Early BBC radiophonics: Private Dreams and Public Nightmares (1957)

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Early BBC radiophonics: Private Dreams and Public Nightmares (1957)

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Күн бұрын

An early BBC experiment in radiophonic sound, predating the establishment of the Radiophonic Workshop, created by Frederick Bradnum and Daphne Oram (pictured) and produced by Donald McWhinnie.
TX BBC Third Programme, 07/10/1957.
McWhinnie's spoken introduction (the work starts at 4:20):
"This programme is an experiment. An exploration. It's been put together with enormous enthusiasm and equipment designed for other purposes. The basis of it is an unlimited supply of magnetic tape, recording machine, razor blade, and some thing to stick the bits together with. And a group of technicians who think that nothing is too much trouble - provided that it works.
"You take a sound. Any sound. Record it and then change its nature by a multiplicity of operations. Record it at different speeds. Play it backwards. Add it to itself over and over again. You adjust filters, echos, acoustic qualities. You combine segments of magnetic tape. By these means and many others you can create sounds which no one has ever heard before. Sounds which have indefinable and unique qualities of their own. A vast and subtle symphony can be composed from the noise of a pin dropping. In fact one of the most vibrant and elemental sounding noises in tonight's programme started life as an extremely tinny cowbell.
"It's a sort of modern magic. Many of you may be familiar with it. They've been exploiting it on the continent for years. But strangely enough we've held aloof. Partly from distrust. Is it simply a new toy? Partly through complacency. Ignorance too. We're saying at last that we think there's some thing in it. But we aren't calling it 'musique concrète'. In fact we've decided not to use the word music at all. Some musicians believe that it can become an art form itself. Others are sceptical. That's not our immediate concern. We're interested in its application to radio writing - dramatic or poetic - adding a new dimension. A form that is essentially radio.
"Properly used, radiophonic effects have no relationship with any existing sound. They're free of irrelevent associations. They have an emotional life of their own. And they could be a new and invaluable strand in the texture of radio and theatre and cinema and television."

Пікірлер: 57

@codyandvictoria 9 жыл бұрын

0:37

@pizzapowwow5848 8 жыл бұрын

+Cody Blue ty

@NINJACOREjZ 7 жыл бұрын

#ODESZA here.

@kwezimashapa6425 5 жыл бұрын

Odesza Last Summer Intro. Thank you.

@TinoPetersson 4 жыл бұрын

Who would have thought? Cody Blue. I love your videos.

@codyandvictoria 4 жыл бұрын

I honestly can't remember why I commented this HAHA. Thanks for watching the channel.

@xenkawaii 8 жыл бұрын

I did a transcript because one didn't exist. Y'all're welcome: First Voice: Round and round like a wind from the ground Deep and deep, a world turns in sleep Second Voice: I fall through nothing, vast empty spaces Darkness and the pulse of my life bound Intertwined with the pulse of the dark world Still falling, falling But slower now Like music, the way down is slow, defying gravity Almost to a stop Almost First Voice: The crying heavens Bird or angel Second Voice: What holds me suspended in the air? Is it silence that holds me? Silence that beats everywhere Holding me as if in a cradle Rocking Now, quite unaware First Voice: Round and round like a wind from the ground Deep and deep, a world turns in sleep Third Voice: Sleep? You can sleep? Unaware? No, listen! Listen! Listen with your inner ear I can hear the pain of the world Calling Africa, Asia, Egypt, Russia To where you have fallen These names are falling Like spent rockets, they drift in despair Second Voice: I don't care, I don't care Here I am myself again Contained in the bud of myself The pure disdaining innocence Curled with the Worm Happy, I listen, and can hear no pain Third Voice: Waiting for you is fear Beneath the blanket of your sleep, in the back of the brain Now and always here First Voice: Round and round like a wind from the ground Deep and deep, a world turns in sleep Third Voice: Waiting for you is fear The flame that moves crowds Cities falling Ice floes breaking, bitter snow The jungle where savage beasts whimper and growl, treading tow on tow Trees breaking and the thunder rolling like armies between mountains And the heart of pretty valleys Do you know what crown is waiting for you? Look! Open the inner eye Look! Do you see dead ahead, there just above the level of the sand You see that head crowned with a band of thorns and black stones That bodiless head, sunk into the landscape of rock and desert sand Almost like a bomb dropped by an airplane at the moment before explosion That is your fear Your crown is waiting Second Voice: If I woke up now, this would go If I woke up now, then what would follow? First Voice: Round and round like a wind from the ground One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, twenty, thirty, fourty, fifty, sixty, seventy, eighty, ninety... Third Voice: Now you are treading in lonely corridors Behind glass walls looking inward Girls sit like tears, counting the days The months, the years As they move elusively faster and faster Second Voice: A way out! I must find the door! Third Voice: There is no way out provided. Each corridor leads into another corridor. Second Voice: I must find the door, the open door! Life is not like this, life is birth and death Laugher and pity, farce and tragedy And always somewhere an open door! Third Voice: Beat, beat with your fists On the double-sided, double-fist mirror At the end of all corridors Did your consciensce provided for the anguish surrounding you? For the heat and anger? The desire, and the despair? First Voice: Deep and deep, a world turns in sleep Second Voice: The image is divided In the world that I inhabit daily, Bowler has it, I pay my taxes And concern about the tides of armies, the hunger in continents Of the measurements of Africans. In the world beyond this, the atom bomb teaches me respect for the scientist The situation teaches me respect for the wisdom of statesmen And political respect is taught me by the politicians In that world, there are many whom I trust And must feel, therefore, that men with beastly faces, moustaches, and briefcases Must have sound opinions Otherwise... Third Voice: The image smashes Here, it smashes because you fear And spreads like water Flooding the land of faces I pick my way over this sea Walking on water between floating briefcases Umbrellas and drowned faces Second Voice: Oh, my friends, my friends You have learnt to be my enemies First Voice: Who will pray for those who drown in lonely places? Second Voice: Oh, pray for me Oh, pray for me First Voice: Who will pray for those who fall in busy places? Second Voice: Oh, pray for me Oh, pray for me Third Voice: The bell Listen It tolls over the eternal spaces of rock and water And the dead sink to the fishes' laughter Second Voice: But what of me? What about me? First Voice: Round and round like a wind from the ground Second Voice: But what of me? Third Voice: You are free You free from the nights' disgraces Gently to return to the curled Worm The warm, dark, smelling places of the bud The heart, the womb Second Voice: And nobody to pray for those who drown? First Voice: Deep and deeper, a knife turns in the sleeper Third Voice: Your fear has stabbed like little knives Which kills so many that you might survive Second Voice: My fear It was you who first made me fear You who screamed that corruption when I recurled You who placarded the headlined world into my suspended cocoon of peace You Third Voice: I? Look into my face and tell What face do you see? Second Voice: I see myself The image is no longer divided Like a mirror, I am you, and you are me Third Voice: In sleep our shadows cling like veils of lovers As lovers, we can shut out the world Not think upon tomorrow Nor think upon our ruthless awakening Silence, silence Together we are everything and nothing Before us and behind us Silence The void where the moment of our lives becomes eternal First Voice: Sleep and sleeper Lie amongst where stones might lie Roads side-by-side between vast hills Orders of nothing Nothing

@davepx1 3 жыл бұрын

Thank you very much. A valuable contribution to the record.

@carloslozano2047 9 жыл бұрын

ODESZA!

@pwarelis 8 жыл бұрын

+Carlos Lozano Ahaha! Love it

@paolachorro159 8 жыл бұрын

odesza brought me here, Im in love with their intro

@GhettoJohnWickk 8 жыл бұрын

love it

@MothershipOracle 10 жыл бұрын

this is mental.....absolutely love it!!! a basis for deliah to work with!!!

@wowitsjaniice 10 жыл бұрын

OdeszaProduction brought me here

@EricBains 10 жыл бұрын

ME TWO ! ;D

@KINGOFDARKNESS48 10 жыл бұрын

XdeRehT TheRedX me too

@MonteVerdiii 10 жыл бұрын

me three !

@GuyTheMasculine 9 жыл бұрын

MonteVerdi Play the whole album over this. Have the volume for this twice as high, most of the time it sounds amazing.

@davepx1 3 жыл бұрын

Embarrassingly I hadn't looked for this because it never occurred to me it would be available, and all the time it was here! A truly remarkable piece, even given the Third Programme's perceived "artiness" and limited audience. You might expect to encounter such things in some obscure Left Bank club, but this was the BBC! After 63 years, not a disappointment: this really was as innovative as it was said to be, foreshadowing Delia's 60s collabotarions.

@Ginac 5 жыл бұрын

playing a long playlist of Ambient music and listening to this is ... so spiritual

@jonteachesguitar1155 9 жыл бұрын

this probably scared the shit out of some people

@oKryptek 8 жыл бұрын

😂😂😂😂😂😂😂

@cedarpointenthusiast Жыл бұрын

I came here for the odesza sample, and not gonna lie it kinda scared the shit out of me at first!

@yinvara9876 6 жыл бұрын

11:53 Damn, that one spooked me

@Supramonk 5 жыл бұрын

amazing

@croiners4166 7 жыл бұрын

This is like a dream

@Tolu349 6 ай бұрын

Have you woken up yet?

@1herbiekritzer 12 жыл бұрын

love it . .

@tsfreh 12 жыл бұрын

awesome

@litlgrey 12 жыл бұрын

How magnificent!

@mizzdaisyrocks 6 жыл бұрын

0:38 intro by odesza part

@grimie2476 6 жыл бұрын

Odesza brought me here :)

@93Zos 12 жыл бұрын

Lovin' this. The genesis of the Radiophonic Workshop, soon to be revived with Matthew Herbert !

@mgthestrange9098 6 жыл бұрын

I can just imagine a typical 50s housewife sitting down to enjoy an evening of wireless and hearing this... there would be complaints if something this experimental were broadcast today. I the bit about the head in the sand being your fears sounds like Lord Voldemort.