Inventions for Radio - The Dreams (Original Radio Broadcast)

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  ∞Out There For A Minute∞

  Pieter

  6 x CD, Compilation, Reissue, Mono Box Set (Silva Screen 2024) "Between January 1964 and September 1965, the BBC’s Third Programme aired four radio broadcasts collectively known as Inventions For Radio. These were startlingly innovative broadcasts, conceived by playwright Barry Bermange and consisting of voices recorded from the general public answering questions on four themes, one for each programme: dreams, the existence of God, life after death and ageing. In an era when broadcasting was still dominated by the cut-glass enunciations of received pronunciation, these were real voices, with real accents – and the broadcasts generated an avalanche of complaints about ‘rough’ voices.

  In retrospect it was fitting that The BBC Radiophonic Workshop asked Coventry native and eternal outsider Delia Derbyshire to edit the clips and add electronic music and effects. The results are astonishing, although for many years Derbyshire was not credited for her contribution; writings from Derbyshire archivists Mark Ayres and David Butler flesh out the story in the brilliant sleevenotes to this box which includes one CD per broadcast and two further discs of additional material.

  As ever, Derbyshire’s vision is overwhelming at times, precisely because it’s unpushy, subcutaneous, emotional, dream-like. The tracks from the first episode The Dreams evoke powerfully the intangible horror of nightmares, the sense of inevitable doom and paralysis, and Derbyshire is incredibly subtle in the layering of drones, bassy rumbles and crepuscular textures. It’s really quite impossible to conceive of how this music was created in 1964 when it sounds so astonishingly modern.

  Throughout, it’s the manner in which Derbyshire evanesces her own presence and the respect with which she treats the source material that really shines through. The Amor Dei disc is framed with a sense of light and space that’s just miraculous, a flying buttress of sound that seems to hang from heaven, before the After-Life and The Evenings Of Certain Lives discs take you into narratives of grief and longing that are some of the most moving collages of sound and speech you will ever hear.

  One of the true titans of modern sound creating some of her finest work. Absolutely essential." (Neil Kulkarni, The Wire January / February 2024 (Issue 479 + 480))

  Amor Dei: http://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_mciEJ3ebViQMWpceI9VjqYjq-ykNxYIdE

  The After-Life: http://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_m6T6JrohOa_DRF0JotpJm6yo6OSWKr0xk

  The Evenings Of Certain Lives: http://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_l85j0pUJUEUoaVZ6yFKSZU7lAgiNC1_4g