, I've heard all about you from Bumps.

But if you're to secure your reputation as a snappy dresser,

Brian, perhaps you should concentrate on

your professional reputation first.

Yes. I'm sorry. Sorry.

Shall we help you?

BOTTLES CLATTER There we go!

When I first came here, I was expecting to find

beautiful chromium-faced equipment and everybody wearing white coats.

And, in fact, I found the tattiest studio,

all full of virtually redundant antique equipment.

Interesting stuff?

SHE CHUCKLES LIGHTLY

Well, potentially, but it's full of mistakes.

Do you see?

No.

Well, they've not allowed for the Pythagorean comma,

so, all these scales are wrong.

Hm, oh...

And it's the reason why a Pythagorean 12-pointed star

will never close on one side, because there ought

to be a discrepancy between the 12 justly tuned perfect fifths.

Oh. Would you mind if I corrected it?

Oh, well, as I've never seen anyone so much as look it,

you do what you need to.

I really ought to. It's a beautiful progression.

But, then, I suppose, if you're using two-dimensional models

to explain four-dimensional concepts,

you will end up with weird harmonics eventually.

Well, you can be our very own enchantress of numbers.

I'm a mathematician, Desmond.

Right.

DELIA VOICEOVER: I think I've always been a very independent thinker,

but I must say that I...I go back to first principles.

When it comes to the music, I go back to the Greeks

and the original...

..well, the simple harmonic series.

I think that's a very healthy thing to do for anyone.

It is 0830 hours, September the 14th, 1988.

These are children of our time.

They should live to be 100.

They may colonise the stars.

They will not toil, they need never be unhappy.

But, this morning, as every morning, there is a problem -

how to spend a golden lifetime, what to do with so much time.

From this September morning in 1988,

look back across a quarter of a century.

We really make the use of computers rather than the human brain

for the control of processes and systems.

The new cybernetic machines go one step further.

In fact, they simulate the human brain.

That's what the word cybernation means.

RECORDING STOPS

DISTORTED SLOW TEMPO: Cybernetic machines...

So, how's 1988 sounding?

Like a very bad dream.

We also have a new commission.

So, Structures Sonores from Paris.

Well, Verity Lambert can't afford them,

but she would like us to sound like them.

They have glass rod set in steel,

a massive grant from their government

and a 20-paid ensemble of musicians.

There are five of us being paid peanuts.

We use square and sine wave generators

and are mostly interested in dissecting white noise.

Hm. She would like it to sound familiar, but different.

Yes. We've been given a scrap of manuscript from the composer

Ron Grainer, with a few bars scribbled on there

with a melody and a bass line.

Yes?

And a mood description of "wind, bubbles and clouds".

Yes. Interesting.

It's for a drama about a time-travelling doctor.

But, of course, they're doing it on the cheap

and, not very surprisingly,, that's where we come in.

They want us to prove we are as capable of tunefulness

as uncanniness.

Christ. Uff...

And, as you all know, we are inundated at the moment.

Does anyone in this room have any idea how to do this?

Well... Hm? Yes?

How? Um...

SHE PLAYS MELODY ON LOOSLY STRINGED INSTRUMENTS

Ah...

Listen to this.

SHE PLAYS MELODY ON LOOSLY STRINGED INSTRUMENTS

Something like that.

That's what he's written.

I think we can do something with that.

This is very impressive.

You know, I think most of what I've ever needed to know about anything

at all has come from that book. Huh?

That's quite a claim.

I'm translating notes on the page into cycles per second,

and then I'm going to translate the duration of notes

into inches of tape.

That's why I have this and this.

And this. I wondered why you were was so engrossed

in the BBC Tennis Club newsletters.

Was I? You are aware that these are the as yet undistributed

June editions and that Maddelena is the club chair?

It's a good job she likes me, then.

Well, not any more, love. No, no, no, that is naughty.

Don't tell her.

PLAYS DOCTOR WHO THEME

HE WAILS

Something like that?

LAUGHTER

DELIA VOICEOVER: Ron wrote the score with abstract things on,

like "wind clouds" and "sweeps"

and "swoops" and "wind bubble," all sort of beautiful descriptions

but with a carefully worked-out rhythm.

And so I got to work and put it all together.

So, are we all set? Yes, just about there. OK.

Bass, bass, melody, details. You're on bass.

I'll do melody and details. OK?

This will work.

Three, two, one.

DOCTOR WHO THEME

WHOOSHES

WAILS

It was a magic experience because I couldn't see from the music

how it was going to sound and it was just Ron's brilliant aural

imagination because when he heard the results,

oh, he was really tickled pink!

SNEEZES AND COUGHS

She had this almost permanent state of sniffles.

This old man said, "You've got a very bad cold, my dear."

And she said, "No, no, I've got vasomotor rhinitis."

And he said, "You should try some of this,"

and he gave her a pinch of snuff.

SNEEZES

Which immediately cleared her head.

She didn't realise at that point it's one of the most addictive

substances you can ever let go up your nose.

And that became her recurrent habit.

Knock knock. Who's there? Doctor. Doctor who?

Airs tomorrow between Grandstand and Juke Box Jury.

That's still not a punch line!

BOTH SIGH

GUNSHOT

Hello, Leonard. Hello, yes.

Yes, OK, go ahead, then. Righto.

Well, as long as you realise all I've got in front of me is a pile

of tape, which I'm just ripping off the printer, which you can

probably hear in the background now. Hello, London.

This is Leonard Parkin calling radio newsreel from Washington.

President Kennedy and Governor John Connally of Texas were shot today

from an ambush as President Kennedy's motorcade left the centre

of Dallas, where the President went on...

DOCTOR WHO THEME PLAYS

Let me read it to you.

"Verity's new sound is way out. Verity Lambert walked

"into the workshop and said, 'I want a new sound that is way out

"'and catchy.'" Mm, a version of events.

"Mr Briscoe and his team looked over the notes and went to work

"without using a single musician or musical instrument.

"They did it all with electronics, and this is the first time

"that electronics has been used to produce a recognisable tune."

It sounds as if they think the tune's been manifested

by some kind of radiophonic alien.

Ron was so sweet, he said to me, "You should be getting half

"of my royalties." We can't claim individual authorship, can we?

We're just seen as technicians.

Do your job and know your place, my dear.

It's bloody appalling.

SHE SIGHS

I feel like I'm traversing time, tapping into frequencies

as I'm making sound from fragments of Delia's life, from her music

and her voice, her words.

In many ways, our lives are a reflection

of each other's, our determination to be heard

and our seeking the unheard.

Our vision of sound as an image or a feeling...

..and the excitement of discovery and redrawing rules.

When I was doing the inventions with Barry Bermange, he wanted sounds

which would sound like a Gothic altarpiece.

He said, "Oh, give me a pencil and paper."

I did.

And, with great care and elaboration,

he drew me a beautiful Gothic altarpiece and said,

"That's the sort of sound I want."

The Afterlife, an Invention For Radio.

All the voices were recorded from life and arranged

in a setting of pure electronic sound in five movements.

Light, light.

ECHOES

Everywhere is light, light.

"LIGHT" ECHOES

The vastness of space, space.

"SPACE" ECHOES

It's so clear, clear.

"CLEAR" ECHOES

Green fields.

Valleys.

Clear running water.

It's so clear. Clear.

My most beautiful sound at that time

was made by a tatty old BBC lampshade

I found lying around the studio,

but it had the most beautiful ringing sound to it.

LOW RINGING

ECHOES

Like joining forces, an exchange between us.

This was a documentary

programme about the Tuareg tribe,

the Tuareg tribe of nomads

in the Sahara Desert.

I tried to convey the distance of the horizon and the heat haze.

ATMOSPHERIC MUSIC

There's this very high, slow, reedy sound.

That indicates, like, this strand

of camels seen at a distance, wandering across the desert.

That in fact was made from square waves put through every filter

I could possibly find to take out all the bass frequencies.

Four - the castrated oboe.

# Ahhhh. #

RECORDED AND DISTORTED: Ahhhh.

PLAYS DISTORTED VERSIONS

OBOE SOUND

CONTINUES

SOFTER ELEMENT

AMBIENT MUSIC

So the camels rode off into the sunset with my voice

in their hooves and green lampshades on their backs.

It has to be something out of this world.

Most of the programmes that I did

were either in the far distant future,

the far distant past, or in the mind.

I think this was 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.

It is difficult to pronounce because it's made

from backwards chanting.

I think if you play it forwards, it would say something like

"Praise to the master...

"..his wisdom and his reason."

Ooh, ooh, ooh... Uh-huh.

Praise to the master, his wisdom and his reason.

Ooh, ooh...

What?

"Ooh". It's a bit... Could you...? No.

I did train as an actor I know what I'm doing. Yes, I know.

So you keep telling me, let's move on.

There is a God, there must be a God.

You certainly didn't, did you?

You're so mean. Have a go at that one.

There is a God, there must be a God, there must be a God, there is a God.

Ooh, ooh, ooh...

Great.

OK?

And now we're going to rewind.

Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh...

DISTORTED BACKWARDS

Didn't you have a deadline tomorrow morning? You know my deadlines

are always tomorrow morning,

and the closer they get, the more I find better things to do.

I think I suffer from a kind of reverse adrenaline.

But we're not flying our own kites, are we, darling?

We spring into action for when the department needs a tune.

Let's get a drink.

Another one?

VOICEOVER: Well, as far as I remember, it was like this -

I had a very complicated studio

and definitely wanted to make the studio better.

And at this time, I'd heard of,

I'd heard of the Radiophonic Workshop, but I'd never been there.

And, then, one day, Brian and Delia came to see me.

I think they just knocked on the door at Putney.

They said, "What about joining forces

"and making commercial music?

"To make money." And I thought this was...this was rather amazing,

that Radiophonic Workshop should come to me.

I hadn't at that stage realised that what they were proposing was

not part of the Radiophonic Workshop, but something different.

Peter had met Delia and she involved me.

And that's when we started Unit Delta Plus.

He was very, naturally, as everybody was, impressed by her.

Well, it gives her a range of facilities that weren't available

to us. And a studio to work in, where we could sort of

not feel entrapped.

Peter Zinovieff was doing the most interesting things.

He didn't claim to be a musician.

He didn't claim to be a composer.

But imagine one of those beautiful London townhouses.

The drawing room on the first floor was totally crammed with telephone

relay equipment, where he was working on his random sequences.

And I thought, "Golly, this is the way things should go."

That was a beautifully interesting time.

Everything was mechanical.

It was all part of a very fertile sort of area,

a wonderful sort of creative time.

Things were happening all over London.

Units were the most popular thing.

And then the Delta was for Delia, really, plus Peter and me.

So, we gave this concert and I don't know

how it came to be in Newbury.

Yes, Peter knew the people who had the theatre

and I think was Peter's idea to do it.

I suppose they must have asked us, somebody must have asked us.

It wasn't much of an affair. It was a country,

you know, village thing.

There was a light projection being done

by the Hornsey College of Art.

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 and he played the double bass, same as I did.

And he was already doing tracks for the Ballet Rambert.

And, so, we got together and we started this album.

We got together.

UPBEAT ELECTRONIC MUSIC

I was doing a postgrad degree in the physics of electronics.

We hear there's this lecture on electronic music in the next hall,

given by some people from the Radiophonic Workshop - Brian, Delia

and Peter Zinovieff, who call themselves Unit Delta Plus.

But I thought, "Christ.

"Yes, absolutely. I want to see it."

So, I shot along to this thing.

And, sure enough, these people were actually doing what, to me,

had just been a fantasy.

Also, I think there's some chemistry

between Delia and I, and we sort of hit it off.

Yes, David sort of erupted out of the audience at the end

of the lecture.

Complete bearded hippie.

A bit like an excitable Peter Pan, really.

And, er... I know he won't mind me saying, he still is!

"Unit Delta Plus! I remember you guys were playing last week

"at the Roundhouse." And we got to talking after, and we just got

on like a house on fire.

And, within a week, we'd started Kaleidophon.

Is this OK?

Yes.

I'm here this time,

most nights, no-one comes in.

The night porter thinks I'm a very strange beast, and I am.

Oh, yeah, wow.

Where's the frequency shifter? Frequency shifter? Er,

it's there. There. There!

Ah, yes.

OK.

Yeah.

Well, let's - we can start there, can't we?

Erm. Fantastic. Careful with that.

Uh-huh.

How many you got? 12. 12?! Yeah.

Frequency shifter.

And then we have the, erm... Incredible. ..these.

And Phillips's of course.

OK. OK.

ECHOES

Well, we might as well get going, right? Right.

OK, is that linked up to there? Cos I can't see the...

Yes, of course. Of course it is, fantastic.

ECHOING

All right, look, straight away...

ECHOING DISTORTION

LOUD DISTORTION

OK. I do know. I use it every day. Yeah.

CHIMING

So, psyche-Delia...

..who are you?

Hm...

Now...

What are you doing?

HE MUMBLES

Golly.

OK.

Oh, oh, gosh, where to start? Go on...

Um, no...I can't.

Please, please, please. OK.

Music... No, I'm not doing this.

Mm! No. Mm.

SHE LAUGHS

Well, I studied music and mathematics at Cambridge.

You see, I'm fascinated by harmonics and the numbers that are built

into nature - clouds, mountains, and coastlines, and ferns,

and natural fractals.

And, of course, our bodies respond to those numbers,

even at a subconscious level.

And, electronic music...

Well, I don't, I don't know.

I was three years old during the Coventry Blitz,

and I can still hear the sound of the, the air raid sirens,

a sort of permanent background hum.

And then there was silence, followed by the sound of the all-clear.

And I can remember my mother counting in the gaps

between the bombs falling.

Sorry, is this really boring?

No, no, I'm closing my eyes so I can hear you properly.

Yes, yes, I do that sometimes.

And I am very, very stoned.

Go on, go on and on and on, it's nice. No, it's not nice,

not nice at all, David.

Go on, you were talking about your mother, please. Yes, yeah.

Well, she didn't pray, which was strange because she was a devout

Catholic, she counted.

And I think there was something very,

very potent within those spaces, a sort of lifetime of faith

for my mother.

And, as a child, you don't know what that is, of course.

And I think those experiences,

they must live in every cell of your body.

FAINT AMBIENT MUSIC

Oh, I don't know, it's just a silly theory.

AMBIENT DRONE

Stop! Stop, stop, stop...

No, no, I don't care... What do you mean?

I like using...voices, just not

as conventional vocals. What do you mean?

So, if, um, if somebody maybe, in the background,

was having an orgasm...

Right. Yeah?

Then we should use it as one of the waveforms

and then the listener will never know what they're hearing.

DISTORTED SOUND EFFECTS

WOMAN CRIES

HEARTBEATS

SIREN AND SOUND EFFECTS

I mean, it's marvellous.

But, yes, they've turned it down.

What was the problem this time?

Well, you're not here most days, are you?

But I'm here every day, I work through the night.

What's that got to do with them? Well, I can only assume

you have other priorities. I've always preferred to work at night.

You know that. You've seen how I work. Not recently, no.

It's too crowded in here, Desmond, during the day.

There's too much work and there's no space to work in.

Yes.

Well, according to this, it's, uh, it's unforeseen circumstances

that have prevented them from using the piece.

Desmond, they asked for a light-hearted cartoon-like music for

a car-maintenance programme, not the national bloody anthem.

Are we...are we wizards?

Are we...?

Electronic wizards. You know, sound, sound wizards. Yeah...

Oh, and this...

..this sound here, right, Delia...

..it put me in mind of, like, an electronic blizzard.

Oh, what, like a wizard in a blizzard?!

LAUGHTER

Yeah.

Why, why not?

A wizard in a blizzard.

Yes, why not.

I mean, you might...you might laugh but, listen, this album

could be a sonic rite of passage for future generations.

Yeah? Yeah?

SHE LAUGHS

Just think of it.

It's a romantic triangle, OK?

Because there's, there's us in one corner,

there's the music in the other.

And up here, right,

is the future listeners who we're giving birth to

in this room right here, together.

It's...it's pure electronic sex.

Oh, yes! I love triangles!

I do love triangles. Look...

Yeah.

Mm.

And all their associated forms, tripods, pyramids,

cones...

..and prisms. Yeah. Cones. Cones.

Yeah.

LAUGHTER

Prisms! Yeah.

Aren't we, Brian?

It's a triangle, isn't it?

It's a romantic triangle, Brian.

Bri...

TRIANGLE CHIMES

CHIME ECHOES

You know, I've always been nonconformist.

I don't like, you know, the eight-bar standard thing,

or the 12-bar blues.

They're beautiful in their way,

but why not explore different phrase length?

Oh, I've exploded my Daleks. Good. Where are you off to

in such a hurry, Delilah?

Brian Jones. Brian Jones is here. I love him.

What, Brian "Rolling Stones" Jones?

I love him. No, look.

I've got him now. You can have him later. Go and explode your Dalek.

Brian Jones?!

Goodness me.

There we were with our 12 oscillators,

hand-tuned oscillators.

And eight...circuits...

..and he sort of went to it...

..with his...

Oh, I remember him so vividly, with his frilly cuffs, and things.

And he went to it so he could play it as a musical instrument!

SHE LAUGHS

I think he was too spaced out!

AMBIENT MUSIC

I didn't want to go back to cutting up tape,

because I was so against tape machines.

I was incredibly romantic

and Brian and Delia were very practical.

They really weren't interested in the fact that

in the future, wonderful, exotic things could be done by computers.

They were interested in what could be done today.

The next item, Partita For Unattended Computer,

by Peter Zinovieff, is a true live performance in the sense that

no magnetic tape has been used at all.

Furthermore, the computer has a choice, at various stages

in the procedure, and the piece therefore comes out different every

time it's played. The performance

you're about to hear is therefore unique and unrepeatable.

First of all, checks are made...

VOICEOVER: Right from the beginning,

it never really clicked.

I don't think we quarrelled, but just nothing happened.

Pity it didn't work out with Peter. Hm. I think he's accepted

that we're all pulling in different directions now.

I hope so. I think he's a genius.

I just can't work that way.

What do you think of his idea for an unattended computer?

Well, it's very difficult to say.

I think it's thrilling as a concept.

But are the sounds interesting enough?

He's a visionary, a futurist.

Hm.

LOW RUMBLING

Um. Toodaloo.

Golly.

What's that?

Oh, yeah...

Yeah, it's just, um, yeah, I don't know.

I don't know.

I've just been, I've just been working on it.

It's sort of like an electric bass, but it's got

an electro conductive tape, here.

Yeah. I'm not sure yet.

I don't know.

I dunno. Could be good. Interesting. Could be good.

Yeah. Could be. Yeah.

Good news. I've got good news. Very good news.

Sit down. Sit down.

Oh, just tell us, will you, I can't bear it.

I took some of the stuff we're working on to my friend Chris

at Island Records, and he absolutely loved it.

Absolutely loved it. Loved it.

Great. And he said, "What do you want?"

And I said, "Well, we'd quite like to do a single."

And then he said, "David, how much do you think a single makes?"

I said, "I don't know, Chris. I've really no idea."

He stopped me there.

And then then he said, "£3,000."

And, so, there and then,

he wrote me a cheque... No. ..for £3,000, said,

"He's your single. Now, go make an album."

No! Yeah.

Oh, that's marvellous! Yeah, yeah.

Well done, well done.

That's marvellous.

Let's hear it - come on.

Well done. Where is it?

# I'm just as high in a rug looking up

# As I was in a cloud looking down... #

Der, um, dum...

# Fire burn... #

Etc.

Yes, Brian arranged that, a meeting with Chris Blackwell.

I think David had some contacts at Island Records.

I spent as much time

as I could in the studio there, which was on the top floor.

The living accommodation was quite horrendous.

By then, Delia was getting into sort of hippiedom.

The ceiling had a parachute draped from it and she had a cat -

it had fleas, always.

So, we got our numbers together.

SHE SCREAMS

All right, all right, all right, listen, listen...

Think about it, Jen, right, your boyfriend,

he's just...he's just crashed his car.

So, you're running away, in the woods, somewhere off the A1,

through a lay-by.

You are wearing hardly any clothes. Brutal rain, crashing down!

This is horrific.

So, so, give me some more. OK?

Give me more.

SHE SCREAMS

More!

SHE SCREAMS

SHE WAILS

Yeah...

Yes!

SHE WAILS

YES!

The rain is...

Blood and piss and rain...

SHE SCREAMS

SCREAMING CONTINUES

Is that the sort of thing?

That's incredible. Right...

Hey.

Hi, darling, hey!

Right.

I did a piece for the Ballet Rambert,

and a couple of actresses

from the Royal Shakespeare Company came over to record their voices.

And I remember we were...we'd recorded them telling stories

of new experiences, and stuff like that.

And, then, just the sounds of laughing, crying, screaming...

..whispering - just about every emotion you could think of.

And we were mixing these things later, after everyone had left.

And, erm...

..oh, yeah, there was this banging at the door, really violent

and I opened the door.

The police came in and pushed me aside, searched the place.

When they found there wasn't anybody there, they stopped and told me

what it was about.

They said there'd been a complaint that somebody had heard a girl

being hysterically raped in my room.

So, this is what mixing tapes in the night is.

The next day, the guy underneath us dies,

and, less than a week later, the guy next door dies.

And one of them was 98, the other had cancer.

But that didn't stop the people around saying

it's these new electronic sounds that have done them in.

And we were like Frankensteins,

and the villagers had come with their pitchforks,

you know, and we were evicted from that place so damn fast.

WOMAN SOBS

CHANTING

EERIE AMBIENT MUSIC

ROCK AND ROLL DRUMS BEAT

AMBIENT VOICES

ROCK MUSIC PLAYS

Thank you.

Slob.

RADIO: The death has been announced today of former the Rolling Stones

guitarist Brian Jones. He was found dead at his parents' home

in Hatfield, East Sussex.

Yeah, I wept into my washing-up bowl.

At that time, I was living with David Vorhaus, I think.

At his parents' country home, country retreat.

Oh, golly, all these people dying.

EERIE MUSIC

YOUNG GIRL: The land at the bottom of the sea.

WOMAN: It wasn't a stormy sea but it was a frightening sea.

And I had the sensation that I was going to drown.

TRANSCENDENTAL MUSIC

MALE VOICE: The dream condition.

Mary, hello, how was your journey?

Oh, magnificent.

I took the 38 bus from Somers Town,

it was terribly easy.

Oh, Ada will be here soon.

I just...I don't know where to begin.

You must have a clear idea of where you want to end up.

Otherwise, you'll just be blown about by every momentary

gust of feeling.

You must stand firm, my dear, and accept that people will not like it.

Let's have a drink.

All the civilised women of the present century are anxious

only to inspire love, when they ought to have the nobler aim of

getting respect for their abilities and virtues.

KNOCK ON DOOR Oh, Ada, Ada.

Ada, Hello. Please come in. Thank you for coming.

Mary's been helping me come to terms with a broken heart.

I need to clarify my own wave patterns and clear them

of all irrelevancies.

If anything is blocking that process, your natural resonances

will be stifled.

Firstly, you must not wish to have power over men.

But power over yourself.

Is that fair, Ada?

Yes, and perhaps not always happy, perhaps, and not always fulfilled.

But at one with myself. Yes.

You need to find friends in women and fellows in men.

Yes. I'll drink to that.

Your best and wisest refuge from all troubles

is in your science, Delia.

Yes. Essential truth and beauty through music.

Let the pattern of mathematics

be my road map to fulfilment. And love,

by its very nature, must be transitory.

So, to friendship. To friendship! To friendship.

CLINKING SOUND RESONATES

WIND WHISTLES

FEMALE VOICE: It is raining women's voices as if they were dead.

Sorry, sorry, it's just a little too posh.

Uh, yes, that makes sense. Do you want me to do it again?

Yeah.

It is raining - oh, hell, that's not it at all. No.

It is raining. Women's voices...

Can we just do the whole thing...

There should be two of these.

I left... Did you take the other one?

Bloody hell!

OK, that's enough, come on now, everybody out. We're overheating.

Of course we are, because we're sealed in here

like a tinned shepherd's pie.

Right, going out.

I can't stand the sight of Desmond today.

Delia's depressions grew out of pressure.

I mean, a depression is basically when you back off from life,

you depress yourself away from it, and I think that's

how it all started.

Everything was expected of Delia. She was the, you know,

the clever girl at school.

She was... She shone in everything she did.

She also, we must remember, she was a mathematician,

and, very often, mathematicians burn out quite early on in life.

And I think the circumstances around her private life

were getting a bit complex.

I remember, at one point, Ron Grainer saying to her,

"Delia, you drink too much."

And she said, "No, I don't."

It was self-medication, to keep her calm I think.

And the trouble with any sort of medication is it goes

on and on. They were starting in the '70s.

You know, the late '60s and '70s, and...

..went on, really, for the rest of her life.

She was not a conformist in any way.

I did rebel against a lot of, um...

Ah! Yes, yes, I did.

I did all sorts of things I was told I couldn't do.

Peter says it's not ready for commercial use yet, may never be.

They just want to see how we get on with it.

But the filters and oscillators are much more stable than the VCS 3.

It's based around a combination of three VCS 3 systems,

combined into one massive synthesiser.

Well, you know, I'm sorry, Desmond, but it's hopeless. Right...

DISCORDANT BEEPING

Listen, these sounds have nothing to them.

I think we need to give it a little bit more time to see

how you can help us.

Well... That's much faster.

Certainly won't help me.

It was called Delaware or they wanted to call it Delaware.

So, it wasn't even a Synthi 100, then.

We only made about 30,

35 or something.

But they're marvellous machines.

I was really looking forward to having synthesisers

because I knew it would speed up the work so much.

I was looking forward to being able to do things much more quickly.

But I think I'm still disappointed with synthesisers and what one can

do with them, with the flexibility of them.

I think the trouble was she was too in advance of her time.

Really, if you look back on it, we all thought

it was the best thing since sliced bread,

but it was a very primitive machine.

I'd still like to get inside it somehow and make it do

a more human sound than what it does.

We have a new commission,

from the Institute of Electrical Engineers.

We are going to do a radiophonic workshop in concert.

We can really show off our Synthi 100, here.

So, let's wow them.

Remember, audience-wise,

while there will be a natural interest in music, electronics,

and the arts, the social nature of the event

and the presence of the ladies will require that the programme

is not too technical, but entertaining

and aesthetically pleasing.

So, Delia...

What are you doing?

Decomposing.

Mm.

This is a nightmare.

There's a deadline looming

and we haven't heard anything from you yet.

Right.

HE CLEARS THROAT

Gladstone...

..congratulates Edison.

Morse code.

And a space rocket...

..taking off.

Use the scaffolding, fit it

where it fits.

It was a big, official number

which was being performed in front of the Queen at the Festival Hall

and she'd been commissioned to do a short piece

using the Delaware synthesiser,

which was, by then, you know, that was the bee's knees

of modern equipment.

I began by interpreting the actual letters,

IEE100, in two different ways.

The first one in a Morse code version

using the Morse for IEE100.

This I found extremely dull rhythmically.

MORSE CODE PATTERN PLAYS ON A LOOP

That's just awful. It's just awful!

It's just bad.

SHE SWITCHES MUSIC OFF

SYNTHESISER SOUNDS

SHE SIGHS

TAPE REWINDS

And I said to him, whatever you do, when you get to the final mix,

run tapes in the next door studio as well, don't tell her.

Run duplicates and bring me the duplicates yourself.

PHONE RINGS

Did you get it on with the machine?

Well done.

I most definitely suffered from what I'd call

reverse adrenaline.

ECHOING: Reverse adrenaline...

When a project deadline got closer, my output slowed down enormously

and there were just other things to do.

But I went to the event. I did my bit.

Though I was furious with Brian at the time.

I think it went well.

The Queen liked it, apparently.

I'm not even sure she stayed till the end.

I certainly didn't.

I've tried to get into it a feeling of simplicity and loneliness.

Of a man on a moon.

It's...it's anaemic.

We'll play it to them and then we'll see.

The programme's going into colour now and there's a new Doctor.

So? It's my job to make sure that we stay afloat

under this particular regime.

CACOPHONOUS SOUNDS

The world went out of tune with itself.

Looking back, there was something at that time, '72, '73, '74,

that went wrong.

It's hard to say why I left.

Self-preservation, I think.

I finally left the Workshop in 1973.

I don't have any bitterness.

I made my own choices.

DISTORTED BIRDSONG

Can you hear what I hear?

Partly why she left the BBC was there was a lot of pressure on her

and at the same time no recognition.

I think I met Delia in '72.

I got on quite well with her.

We looked at Circle Of Light and listened to the soundtrack.

And I was very impressed.

I said, OK, I'd like to work with her. So, we went to a pub.

We asked her up to collaborate on our first film, One Of These Days,

which I made with Elsa Stansfield.

And she was telling, you know, that she was really fed up

with the BBC and wanted to do her own things,

and very curious to hear about the film, and what we wanted to do,

that she could come to the Netherlands, and like that.

She felt no restrictions

and I think that appealed very much to her.

She was totally free.

MUSIC: Circle Of Light, Part 2 by Delia Derbyshire and Elsa Stansfield

I just had to sleep. To me, everything was out of tune

in the world, so I'd go as far north in England as I can,

so, I went there. I had a lovely house

built from stones and Hadrian's wall, yeah.

SHE CHUCKLES

Crazy, crazy, crazy!

London needs you, Delilah, darling.

I've set up my studio permanently now at 8, 9 and 10 Studios,

Neal's Yard, Covent Garden.

I've called it Electrophon.

Perhaps I could lure you back.

With love from B.

Please get in touch.

I miss you.

I was in a disused quarry.

They advertised for a French-speaking radio operator.

And, as soon as I saw the word "radio," I applied.

Bonjour.

Delia went to work originally

on the gas pipeline

that was being laid across Cumbria.

It was all around sound

and language.

She was a French speaker

and would have been bilingual.

She told me that she'd met her husband when he was laying

the gas pipelines.

We kept in touch after Delia left for Cumbria

and went to marry a local man there in Gilsland.

It looked like they'd nothing in common apart from the drinking.

There wasn't much else. They were so different.

And I think, in a little village, like she was,

people thought she was some kind of screwball, really.

Delia broke up with her husband.

It was inevitable, it was always going to happen,

and she went to the LYC and got some work there.

It was an incredible place.

She moved into an environment which was much more her

because it was artists, and stimulation, and things to do.

I think Delia is one of those people that I met in life

a bit like a meteor, really.

It was this incredible flash,

this woman who did all these things

and then just went,

but I won't ever forget her.

I lived and worked with one of the first group

of Chinese abstract artists, Li Yuan-chia,

at his art gallery and museum by Hadrian's Wall.

Well, Li was a very hard working man,

and not really a people person,

you know, kind of shy and afraid.

And his LYC was really his artwork.

The museum was his artwork, like a social sculpture.

And it was also kind of a space where you could drink tea

in a library, and where children could play.

So it was a very open space with a lot of good exhibitions.

But I met also Winifred Nicholson through him.

Li got the first building partly through Winifred.

Did you really convert this place single-handedly?

No.

All the help I need comes from the birds

and my good friend Winifred Nicholson.

Let's play a game.

We each write in only two words

the absolute essence of something,

or nothing. Like your cosmic point.

Yes, then we throw the paper and pass to the next person.

And am I right in saying that the cosmic point is not an object,

but a proposition about space and time?

GIGGLING

OK, so, shall I read them out?

I've done two because I couldn't decide. Yes.

A dot, a prism, an octave.

HE LAUGHS

A concrete poem.

Do you think perhaps we've written the same thing?

CHORAL SINGING

NEWSREEL: I condemn all contraception...

Euro pollution control has failed to neutralise its...

OVERLAPPING POP SONGS PLAY

Let me read it to you, it's quite funny.

"Delia Derbyshire, who battled depression..."

Did I? Golly, maybe I did.

"Died aged only 64 in 2001."

Yes. That was a shame.

"She was the godmother of electronic dance music."

No idea about any of that. Sounds good, doesn't it?

"A hopeless alcoholic."

Actually, I was rather a successful alcoholic.

Who writes this stuff? Really, honestly.

"She carried out pioneering work for the BBC Radiophonic Workshop

"in the early 1960s,

"producing the familiar Doctor Who signature theme."

Will they ever stop going on about that?

I very much doubt it. "And collaborating with Brian Jones

"and Jimi Hendrix and others."

Hardly! I glimpsed Jimi once and had a chat with Brian.

Oh, I loved him and his frilly cuffs, but who didn't.

"Miss Derbyshire was also a woman of her times,

"clad in Biba" - never - "and Mary Quant."

What, on my wages?

"Her hair in a Vidal Sassoon bob." Wrong.

Too busy for hairstyles. "A fixture of parties of swinging London."

Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Here we go. Now, this is why I'm here, you see.

"She left the BBC a disillusioned woman."

No, I didn't.

"She struggled with drink."

It was never a struggle, always a pleasure.

"Had a series of unsuitable jobs."

I had some lovely ones, as a matter of fact.

"At one time, she married an out-of-work miner."

It was a blip, and he wasn't a miner.

"But settled in the Midlands where she lived in relative obscurity

"and would rail between drinks." SHE LAUGHS

Wrong!

Golly, am I glad I came back.

Otherwise...

..who designs the myths?

MUSIC: Circle of Light by Delia Derbyshire and Elsa Stansfield

The sun starts to emerge.

It's only now that in perspective that people are saying...

..how important it was.

But for the kids! I mean, just for the children, like you.

MUSIC: Circle of Light by Delia Derbyshire and Elsa Stansfield

Egypt, reel three and one closing!