In the news again (see Lost tapes of the Dr Who composer), is Delia Derbyshire, creator of the Doctor Who theme. One particular characteristic of the sixties, apart from the fashions etc, is the “sound” behind all the films and of popular music at the time. However, getting past the cheesy flower power and merseybeat type sounds, and the standard film music usually heavy on the trombones, was another flavour that had two basic strands. One was the Pink Floyd/Syd Barrett sound which has continued to the present day in one way or another. The other was the creepy spacey sounds coming from Delia Derbyshire’s experimentations, which had lost favour until recently.
She was carrying on a tradition to which I was introduced at school called “musique concrete” from the French. There were several exponents of it and initially, it’s fairly easy to do – anyone can do it – with a bit of practice and manual dexterity in tape handling.
However, Delia did it extremely well. Listen to the samples on the links above and you’ll see the flavour that made several ordinary or avante-garde shows, extraordinary. In fact, the whole genre of other-worldliness is captured in the sounds, some of which was captured in such epics as The Martian Chronicles and the early Star Treks.
The Hamlet performance lower down on the first link above is especially noteworthy, although it’s very similar to the verbal intro on Amon Duul 2′s Apocalyptic Bore so we know where they got that from! http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7512496.stm
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