Podcasts about radiophonic workshop

This week we fire up a Wurlitzer and crack open an oyster as we celebrate one of the aspects of the Goon Show that made it so unique: the sound effects. Joining Tyler to talk about some of our favourites are Chris Smith and Graeme Lindsay-Foot and the idea for the show first occurred to Chris when he heard a news item on the radio several years ago. According to Chris: "They covered the recent creation of a "sounds archive", dedicated to preserving sounds previously very familiar butwhich are fast fading in popular memory, such as a steam train or bakelite telephone dialling tone (or its ring for that matter), or cine camera or film projector. The point being that the "lifespan" of familiar sounds is becoming shorter as technology and equipment changes - leading tothose sounds literally fading away from popular memory."Taking this as a starting point, they consider what effects in the Goon Show would totally baffle younger listeners today, before running through some of the greatest (and some fairly obscure) FX and GRAMS inclusions throughout the show's run, including many listeners' favourites such as Tom the piano-playing penguin, someone knocking on the door with a duck and the otherworldly Radiophonic Workshop effects used in 'The Scarlet Capsule'. There's also a salute to those unsung lads who made the magic happen!

Episode 162 Chapter 23, Radiophonic Music in the United Kingdom. Works Recommended from my book, Electronic and Experimental Music  This episode of the podcast is produced as a companion to my book, Electronic and Experimental Music, published by Routledge. Each of these episodes corresponds to a chapter in the text and an associated list of recommended works, also called Listen in the text. They provide listening examples of vintage electronic works featured in the text. The works themselves can be enjoyed without the book and I hope that they stand as a chronological survey of important works in the history of electronic music. Be sure to tune-in to other episodes of the podcast where we explore a wide range of electronic music in many styles and genres, all drawn from my archive of vintage recordings. There is a complete playlist for this episode on the website for the podcast. Let's get started with the listening guide to Chapter 23, Radiophonic Music in the United Kingdom from my book Electronic and Experimental music.   Playlist: RADIOPHONIC MUSIC IN THE UNITED KINGDOM   Time Track Time Start Introduction –Thom Holmes 01:36 00:00 1.     Daphne Oram, “Introduction to Oramics” (1960). Introduction to her Oramics studio and processes for making electronic music. Voice and musical examples by Daphne Oram, recorded in her home studio Tower Folly, Kent. 04:37 01:38 2.     Daphne Oram, “Four Aspects” (1960). Tape composition by Daphne Oram recorded in her home studio Tower Folly, Kent. 08:07 06:14 3.     Delia Derbyshire, “Doctor Who Theme” (Closing Credits) (1962). The most famous version of this theme for the popular television program, composed by Ron Grainer and realized by Derbyshire at the BBC studios. 02:23 14:20 4.     Ray Cathode (George Martin), “Time Beat” (1962). Produced at the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. Written and produced by George Martin, around the time when he was starting his production work with The Beatles. 02:11 16:40 5.     Ray Cathode (George Martin), “Waltz in Orbit” (1962). Produced at the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. Written and produced by George Martin, around the time when he was starting his production work with The Beatles. 01:52 18:52 6.     Daphne Oram, “Costain Suite” (1964). Tape composition by Daphne Oram recorded in her home studio Tower Folly, Kent. 13:17 20:44 7.     Delia Derbyshire, “Running” (1964). One of the seven parts from the “radio inventions” called "The Dreams," first broadcast on the BBC Third Programme, Sunday 5th January 1964. 08:08 34:02 8.     Delia Derbyshire, “Falling” (1964). One of the seven parts from the “radio inventions” called "The Dreams," first broadcast on the BBC Third Programme, Sunday 5th January 1964. 08:45 42:08 9.     Delia Derbyshire, “Land” (1964). One of the seven parts from the “radio inventions” called "The Dreams," first broadcast on the BBC Third Programme, Sunday 5th January 1964. 07:02 50:54 10.   Daphne Oram, “Pulse Persephone” (1965). Tape composition by Daphne Oram recorded in her home studio Tower Folly, Kent. 04:03 58:06 11.   Tristram Cary, “Sputnik Code” (1968). Cary was a British composer and pioneer of electronic music. He composed this work for a movie soundtrack. 01:50 01:02:08 12.   Lily Greenham, “ABC in Sound” (1968). Early tape work by this pioneer of electronic music in the UK. Greenham was an Austrian-born Danish visual artist, performer, composer and leading proponent of sound poetry and concrete poetry. She settled in London. 02:39 01:04:02 13.   White Noise (Delia Derbyshire, David Vorhaus, Brian Hodgson), “The Black Mass: An Electric Storm In Hell (The White Noise)” (1969). Experimental electronic music project established in London in 1968, originally as a group project between David Vorhaus and BBC Radiophonic Workshop members Delia Derbyshire and Brian Hodgson. Vocals by Annie Bird, John Whitman, Val Shaw. 07:20 01:06:40 14.   White Noise (Delia Derbyshire, David Vorhaus, Brian Hodgson), “Your Hidden Dreams” (1969). Experimental electronic music project established in London in 1968, originally as a group project between David Vorhaus and BBC Radiophonic Workshop members Delia Derbyshire and Brian Hodgson. Vocals by Annie Bird, John Whitman, Val Shaw. 04:55 01:13:58 15.   White Noise (Delia Derbyshire, David Vorhaus, Brian Hodgson), “Love Without Sound” (1969). Experimental electronic music project established in London in 1968, originally as a group project between David Vorhaus and BBC Radiophonic Workshop members Delia Derbyshire and Brian Hodgson. Vocals by Annie Bird, John Whitman, Val Shaw. 03:07 01:18:52 16.   Electrophon (Brian Hodgson, Dudley Simpson), “Arrival of the Queen of Sheba” (Händel) (1973). Electronic interpretations of classical music for various synthesizers. 03:04 01:22:00 17.   Paddy Kingsland, “Fourth Dimension” (1973). Produced by Kingsland for the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. “The synthesisers used on this disc are both British, and both made by E.M.S. of London. They are the VCS3, an amazingly versatile miniature synthesiser, and its big brother, the Synthi '100', known within the Radiophonic Workshop as 'The Delaware', after the address of the Workshop.” 02:19 01:25:02 18.   Lily Greenham, “Traffic” (1975). Realized at the Electronic Music Studio, Goldsmiths' College, University of London. Technical Assistance, Hugh Davies. 10:33 01:27:18 19.   White Noise (David Vorhaus), “Concerto Movement 1” (1975). Used what Vorhaus called the Kaleidophon Synthesizer that included two EMS VCS 3's connected via a console of electronic modules he designed. 11:33 01:37:50 20.   Delia Derbyshire, “Dreaming” (1976). Produced for the BBC Radiophonic Workshop as a work to accompany a television program. 01:13 01:49:18 21.   Glynis Jones, “Crystal City” (1976). Produced for the BBC Radiophonic Workshop as a work to accompany a television program. 01:01 01:50:30 22.   Glynis Jones, “Magic Carpet” (1976). Includes three shorts works, Magic Carpet Take-Off, Magic Carpet Flight and Magic Carpet Land. Produced for the BBC Radiophonic Workshop as sound effects. 00:50 01:51:30 23.   Brian Hodgson, “Tardis Land” (1976). Produced for the BBC Radiophonic Workshop as a sound effect. 00:23 01:52:22   Additional opening, closing, and other incidental music by Thom Holmes. My Books/eBooks: Electronic and Experimental Music, sixth edition, Routledge 2020. Also, Sound Art: Concepts and Practices, first edition, Routledge 2022. See my companion blog that I write for the Bob Moog Foundation. For a transcript, please see my blog, Noise and Notations. Original music by Thom Holmes can be found on iTunes and Bandcamp.

Steve Caplin says that in 2 days, AI solved a problem that took Imperial College scientists 10 years. But it also caused a massive gaffe in a staggeringly expensive Super Bowl ad. He discusses new e-ink developments including outdoor posters, a tablet, a minimal phone and a gaming console. The BBC's Radiophonic Workshop output has been digitised. There's a high-tech bookmark. Italy is getting tough with fake TripAdvisor reviews which are damaging tourism. You should take your tablets with milk not water in future. And Gen Z is having problems hearing, but it's neurological and caused by noise-cancelling headphones say audiologists. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In celebration of Delia Derbyshire Day 2023 and the 60th Anniversary of the Doctor Who theme, Caro C is joined by fellow devotees Mark Ayres, David Butler and Cosey Fanni Tutti to discuss the Delia Derbyshire Day archives and the importance of her contributions to the development of electronic music.Chapters00:00 - Introduction01:26 - Delia Derbyshire ArchiveMark Ayres03:15 - Mark Ayres Introduction 07:44 - The Beginnings Of Electronic Music10:12 - Electronic Sound Sources13:10 - The Delia Derbyshire Archives18:40 - Favourite Piece - The Makeup Tape Of Blue Veils22:21 - The Future Of The ArchivesDavid Butler24:38 - David Butler Introduction28:59 - The Contents Of The Archives33:17 - Building A Network Of Collaborators35:03 - Methods And Techniques Revealed36:59 - Manipulating The Voice39:05 - Favourite Piece - Two Houses And Demo Cue Cosey Fanni Tutti41:42 - Cosey Fanni Tutti Introduction 43:42 - Delia Derbyshire Musical Influences45:24 - A Background In Physics48:50 - Favourite Piece - Amor Dei53:34 - The Importance Of The Archiveshttps://deliaderbyshireday.com/dd-archive/Delia Derbyshire BiogDelia Derbyshire (1937-2001) was a key figure in the development of electronic music in the UK. Born in Coventry but evacuated to Preston during the Blitz, Delia cites the sound of air raid sirens as inspiring her interest in electronic sound. She went on to study Maths and Music at Cambridge University and launched her career at the BBC in 1960 as a trainee Studio Manager. She moved to the Radiophonic Workshop in 1962, where she spent the next 11 years developing experimental sounds and music for their TV and radio shows, in addition to working as a freelancer on film, theatre and other live projects. Her most famous work is her electronic arrangement of Ron Grainer's Doctor Who theme, created in 1963.Delia composed and produced electronic music using tape, plus early synthesis and sampling methods before specific instruments were created for these purposes. Her work has influenced and inspired many modern artists including The Chemical Brothers, Aphex Twin, Portishead, Nainita Desai, Amon Tobin and Cosey Fanni Tutti, while Pink Floyd, Orbital and Hannah Peel have reinterpreted her work.Mark Ayres BiogMark Ayres is a composer, arranger, sound designer, mixer and mastering engineer. Mark wrote incidental music for Doctor Who in the 1980s. More recently he wrote the music for, sound-designed and mixed the reconstructed 'lost' Tom Baker adventure, “Shada”, and a celebratory feature length version of the original 1963 “Daleks” serial transmitted on BBC4 on 23rd November 2023, Doctor Who's 60th birthday. He has also composed for television and film including scores for 1996 feature "The Innocent Sleep" and the more recent "Scar Tissue".Mark was involved in the BBC Radiophonic Workshop's final days and went on to become their archivist. A personal friend of Delia Derbyshire, he was entrusted with her personal archive after her death in 2001, which is now on permanent loan to the University of Manchester John Rylands Library and accessible for study. He is a Trustee of the Delia Derbyshire Day Charity.His devotion to the Workshop after Doctor Who ceased broadcasting in 1989 proved vital in regenerating interest in their work, and he is now the driving force behind their live revival on the festival circuit and in the creation of new works including the score for Matthew Holness' disturbing psychological horror film, "Possum". He has produced and mastered many recordings for Silva Screen Records and others, and his work remastering classic television programmes including Doctor Who, Quatermass, and the films of Ken Russell and Alan Clarke for broadcast, DVD and Blu-ray, including 5.1 remixes of many titles, has been highly acclaimed.David Butler BiogDavid Butler is a Senior Lecturer in Drama and Film Studies at the University of Manchester. He helped to bring the Delia Derbyshire Archive  to the John Rylands Library, Manchester in 2007 and is one of the archive's lead researchers and curators. David is the chair of trustees for Delia Derbyshire Day and helped set up the charity in 2016.Cosey Fanni Tutti BiogCosey Fanni Tutti is a musician and writer, best known for her part in experimental electronic bands Throbbing Gristle and Chris & Cosey. Cosey interacted with the Delia Derbyshire Archive when she composed the soundtrack for Caroline Catz's film 'Delia Derbyshire: The Myths And The Legendary Tapes' and in the writing of her book Re-Sisters: The Lives and Recordings of Delia Derbyshire, Margery Kempe and Cosey Fanni Tutti published by Faber in 2022.https://www.coseyfannitutti.com/Caro C BiogCaro C is an artist, engineer and teacher specialising in electronic music. Her self-produced fourth album 'Electric Mountain' is out now. Described as a "one-woman electronic avalanche" (BBC), Caro started making music thanks to being laid up whilst living in a double decker bus and listening to the likes of Warp Records in the late 1990's. This 'sonic enchantress' (BBC Radio 3) has now played in most of the cultural hotspots of her current hometown of Manchester, UK. Caro is also the instigator and project manager of electronic music charity Delia Derbyshire Day.URL: http://carocsound.com/Twitter: @carocsoundInst: @carocsoundFB: https://www.facebook.com/carocsound/

If you're looking for new things to hum as you while away the days to the 60th anniversary and its specials, wait no more! The new arrangement of the Doctor Who theme tune is now in the wild, along with the Fifteenth Doctor's theme just aching to bust out of your speakers and into your heart. You'll need all that love because although the BBC will soon put almost all of Classic Who and the various spinoffs on the iPlayer, "An Unearthly Child" is a bone of contention between the son of writer Anthony Coburn and…the rest of the internet. Plus we have Disney+ intrigue and speculation, a new edition of Outside In, music and audio news, and part the fourth of Classic Series Commentary for "Mawdryn Undead"! Links: Support Radio Free Skaro on Patreon New Doctor Who theme Fifteenth Doctor theme “Fifteen” Doctor Who @ 60 concert on BBC Sounds Alex Pillai and Peter Hoar announced as S15 directors All existing Classic and Modern Doctor Who will be on BBC iPlayer starting November 1 Doctor Who: How the TV show's first writer became lost in time Classic Doctor Who not expected to come to Disney+ Who Are We: Doctor Who? The Classic Years audio documentary on BBC Sounds Oct 21 Doctor Who Magazine 596 released Electronic Sound magazine 106 has a profile on the Radiophonic Workshop and 7″ single Outside In Regenerates due Nov 23, preorder available Dominic Glynn's “The Survival Remixes” due Nov 24, preorder live Oct 16 Big Finish Doctor Who – The Eighth Doctor Adventures: In the Bleak Midwinter due December 2023 Commentary: Mawdryn Undead, Part Four

This week writer and journalist David Quantick on Ned's Atomic Dustbin. As someone who spent time with the band while writing for the NME and a former member of the GSPS, David was the ideal person to tackle NAD. The band took their name from a Goon Show episode, with band member Jonn Penney suggesting it after flicking through the More Goon Show Scripts book. The Goon Show itself was from the 9th Series in 1959 and contained vague Cold War themes as well as digs at BBC censorship and notably featured the debut of the Radiophonic Workshop-devised sound effect Bloodnok's Stomach. The conversation veers from the indie music scene of the early nineties to a joke about a talking dog and John Snagge working with the Sex Pistols. We also touch on 'terrible band names', Spike Milligan's complicated attitude to racial depictions in comedy, about Peter Sellers possibly inspiring Peter Cook with a thinly-veiled Harold Macmillan impression and consider whether the scripting of this particular episode was Spike 'on autopilot'. You can listen to the Goon Show episode Ned's Atomic Dustbin here: https://open.spotify.com/track/6pGHhb9SLNeBoy20AMTg9L More about the band here: http://www.nedsatomicdustbin.com/ David is on Twitter @quantick and follow the podcast @goonshowpod

Amazingly, we've reached episode 900 of this here internet audio programme and we celebrate with not only the news of the day, including DWM tidbits, Big Finish and more audio fun, and the ever-present Timelash, but with the first of three exciting Classic Series Commentaries about the 1964 William Hartnell classic “Planet of Giants!” Links: Support Radio Free Skaro on Patreon The Timelash Doctor Who Magazine 589 released Directors discuss the new TARDIS set Casting news from Doctor Who Magazine Doctor Who Am I available Radiophonic Workshop videos on BBC Archive YouTube Channel Serpent Crest 10 LP set due May 26 Big Finish Rani Takes on the World: The Revenge of Wormwood due April 2023 Commentary: Planet of Giants

In this episode, we're going to hear about woman who is sometimes called a sculptress of sound —  “the unsung heroine of British electronic music” —  Delia Derbyshire, ably presented by our very own DLS co-founder Katy Derbyshire.     A working-class girl from Coventry, England, Delia studied music and mathematics, and went on to work at the BBC's Radiophonic Workshop. If you're a SciFi fan, you've probably heard one of her best known works — the otherworldly theme tune to the TV show Doctor Who. A true pioneer of pre-synthesizer electronic sounds, Delia created music for more than 200 projects, but remained anonymous due to the BBC's bureaucratic structures. She also set up studios making electronic music for soundtracks, festivals and theatre productions, until she left the public eye in 1975.    DLS co-founder Florian Duijsens joins producer Susan to set things up.    You can see some photos of Delia Derbyshire and hear more of her amazing work on our show notes page:  https://deadladiesshow.com/2023/02/16/podcast-59-Delia-Derbyshire   Our theme music is “Little Lily Swing” by Tri-Tachyon.   Drop us a line info@deadladiesshow.com or reach us on social media @deadladiesshow   Thanks for listening! We'll be back with a new episode next month.   **** The Dead Ladies Show is a series of entertaining and inspiring talks about women who achieved amazing things against all odds, presented live in Berlin and beyond. This podcast is based on that series. Because women's history is everyone's history.   The Dead Ladies Show was founded by Florian Duijsens and Katy Derbyshire. The podcast is created, produced, edited, and presented by Susan Stone. Don't forget, we have a Patreon! Thanks to all of our current supporters! Please consider supporting our transcripts project and our ongoing work: www.patreon.com/deadladiesshowpodcast

A Q&A recorded back in October this year when The Radiophonic Workshop and Stealing Sheep were just about to live soundtrack the animated sci fi movie Fantastic Planet at The Science Museum in London.   You may wish to contribute to the show's running costs, it's Patreon is here https://www.patreon.com/tdrury or buy me a coffee here https://ko-fi.com/timdrury   The show is also on Facebook please join the group for exclusive behind the scenes insights and of course also discuss and feedback on the show https://www.facebook.com/groups/187162411486307/   If you want to send me comments or feedback you can email them to tdrury2003@yahoo.co.uk or contact me on twitter where I'm @tdrury or send me a friend request and your comments to facebook where I'm Tim Drury and look like this http://www.flickr.com/photos/tdrury/3711029536/in/set-72157621161239599/ in case you were wondering.

By the time the BBC had come of age in the 70s and 80s, radio production had become a creative art. The Radiophonic Workshop could famously transport listeners to imagined worlds and this was certainly the case with productions of Shakespeare. Actor Samuel West and Dr Andrea Smith celebrate the creativity that gave us everything from the magic of Puck and Oberon in A Midsummer Night's Dream to battle scenes and the horrors of the gouging of eyes in King Lear. Presented by Samuel West and Dr Andrea Smith Produced by Susan Marling A Just Radio Production

In dusty attics and cupboards across the land, old radio programmes languish on tapes and reels. Luckily, Keith Wickham and friends make it their business to find them and get them back where they belong - in the BBC archive. Raiders of the Lost Archive tells the story of a collegiate network of audio archivists, sound engineers and hobbyists dedicated to repatriating these cultural treasures, outlining the complex work that is needed to ensure these programmes can be heard once again. Swoon as we hear how the Radiophonic Workshop archive was saved. Laugh as Ken Dodd tells jokes that were old even in 1957. Thrill as the archivists locate lost episodes of Desert Island Discs, and hand them over to Lauren Laverne. But that's not all. What is the astonishing audio holy grail that the Raiders archivists have turned up? A very special lost programme that has not been heard since 1955. With special thanks to the Radio Circle, Richard Harrison, Roger Bickerton, Mark Ayres, Steve Arnold, Tom Hercock, Hannah Ratford and all at BBC Archives in Caversham. Presented by Keith Wickham Written and Edited by Keith Wickham and James Peak Produced by James Peak An Essential Radio production for BBC Radio 4

Possum is a 2018 British psychological horror film written and directed by Matthew (Garth Marenghi) Holness in his feature film debut, starring Sean Harris and Alun (Krull) Armstrong. It centres on a disgraced children's puppeteer who returns to his childhood home and is forced to confront the abuse and trauma he suffered there.Possum is an adaption of Holness' short story of the same name, published in the horror anthology The New Uncanny: Tales of Unease, and partially inspired by the theories on the uncanny by Sigmund Freud. Holness soon forgot about the idea of adapting the story until he had begun working on developing a possible horror film. As a fan of the horror genre, Holness stated he much preferred horror films that resonate with the audience and force them to reflect on the experience afterward. Possum's visual style was inspired by public information films Holness saw in his youth. Other inspirations include Dead of Night (covered by us in the mothership show), George Romero's Martin, and German Expressionist films. Filming began in Norfolk, with additional filming taking place in Great Yarmouth and Suffolk. The film's score was composed by sound effects and experimental electronic music studio The legendary Radiophonic Workshop, and featured unreleased material by the studio's original member Delia Derbyshire. This marked their first soundtrack purposely constructed for a feature film.In addition to garnering multiple awards and nominations, it was generally praised by critics for Harris' performance, the film's atmosphere, score, and unsettling imagery, though the story prompted several negative reviews. Get bonus content on PatreonSupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/general-witchfinders. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Big Mates are joined by Will Fraser (a.k.a. Bloom's Taxonomy) to discuss the Radiophonic Workshop, the videogame Half-Life, Brian Eno, and all things Radiohead.Adam, Steve, Lucas, and Will explore the influence Radiohead has had on will as electronic musician Bloom's Taxonomy, particular the effect of Kid A. They also discuss Will's songwriting process, why he makes music, and share memories from previous projects he did with Adam and Steve.They also find time to discuss Will's Top 10 Radiohead songs!Our next episode is out on Monday September 12th and will feature the beginning of our deep dive into Radiohead's fifth album, Amnesiac.You can find Will's music at https://www.bloomstaxonomymusic.com/.You can now wear your fandom on your (literal) sleeve!What Is Music? now has a RedBubble shop with lots of cool and stupid designs. You can get the designs on basically any product you like, from t-shirts and mugs, to bath mats and jigsaws, via clocks and phone cases! Head to https://whatismusicpod.redbubble.comIf you'd like a different way to donate to usYou can do so at https://ko-fi.com/whatismusicAny donations very gratefully received and go towards our running costs!Join the conversation on:Twitter: https://twitter.com/whatismusicpodInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/whatismusicpodE-mail: whatismusicpod@gmail.comhttp://whatismusic.buzzsprout.com/Support the show

It's a unique collaboration of electronic legends and indie favourites - the past and present combining to create something futuristic and extraordinary. La Planete Sauvage – the soundtrack to an iconic 1973 film – is a project that sees The Radiophonic Workshop and Stealing Sheep join forces, for an album released to mark 2021's Delia Derbyshire Day. And this July it comes to bluedot for a very special performance on the Sunday of this year's festival.This is the bluedot podcast with the Radiophonic Workshop and Stealing Sheep. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

I recently got my hands on the album La Planète Sauvage by Stealing Sheep and the Radiophonic Workshop. After I'd finished marvelling at the electronic delights, it got me thinking that it's probably about time I did a podcast about songs from bands and artists from Liverpool.There's a rich selection to choose from: 60s Merseybeat, 80s indie, synthetic sounds of all hues. And so here, for your listening enjoyment are ten songs in the key of Liverpool.

This week's episode looks at “Tomorrow Never Knows”, the making of Revolver by the Beatles, and the influence of Timothy Leary on the burgeoning psychedelic movement. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a fifteen-minute bonus episode available, on "Keep on Running" by the Spencer Davis Group. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt's irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ Errata A few things -- I say "Fairfield" at one point when I mean "Fairchild". While Timothy Leary was imprisoned in 1970 he wasn't actually placed in the cell next to Charles Manson until 1973. Sources differ on when Geoff Emerick started at EMI, and he *may* not have worked on "Sun Arise", though I've seen enough reliable sources saying he did that I think it's likely. And I've been told that Maureen Cleave denied having an affair with Lennon -- though note that I said it was "strongly rumoured" rather than something definite. Resources As usual, a mix of all the songs excerpted in this episode is available at Mixcloud.com. I have read literally dozens of books on the Beatles, and used bits of information from many of them. All my Beatles episodes refer to: The Complete Beatles Chronicle by Mark Lewisohn, All The Songs: The Stories Behind Every Beatles Release by Jean-Michel Guesdon, And The Band Begins To Play: The Definitive Guide To The Songs of The Beatles by Steve Lambley, The Beatles By Ear by Kevin Moore, Revolution in the Head by Ian MacDonald, and The Beatles Anthology. For this episode, I also referred to Last Interview by David Sheff, a longform interview with John Lennon and Yoko Ono from shortly before Lennon's death; Many Years From Now by Barry Miles, an authorised biography of Paul McCartney; and Here, There, and Everywhere: My Life Recording the Music of the Beatles by Geoff Emerick and Howard Massey. For information on Timothy Leary I used a variety of sources including The Most Dangerous Man in America by Bill Minutaglio and Steven L. Davis; Timothy Leary: Outside Looking In by Robert Forte; The Starseed Signals by Robert Anton Wilson; and especially The Harvard Psychedelic Club by Don Lattin. I also referred to both The Tibetan Book of the Dead and to The Psychedelic Experience. Leary's much-abridged audiobook version of The Psychedelic Experience can be purchased from Folkways Records. Sadly the first mono mix of "Tomorrow Never Knows" has been out of print since it was first issued. The only way to get the second mono mix is on this ludicrously-expensive out-of-print box set, but the stereo mix is easily available on Revolver. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript Before I start this episode, I'd like to note that it deals with a number of subjects some listeners might find upsetting, most notably psychedelic drug use, mental illness, and suicide. I think I've dealt with those subjects fairly respectfully, but you still may want to check the transcript if you have worries about these subjects. Also, we're now entering a period of music history with the start of the psychedelic era where many of the songs we're looking at are influenced by non-mainstream religious traditions, mysticism, and also increasingly by political ideas which may seem strange with nearly sixty years' hindsight. I'd just like to emphasise that when I talk about these ideas, I'm trying as best I can to present the thinking of the people I'm talking about, in an accurate and unbiased way, rather than talking about my own beliefs. We're going to head into some strange places in some of these episodes, and my intention is neither to mock the people I'm talking about nor to endorse their ideas, but to present those ideas to you the listener so you can understand the music, the history, and the mindset of the people involved, Is that clear? Then lets' turn on, tune in, and drop out back to 1955... [Opening excerpt from The Psychedelic Experience] There is a phenomenon in many mystical traditions, which goes by many names, including the dark night of the soul and the abyss. It's an experience that happens to mystics of many types, in which they go through unimaginable pain near the beginning of their journey towards greater spiritual knowledge. That pain usually involves a mixture of internal and external events -- some terrible tragedy happens to them, giving them a new awareness of the world's pain, at the same time they're going through an intellectual crisis about their understanding of the world, and it can last several years. It's very similar to the more common experience of the mid-life crisis, except that rather than buying a sports car and leaving their spouse, mystics going through this are more likely to found a new religion. At least, those who survive the crushing despair intact. Those who come out of the experience the other end often find themselves on a totally new path, almost like they're a different person. In 1955, when Dr. Timothy Leary's dark night of the soul started, he was a respected academic psychologist, a serious scientist who had already made several substantial contributions to his field, and was considered a rising star. By 1970, he would be a confirmed mystic, sentenced to twenty years in prison, in a cell next to Charles Manson, and claiming to different people that he was the reincarnation of Gurdjieff, Aleister Crowley, and Jesus Christ. In the fifties, Leary and his wife had an open relationship, in which they were both allowed to sleep with other people, but weren't allowed to form emotional attachments to them. Unfortunately, Leary *had* formed an emotional attachment to another woman, and had started spending so much time with her that his wife was convinced he was going to leave her. On top of that, Leary was an alcoholic, and was prone to get into drunken rows with his wife. He woke up on the morning of his thirty-fifth birthday, hung over after one of those rows, to find that she had died by suicide while he slept, leaving a note saying that she knew he was going to leave her and that her life would be meaningless without him. This was only months after Leary had realised that the field he was working in, to which he had devoted his academic career, was seriously broken. Along with a colleague, Frank Barron, he published a paper on the results of clinical psychotherapy, "Changes in psychoneurotic patients with and without psychotherapy" which analysed the mental health of a group of people who had been through psychotherapy, and found that a third of them improved, a third stayed the same, and a third got worse. The problem was that there was a control group, of people with the same conditions who were put on a waiting list and told to wait the length of time that the therapy patients were being treated. A third of them improved, a third stayed the same, and a third got worse. In other words, psychotherapy as it was currently practised had no measurable effect at all on patients' health. This devastated Leary, as you might imagine. But more through inertia than anything else, he continued working in the field, and in 1957 he published what was regarded as a masterwork -- his book Interpersonal Diagnosis of Personality: A Functional Theory and Methodology for Personality Evaluation. Leary's book was a challenge to the then-dominant idea in psychology, behaviourism, which claimed that it made no sense to talk about anyone's internal thoughts or feelings -- all that mattered was what could be measured, stimuli and responses, and that in a very real sense the unmeasurable thoughts people had didn't exist at all. Behaviourism looked at every human being as a mechanical black box, like a series of levers. Leary, by contrast, analysed human interactions as games, in which people took on usual roles, but were able, if they realised this, to change the role or even the game itself. It was very similar to the work that Eric Berne was doing at the same time, and which would later be popularised in Berne's book Games People Play. Berne's work was so popular that it led to the late-sixties hit record "Games People Play" by Joe South: [Excerpt: Joe South: "Games People Play"] But in 1957, between Leary and Berne, Leary was considered the more important thinker among his peers -- though some thought of him as more of a showman, enthralled by his own ideas about how he was going to change psychology, than a scientist, and some thought that he was unfairly taking credit for the work of lesser-known but better researchers. But by 1958, the effects of the traumas Leary had gone through a couple of years earlier were at their worst. He was starting to become seriously ill -- from the descriptions, probably from something stress-related and psychosomatic -- and he took his kids off to Europe, where he was going to write the great American novel. But he rapidly ran through his money, and hadn't got very far with the novel. He was broke, and ill, and depressed, and desperate, but then in 1959 his old colleague Frank Barron, who was on holiday in the area, showed up, and the two had a conversation that changed Leary's life forever in multiple ways. The first of the conversational topics would have the more profound effect, though that wouldn't be apparent at first. Barron talked to Leary about his previous holiday, when he'd visited Mexico and taken psilocybin mushrooms. These had been used by Mexicans for centuries, but the first publication about them in English had only been in 1955 -- the same year when Leary had had other things on his mind -- and they were hardly known at all outside Mexico. Barron talked about the experience as being the most profound, revelatory, experience of his life. Leary thought his friend sounded like a madman, but he humoured him for the moment. But Barron also mentioned that another colleague was on holiday in the same area. David McClelland, head of the Harvard Center for Personality Research, had mentioned to Barron that he had just read Diagnosis of Personality and thought it a work of genius. McClelland hired Leary to work for him at Harvard, and that was where Leary met Ram Dass. [Excerpt from "The Psychedelic Experience"] Ram Dass was not the name that Dass was going by at the time -- he was going by his birth name, and only changed his name a few years later, after the events we're talking about -- but as always, on this podcast we don't use people's deadnames, though his is particularly easy to find as it's still the name on the cover of his most famous book, which we'll be talking about shortly. Dass was another psychologist at the Centre for Personality Research, and he would be Leary's closest collaborator for the next several years. The two men would become so close that at several points Leary would go travelling and leave his children in Dass' care for extended periods of time. The two were determined to revolutionise academic psychology. The start of that revolution didn't come until summer 1960. While Leary was on holiday in Cuernavaca in Mexico, a linguist and anthropologist he knew, Lothar Knauth, mentioned that one of the old women in the area collected those magic mushrooms that Barron had been talking about. Leary decided that that might be a fun thing to do on his holiday, and took a few psilocybin mushrooms. The effect was extraordinary. Leary called this, which had been intended only as a bit of fun, "the deepest religious experience of my life". [Excerpt from "The Psychedelic Experience"] He returned to Harvard after his summer holiday and started what became the Harvard Psilocybin Project. Leary and various other experimenters took controlled doses of psilocybin and wrote down their experiences, and Leary believed this would end up revolutionising psychology, giving them insights unattainable by other methods. The experimenters included lecturers, grad students, and people like authors Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs, jazz trumpeter Maynard Ferguson, and Alan Watts, who popularised Zen Buddhism in the West. Dass didn't join the project until early 1961 -- he'd actually been on the holiday with Leary, but had arrived a few days after the mushroom experiment, and nobody had been able to get hold of the old woman who knew where to find the mushrooms, so he'd just had to deal with Leary telling him about how great it was rather than try it himself. He then spent a semester as a visiting scholar at Berkeley, so he didn't get to try his first trip until February 1961. Dass, on his first trip, first had a revelation about the nature of his own true soul, then decided at three in the morning that he needed to go and see his parents, who lived nearby, and tell them the good news. But there was several feet of snow, and so he decided he must save his parents from the snow, and shovel the path to their house. At three in the morning. Then he saw them looking out the window at him, he waved, and then started dancing around the shovel. He later said “Until that moment I was always trying to be the good boy, looking at myself through other people's eyes. What did the mothers, fathers, teachers, colleagues want me to be? That night, for the first time, I felt good inside. It was OK to be me.” The Harvard Psilocybin Project soon became the Harvard Psychedelic Project. The term "psychedelic", meaning "soul revealing", was coined by the British psychiatrist Humphrey Osmond, who had been experimenting with hallucinogens for years, and had guided Aldous Huxley on the mescaline trip described in The Doors of Perception. Osmond and Huxley had agreed that the term "psychotomimetic", in use at the time, which meant "mimicking psychosis", wasn't right -- it was too negative. They started writing letters to each other, suggesting alternative terms. Huxley came up with "phanerothyme", the Greek for "soul revealing", and wrote a little couplet to Osmond: To make this trivial world sublime Take half a gramme of phanerothyme. Osmond countered with the Latin equivalent: To fathom hell or soar angelic Just take a pinch of psychedelic Osmond also inspired Leary's most important experimental work of the early sixties. Osmond had got to know Bill W., the founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, and had introduced W. to LSD. W. had become sober after experiencing a profound spiritual awakening and a vision of white light while being treated for his alcoholism using the so-called "belladonna cure" -- a mixture of various hallucinogenic and toxic substances that was meant to cure alcoholism. When W. tried LSD, he found it replicated his previous spiritual experience and became very evangelistic about its use by alcoholics, thinking it could give them the same kind of awakening he'd had. Leary became convinced that if LSD could work on alcoholics, it could also be used to help reshape the personalities of habitual criminals and lead them away from reoffending. His idea for how to treat people was based, in part, on the ideas of transactional analysis. There is always a hierarchical relationship between a therapist and their patient, and that hierarchical relationship itself, in Leary's opinion, forced people into particular game roles and made it impossible for them to relate as equals, and thus impossible for the therapist to truly help the patient. So his idea was that there needed to be a shared bonding experience between patient and doctor. So in his prison experiments, he and the other people involved, including Ralph Metzner, one of his grad students, would take psilocybin *with* the patients. In short-term follow-ups the patients who went through this treatment process were less depressed, felt better, and were only half as likely to reoffend as normal prisoners. But critics pointed out that the prisoners had been getting a lot of individual attention and support, and there was no control group getting that support without the psychedelics. [Excerpt: The Psychedelic Experience] As the experiments progressed, though, things were becoming tense within Harvard. There was concern that some of the students who were being given psilocybin were psychologically vulnerable and were being put at real risk. There was also worry about the way that Leary and Dass were emphasising experience over analysis, which was felt to be against the whole of academia. Increasingly it looked like there was a clique forming as well, with those who had taken part in their experiments on the inside and looking down on those outside, and it looked to many people like this was turning into an actual cult. This was simply not what the Harvard psychology department was meant to be doing. And one Harvard student was out to shut them down for good, and his name was Andrew Weil. Weil is now best known as one of the leading lights in alternative health, and has made appearances on Oprah and Larry King Live, but for many years his research interest was in mind-altering chemicals -- his undergraduate thesis was on the use of nutmeg to induce different states of consciousness. At this point Weil was an undergraduate, and he and his friend Ronnie Winston had both tried to get involved in the Harvard Psilocybin Project, but had been turned down -- while they were enthusiastic about it, they were also undergraduates, and Leary and Dass had agreed with the university that they wouldn't be using undergraduates in their project, and that only graduate students, faculty, and outsiders would be involved. So Weil and Winston had started their own series of experiments, using mescaline after they'd been unable to get any psilocybin -- they'd contacted Aldous Huxley, the author of The Doors of Perception and an influence on Leary and Dass' experiments, and asked him where they could get mescaline, and he'd pointed them in the right direction. But then Winston and Dass had become friends, and Dass had given Winston some psilocybin -- not as part of his experiments, so Dass didn't think he was crossing a line, but just socially. Weil saw this as a betrayal by Winston, who stopped hanging round with him once he became close to Dass, and also as a rejection of him by Dass and Leary. If they'd give Winston psilocybin, why wouldn't they give it to him? Weil was a writer for the Harvard Crimson, Harvard's newspaper, and he wrote a series of exposes on Leary and Dass for the Crimson. He went to his former friend Winston's father and told him "Your son is getting drugs from a faculty member. If your son will admit to that charge, we'll cut out your son's name. We won't use it in the article."  Winston did admit to the charge, under pressure from his father, and was brought to tell the Dean, saying to the Dean “Yes, sir, I did, and it was the most educational experience I've had at Harvard.” Weil wrote about this for the Crimson, and the story was picked up by the national media. Weil eventually wrote about Leary and Dass for Look magazine, where he wrote “There were stories of students and others using hallucinogens for seductions, both heterosexual and homosexual.” And this seems actually to have been a big part of Weil's motivation. While Dass and Winston always said that their relationship was purely platonic, Dass was bisexual, and Weil seems to have assumed his friend had been led astray by an evil seducer. This was at a time when homophobia and biphobia were even more prevalent in society than they are now, and part of the reason Leary and Dass fell out in the late sixties is that Leary started to see Dass' sexuality as evil and perverted and something they should be trying to use LSD to cure. The experiments became a national scandal, and one of the reasons that LSD was criminalised a few years later. Dass was sacked for giving drugs to undergraduates; Leary had gone off to Mexico to get away from the stress, leaving his kids with Dass. He would be sacked for going off without permission and leaving his classes untaught. As Leary and Dass were out of Harvard, they had to look for other sources of funding. Luckily, Dass turned William Mellon Hitchcock, the heir to the Mellon oil fortune, on to acid, and he and his brother Tommy and sister Peggy gave them the run of a sixty-four room mansion, named Millbrook. When they started there, they were still trying to be academics, but over the five years they were at Millbrook it became steadily less about research and more of a hippie commune, with regular visitors and long-term residents including Alan Ginsberg, William Burroughs, and the jazz musician Maynard Ferguson, who would later get a small amount of fame with jazz-rock records like his version of "MacArthur Park": [Excerpt: Maynard Ferguson, "MacArthur Park"] It was at Millbrook that Leary, Dass, and Metzner would write the book that became The Psychedelic Experience. This book was inspired by the Bardo Thödol, a book allegedly written by Padmasambhava, the man who introduced Buddhism to Tibet in the eighth century, though no copies of it are known to have existed before the fourteenth century, when it was supposedly discovered by Karma Lingpa. Its title translates as Liberation Through Hearing During the Intermediate State, but it was translated into English under the name The Tibetan Book of the Dead, as Walter Evans-Wentz, who compiled and edited the first English translation was, like many Westerners who studied Buddhism in the early part of the twentieth century, doing so because he was an occultist and a member of the Theosophical Society, which believes the secret occult masters of the world live in Tibet, but which also considered the Egyptian Book of the Dead -- a book which bears little relationship to the Bardo Thödol, and which was written thousands of years earlier on a different continent -- to be a major religious document. So it was through that lens that Evans-Wentz was viewing the Bardo Thödol, and he renamed the book to emphasise what he perceived as its similarities. Part of the Bardo Thödol is a description of what happens to someone between death and rebirth -- the process by which the dead person becomes aware of true reality, and then either transcends it or is dragged back into it by their lesser impulses -- and a series of meditations that can be used to help with that transcendence. In the version published as The Tibetan Book of the Dead, this is accompanied by commentary from Evans-Wentz, who while he was interested in Buddhism didn't actually know that much about Tibetan Buddhism, and was looking at the text through a Theosophical lens, and mostly interpreting it using Hindu concepts. Later editions of Evans-Wentz's version added further commentary by Carl Jung, which looked at Evans-Wentz's version of the book through Jung's own lens, seeing it as a book about psychological states, not about anything more supernatural (although Jung's version of psychology was always a supernaturalist one, of course). His Westernised, psychologised, version of the book's message became part of the third edition. Metzner later said "At the suggestion of Aldous Huxley and Gerald Heard we began using the Bardo Thödol ( Tibetan Book of the Dead) as a guide to psychedelic sessions. The Tibetan Buddhists talked about the three phases of experience on the “intermediate planes” ( bardos) between death and rebirth. We translated this to refer to the death and the rebirth of the ego, or ordinary personality. Stripped of the elaborate Tibetan symbolism and transposed into Western concepts, the text provided a remarkable parallel to our findings." Leary, Dass, and Metzner rewrote the book into a form that could be used to guide a reader through a psychedelic trip, through the death of their ego and its rebirth. Later, Leary would record an abridged audiobook version, and it's this that we've been hearing excerpts of during this podcast so far: [Excerpt: The Psychedelic Experience "Turn off your mind, relax, float downstream" about 04:15] When we left the Beatles, they were at the absolute height of their fame, though in retrospect the cracks had already begun to show.  Their second film had been released, and the soundtrack had contained some of their best work, but the title track, "Help!", had been a worrying insight into John Lennon's current mental state. Immediately after making the film and album, of course, they went back out touring, first a European tour, then an American one, which probably counts as the first true stadium tour. There had been other stadium shows before the Beatles 1965 tour -- we talked way back in the first episodes of the series about how Sister Rosetta Tharpe had a *wedding* that was a stadium gig. But of course there are stadiums and stadiums, and the Beatles' 1965 tour had them playing the kind of venues that no other musician, and certainly no other rock band, had ever played. Most famously, of course, there was the opening concert of the tour at Shea Stadium, where they played to an audience of fifty-five thousand people -- the largest audience a rock band had ever played for, and one which would remain a record for many years. Most of those people, of course, couldn't actually hear much of anything -- the band weren't playing through a public address system designed for music, just playing through the loudspeakers that were designed for commentating on baseball games. But even if they had been playing through the kind of modern sound systems used today, it's unlikely that the audience would have heard much due to the overwhelming noise coming from the crowd. Similarly, there were no live video feeds of the show or any of the other things that nowadays make it at least possible for the audience to have some idea what is going on on stage. The difference between this and anything that anyone had experienced before was so great that the group became overwhelmed. There's video footage of the show -- a heavily-edited version, with quite a few overdubs and rerecordings of some tracks was broadcast on TV, and it's also been shown in cinemas more recently as part of promotion for an underwhelming documentary about the Beatles' tours -- and you can see Lennon in particular becoming actually hysterical during the performance of "I'm Down", where he's playing the organ with his elbows. Sadly the audio nature of this podcast doesn't allow me to show Lennon's facial expression, but you can hear something of the exuberance in the performance. This is from what is labelled as a copy of the raw audio of the show -- the version broadcast on TV had a fair bit of additional sweetening work done on it: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "I'm Down (Live at Shea Stadium)"] After their American tour they had almost six weeks off work to write new material before going back into the studio to record their second album of the year, and one which would be a major turning point for the group. The first day of the recording sessions for this new album, Rubber Soul, started with two songs of Lennon's. The first of these was "Run For Your Life", a song Lennon never later had much good to say about, and which is widely regarded as the worst song on the album. That song was written off a line from Elvis Presley's version of "Baby Let's Play House", and while Lennon never stated this, it's likely that it was brought to mind by the Beatles having met with Elvis during their US tour. But the second song was more interesting. Starting with "Help!", Lennon had been trying to write more interesting lyrics. This had been inspired by two conversations with British journalists -- Kenneth Allsop had told Lennon that while he liked Lennon's poetry, the lyrics to his songs were banal in comparison and he found them unlistenable as a result, while Maureen Cleave, a journalist who was a close friend with Lennon, had told him that she hadn't noticed a single word in any of his lyrics with more than two syllables, so he made more of an effort with "Help!", putting in words like "independence" and "insecure". As he said in one of his last interviews, "I was insecure then, and things like that happened more than once. I never considered it before. So after that I put a few words with three syllables in, but she didn't think much of them when I played it for her, anyway.” Cleave may have been an inspiration for "Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)". There are very strong rumours that Lennon had an affair with Cleave in the mid-sixties, and if that's true it would definitely fit into a pattern. Lennon had many, many, affairs during his first marriage, both brief one-night stands and deeper emotional attachments, and those emotional attachments were generally with women who were slightly older, intellectual, somewhat exotic looking by the standards of 1960s Britain, and in the arts. Lennon later claimed to have had an affair with Eleanor Bron, the Beatles' co-star in Help!, though she always denied this, and it's fairly widely established that he did have an affair with Alma Cogan, a singer who he'd mocked during her peak of popularity in the fifties, but who would later become one of his closest friends: [Excerpt: Alma Cogan, "Why Do Fools Fall in Love?"] And "Norwegian Wood", the second song recorded for Rubber Soul, started out as a confession to one of these affairs, a way of Lennon admitting it to his wife without really admitting it. The figure in the song is a slightly aloof, distant woman, and the title refers to the taste among Bohemian British people at the time for minimalist decor made of Scandinavian pine -- something that would have been a very obvious class signifier at the time. [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)"] Lennon and McCartney had different stories about who wrote what in the song, and Lennon's own story seems to have changed at various times. What seems to have happened is that Lennon wrote the first couple of verses while on holiday with George Martin, and finished it off later with McCartney's help. McCartney seems to have come up with the middle eight melody -- which is in Dorian mode rather than the Mixolydian mode of the verses -- and to have come up with the twist ending, where the woman refuses to sleep with the protagonist and laughs at him, he goes to sleep in the bath rather than her bed, wakes up alone, and sets fire to the house in revenge. This in some ways makes "Norwegian Wood" the thematic centrepiece of the album that was to result, combining several of the themes its two songwriters came back to throughout the album and the single recorded alongside it. Like Lennon's "Run For Your Life" it has a misogynistic edge to it, and deals with taking revenge against a woman, but like his song "Girl", it deals with a distant, unattainable, woman, who the singer sees as above him but who has a slightly cruel edge -- the kind of girl who puts you down when friends are there,  you feel a fool, is very similar to the woman who tells you to sit down but has no chairs in her minimalist flat. A big teaser who takes you half the way there is likely to laugh at you as you crawl off to sleep in the bath while she goes off to bed alone. Meanwhile, McCartney's two most popular contributions to the album, "Michelle" and "Drive My Car", also feature unattainable women, but are essentially comedy songs -- "Michelle" is a pastiche French song which McCartney used to play as a teenager while pretending to be foreign to impress girls, dug up and finished for the album, while "Drive My Car" is a comedy song with a twist in the punchline, just like "Norwegian Wood", though "Norwegian Wood"s twist is darker. But "Norwegian Wood" is even more famous for its music than for its lyric. The basis of the song is Lennon imitating Dylan's style -- something that Dylan saw, and countered with "Fourth Time Around", a song which people have interpreted multiple ways, but one of those interpretations has always been that it's a fairly vicious parody of "Norwegian Wood": [Excerpt: Bob Dylan, "Fourth Time Around"] Certainly Lennon thought that at first, saying a few years later "I was very paranoid about that. I remember he played it to me when he was in London. He said, what do you think? I said, I don't like it. I didn't like it. I was very paranoid. I just didn't like what I felt I was feeling – I thought it was an out and out skit, you know, but it wasn't. It was great. I mean he wasn't playing any tricks on me. I was just going through the bit." But the aspect of "Norwegian Wood" that has had more comment over the years has been the sitar part, played by George Harrison: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Norwegian Wood"] This has often been called the first sitar to be used on a rock record, and that may be the case, but it's difficult to say for sure. Indian music was very much in the air among British groups in September 1965, when the Beatles recorded the track. That spring, two records had almost simultaneously introduced Indian-influenced music into the pop charts. The first had been the Yardbirds' "Heart Full of Soul", released in June and recorded in April. In fact, the Yardbirds had actually used a sitar on their first attempt at recording the song, which if it had been released would have been an earlier example than the Beatles: [Excerpt: The Yardbirds, "Heart Full of Soul (first version)"] But in the finished recording they had replaced that with Jeff Beck playing a guitar in a way that made it sound vaguely like a sitar, rather than using a real one: [Excerpt: The Yardbirds, "Heart Full of Soul (single)"] Meanwhile, after the Yardbirds had recorded that but before they'd released it, and apparently without any discussion between the two groups, the Kinks had done something similar on their "See My Friends", which came out a few weeks after the Yardbirds record: [Excerpt: The Kinks, "See My Friends"] (Incidentally, that track is sometimes titled "See My Friend" rather than "See My Friends", but that's apparently down to a misprint on initial pressings rather than that being the intended title). As part of this general flowering of interest in Indian music, George Harrison had become fascinated with the sound of the sitar while recording scenes in Help! which featured some Indian musicians. He'd then, as we discussed in the episode on "Eight Miles High" been introduced by David Crosby on the Beatles' summer US tour to the music of Ravi Shankar. "Norwegian Wood" likely reminded Harrison of Shankar's work for a couple of reasons. The first is that the melody is very modal -- as I said before, the verses are in Mixolydian mode, while the middle eights are in Dorian -- and as we saw in the "Eight Miles High" episode Indian music is very modal. The second is that for the most part, the verse is all on one chord -- a D chord as Lennon originally played it, though in the final take it's capoed on the second fret so it sounds in E. The only time the chord changes at all is on the words "once had" in the phrase “she once had me” where for one beat each Lennon plays a C9 and a G (sounding as a D9 and A). Both these chords, in the fingering Lennon is using, feel to a guitarist more like "playing a D chord and lifting some fingers up or putting some down" rather than playing new chords, and this is a fairly common way of thinking about stuff particularly when talking about folk and folk-rock music -- you'll tend to get people talking about the "Needles and Pins" riff as being "an A chord where you twiddle your finger about on the D string" rather than changing between A, Asus2, and Asus4. So while there are chord changes, they're minimal and of a kind that can be thought of as "not really" chord changes, and so that may well have reminded Harrison of the drone that's so fundamental to Indian classical music. Either way, he brought in his sitar, and they used it on the track, both the version they cut on the first day of recording and the remake a week later which became the album track: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)"] At the same time as the group were recording Rubber Soul, they were also working on two tracks that would become their next single -- released as a double A-side because the group couldn't agree which of the two to promote. Both of these songs were actual Lennon/McCartney collaborations, something that was increasingly rare at this point. One, "We Can Work it Out" was initiated by McCartney, and like many of his songs of this period was inspired by tensions in his relationship with his girlfriend Jane Asher -- two of his other songs for Rubber Soul were "I'm Looking Through You" and "You Won't See Me".  The other, "Day Tripper",  was initiated by Lennon, and had other inspirations: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Day Tripper"] John Lennon and George Harrison's first acid trip had been in spring of 1965, around the time they were recording Help! The fullest version of how they came to try it I've read was in an interview George Harrison gave to Creem magazine in 1987, which I'll quote a bit of: "I had a dentist who invited me and John and our ex-wives to dinner, and he had this acid he'd got off the guy who ran Playboy in London. And the Playboy guy had gotten it off, you know, the people who had it in America. What's his name, Tim Leary. And this guy had never had it himself, didn't know anything about it, but he thought it was an aphrodisiac and he had this girlfriend with huge breasts. He invited us down there with our blonde wives and I think he thought he was gonna have a scene. And he put it in our coffee without telling us—he didn't take any himself. We didn't know we had it, and we'd made an arrangement earlier—after we had dinner we were gonna go to this nightclub to see some friends of ours who were playing in a band. And I was saying, "OK, let's go, we've got to go," and this guy kept saying, "No, don't go, finish your coffee. Then, 20 minutes later or something, I'm saying, "C'mon John, we'd better go now. We're gonna miss the show." And he says we shouldn't go 'cause we've had LSD." They did leave anyway, and they had an experience they later remembered as being both profound and terrifying -- nobody involved had any idea what the effects of LSD actually were, and they didn't realise it was any different from cannabis or amphetamines. Harrison later described feelings of universal love, but also utter terror -- believing himself to be in hell, and that world war III was starting. As he said later "We'd heard of it, but we never knew what it was about and it was put in our coffee maliciously. So it really wasn't us turning each other or the world or anything—we were the victims of silly people." But both men decided it was an experience they needed to have again, and one they wanted to share with their friends. Their next acid trip was the one that we talked about in the episode on "Eight Miles High", with Roger McGuinn, David Crosby, and Peter Fonda. That time Neil Aspinall and Ringo took part as well, but at this point Paul was still unsure about taking it -- he would later say that he was being told by everyone that it changed your worldview so radically you'd never be the same again, and he was understandably cautious about this. Certainly it had a profound effect on Lennon and Harrison -- Starr has never really talked in detail about his own experiences. Harrison would later talk about how prior to taking acid he had been an atheist, but his experiences on the drug gave him an unshakeable conviction in the existence of God -- something he would spend the rest of his life exploring. Lennon didn't change his opinions that drastically, but he did become very evangelistic about the effects of LSD. And "Day Tripper" started out as a dig at what he later described as weekend hippies, who took acid but didn't change the rest of their lives -- which shows a certain level of ego in a man who had at that point only taken acid twice himself -- though in collaboration with McCartney it turned into another of the rather angry songs about unavailable women they were writing at this point. The line "she's a big teaser, she took me half the way there" apparently started as "she's a prick teaser": [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Day Tripper"] In the middle of the recording of Rubber Soul, the group took a break to receive their MBEs from the Queen. Officially the group were awarded these because they had contributed so much to British exports. In actual fact, they received them because the Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, had a government with a majority of only four MPs and was thinking about calling an election to boost his majority. He represented a Liverpool constituency, and wanted to associate his Government and the Labour Party with the most popular entertainers in the UK. "Day Tripper" and "We Can Work it Out" got their TV premiere on a show recorded for Granada TV,  The Music of Lennon and McCartney, and fans of British TV trivia will be pleased to note that the harmonium Lennon plays while the group mimed "We Can Work it Out" in that show is the same one that was played in Coronation Street by Ena Sharples -- the character we heard last episode being Davy Jones' grandmother. As well as the Beatles themselves, that show included other Brian Epstein artists like Cilla Black and Billy J Kramer singing songs that Lennon and McCartney had given to them, plus Peter Sellers, the Beatles' comedy idol, performing "A Hard Day's Night" in the style of Laurence Olivier as Richard III: [Excerpt: Peter Sellers, "A Hard Day's Night"] Another performance on the show was by Peter and Gordon, performing a hit that Paul had given to them, one of his earliest songs: [Excerpt: Peter and Gordon, "A World Without Love"] Peter Asher, of Peter and Gordon, was the brother of Paul McCartney's girlfriend, the actor Jane Asher. And while the other three Beatles were living married lives in mansions in suburbia, McCartney at this point was living with the Asher family in London, and being introduced by them to a far more Bohemian, artistic, hip crowd of people than he had ever before experienced. They were introducing him to types of art and culture of which he had previously been ignorant, and while McCartney was the only Beatle so far who hadn't taken LSD, this kind of mind expansion was far more appealing to him. He was being introduced to art film, to electronic composers like Stockhausen, and to ideas about philosophy and art that he had never considered. Peter Asher was a friend of John Dunbar, who at the time was Marianne Faithfull's husband, though Faithfull had left him and taken up with Mick Jagger, and of Barry Miles, a writer, and in September 1965 the three men had formed a company, Miles, Asher and Dunbar Limited, or MAD for short, which had opened up a bookshop and art gallery, the Indica Gallery, which was one of the first places in London to sell alternative or hippie books and paraphernalia, and which also hosted art events by people like members of the Fluxus art movement. McCartney was a frequent customer, as you might imagine, and he also encouraged the other Beatles to go along, and the Indica Gallery would play an immense role in the group's history, which we'll look at in a future episode. But the first impact it had on the group was when John and Paul went to the shop in late 1965, just after the recording and release of Rubber Soul and the "Day Tripper"/"We Can Work It Out" single, and John bought a copy of The Psychedelic Experience by Leary, Dass, and Metzner. He read the book on a plane journey while going on holiday -- reportedly while taking his third acid trip -- and was inspired. When he returned, he wrote a song which became the first track to be recorded for the group's next album, Revolver: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Tomorrow Never Knows"] The lyrics were inspired by the parts of The Psychedelic Experience which were in turn inspired by the Tibetan Book of the Dead. Now, it's important to put it this way because most people who talk about this record have apparently never read the book which inspired it. I've read many, many, books on the Beatles which claim that The Psychedelic Experience simply *is* the Tibetan Book of the Dead, slightly paraphrased. In fact, while the authors use the Tibetan Book of the Dead as a structure on which to base their book, much of the book is detailed descriptions of Leary, Dass, and Metzner's hypotheses about what is actually happening during a psychedelic trip, and their notes on the book -- in particular they provide commentaries to the commentaries, giving their view of what Carl Jung meant when he talked about it, and of Evans-Wentz's opinions, and especially of a commentary by Anagarika Govinda, a Westerner who had taken up Tibetan Buddhism seriously and become a monk and one of its most well-known exponents in the West. By the time it's been filtered through so many different viewpoints and perspectives, each rewriting and reinterpreting it to suit their own preconceived ideas, they could have started with a book on the habitat of the Canada goose and ended with much the same result. Much of this is the kind of mixture between religious syncretism and pseudoscience that will be very familiar to anyone who has encountered New Age culture in any way, statements like "The Vedic sages knew the secret; the Eleusinian Initiates knew it; the Tantrics knew it. In all their esoteric writings they whisper the message: It is possible to cut beyond ego-consciousness, to tune in on neurological processes which flash by at the speed of light, and to become aware of the enormous treasury of ancient racial knowledge welded into the nucleus of every cell in your body". This kind of viewpoint is one that has been around in one form or another since the nineteenth century religious revivals in America that led to Mormonism, Christian Science, and the New Thought. It's found today in books and documentaries like The Secret and the writings of people like Deepak Chopra, and the idea is always the same one -- people thousands of years ago had a lost wisdom that has only now been rediscovered through the miracle of modern science. This always involves a complete misrepresentation of both the lost wisdom and of the modern science. In particular, Leary, Dass, and Metzner's book freely mixes between phrases that sound vaguely scientific, like "There are no longer things and persons but only the direct flow of particles", things that are elements of Tibetan Buddhism, and references to ego games and "game-existence" which come from Leary's particular ideas of psychology as game interactions. All of this is intermingled, and so the claims that some have made that Lennon based the lyrics on the Tibetan Book of the Dead itself are very wrong. Rather the song, which he initially called "The Void", is very much based on Timothy Leary. The song itself was very influenced by Indian music. The melody line consists of only four notes -- E, G, C, and B flat, over a space of an octave: [Demonstrates] This sparse use of notes is very similar to the pentatonic scales in a lot of folk music, but that B-flat makes it the Mixolydian mode, rather than the E minor pentatonic scale our ears at first make it feel like. The B-flat also implies a harmony change -- Lennon originally sang the whole song over one chord, a C, which has the notes C, E, and G in it, but a B-flat note implies instead a chord of C7 -- this is another one of those occasions where you just put one finger down to change the chord while playing, and I suspect that's what Lennon did: [Demonstrates] Lennon's song was inspired by Indian music, but what he wanted was to replicate the psychedelic experience, and this is where McCartney came in. McCartney was, as I said earlier, listening to a lot of electronic composers as part of his general drive to broaden his mind, and in particular he had been listening to quite a bit of Karlheinz Stockhausen. Stockhausen was a composer who had studied with Olivier Messiaen in the 1940s, and had then become attached to the Groupe de Recherche de Musique Concrète along with Messiaen, Pierre Boulez, Edgard Varese and others, notably Pierre Schaeffer and Pierre Henry. These composers were interested in a specific style of music called musique concrète, a style that had been pioneered by Schaeffer. Musique concrète is music that is created from, or at least using, prerecorded sounds that have been electronically altered, rather than with live instruments. Often this would involve found sound -- music made not by instruments at all, but by combining recorded sounds of objects, like with the first major work of musique concrète, Pierre Schaeffer's Cinq études de bruits: [Excerpt: Pierre Schaeffer, "Etude aux Chemins de faire" (from Cinq études de bruits)] Early on, musique concrète composers worked in much the same way that people use turntables to create dance music today -- they would have multiple record players, playing shellac discs, and a mixing desk, and they would drop the needle on the record players to various points, play the records backwards, and so forth. One technique that Schaeffer had come up with was to create records with a closed groove, so that when the record finished, the groove would go back to the start -- the record would just keep playing the same thing over and over and over. Later, when magnetic tape had come into use, Schaeffer had discovered you could get the same effect much more easily by making an actual loop of tape, and had started making loops of tape whose beginnings were stuck to their ending -- again creating something that could keep going over and over. Stockhausen had taken up the practice of using tape loops, most notably in a piece that McCartney was a big admirer of, Gesang der Jeunglinge: [Excerpt: Karlheinz Stockhausen, "Gesang der Jeunglinge"] McCartney suggested using tape loops on Lennon's new song, and everyone was in agreement. And this is the point where George Martin really starts coming into his own as a producer for the group. Martin had always been a good producer, but his being a good producer had up to this point mostly consisted of doing little bits of tidying up and being rather hands-off. He'd scored the strings on "Yesterday", played piano parts, and made suggestions like speeding up "Please Please Me" or putting the hook of "Can't Buy Me Love" at the beginning. Important contributions, contributions that turned good songs into great records, but nothing that Tony Hatch or Norrie Paramor or whoever couldn't have done. Indeed, his biggest contribution had largely been *not* being a Hatch or Paramor, and not imposing his own songs on the group, letting their own artistic voices flourish. But at this point Martin's unique skillset came into play. Martin had specialised in comedy records before his work with the Beatles, and he had worked with Peter Sellers and Spike Milligan of the Goons, making records that required a far odder range of sounds than the normal pop record: [Excerpt: The Goons, "Unchained Melody"] The Goons' radio show had used a lot of sound effects created by the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, a department of the BBC that specialised in creating musique concrète, and Martin had also had some interactions with the Radiophonic Workshop. In particular, he had worked with Maddalena Fagandini of the Workshop on an experimental single combining looped sounds and live instruments, under the pseudonym "Ray Cathode": [Excerpt: Ray Cathode, "Time Beat"] He had also worked on a record that is if anything even more relevant to "Tomorrow Never Knows". Unfortunately, that record is by someone who has been convicted of very serious sex offences. In this case, Rolf Harris, the man in question, was so well-known in Britain before his arrest, so beloved, and so much a part of many people's childhoods, that it may actually be traumatic for people to hear his voice knowing about his crimes. So while I know that showing the slightest consideration for my listeners' feelings will lead to a barrage of comments from angry old men calling me a "woke snowflake" for daring to not want to retraumatise vulnerable listeners, I'll give a little warning before I play the first of two segments of his recordings in a minute. When I do, if you skip forward approximately ninety seconds, you'll miss that section out. Harris was an Australian all-round entertainer, known in Britain for his novelty records, like the unfortunately racist "Tie Me Kangaroo Down Sport" -- which the Beatles later recorded with him in a non-racist version for a BBC session. But he had also, in 1960, recorded and released in Australia a song he'd written based on his understanding of Aboriginal Australian religious beliefs, and backed by Aboriginal musicians on didgeridoo. And we're going to hear that clip now: [Excerpt. Rolf Harris, "Sun Arise" original] EMI, his British label, had not wanted to release that as it was, so he'd got together with George Martin and they'd put together a new version, for British release. That had included a new middle-eight, giving the song a tiny bit of harmonic movement, and Martin had replaced the didgeridoos with eight cellos, playing a drone: [Excerpt: Rolf Harris, "Sun Arise", 1962 version ] OK, we'll just wait a few seconds for anyone who skipped that to catch up... Now, there are some interesting things about that track. That is a track based on a non-Western religious belief, based around a single drone -- the version that Martin produced had a chord change for the middle eight, but the verses were still on the drone -- using the recording studio to make the singer's voice sound different, with a deep, pulsating, drum sound, and using a melody with only a handful of notes, which doesn't start on the tonic but descends to it. Sound familiar? Oh, and a young assistant engineer had worked with George Martin on that session in 1962, in what several sources say was their first session together, and all sources say was one of their first. That young assistant engineer was Geoff Emerick, who had now been promoted to the main engineer role, and was working his first Beatles session in that role on “Tomorrow Never Knows”. Emerick was young and eager to experiment, and he would become a major part of the Beatles' team for the next few years, acting as engineer on all their recordings in 1966 and 67, and returning in 1969 for their last album. To start with, the group recorded a loop of guitar and drums, heavily treated: [Excerpt: "Tomorrow Never Knows", loop] That loop was slowed down to half its speed, and played throughout: [Excerpt: "Tomorrow Never Knows", loop] Onto that the group overdubbed a second set of live drums and Lennon's vocal. Lennon wanted his voice to sound like the Dalai Lama singing from a mountaintop, or like thousands of Tibetan monks. Obviously the group weren't going to fly to Tibet and persuade monks to sing for them, so they wanted some unusual vocal effect. This was quite normal for Lennon, actually. One of the odd things about Lennon is that while he's often regarded as one of the greatest rock vocalists of all time, he always hated his own voice and wanted to change it in the studio. After the Beatles' first album there's barely a dry Lennon solo vocal anywhere on any record he ever made. Either he would be harmonising with someone else, or he'd double-track his vocal, or he'd have it drenched in reverb, or some other effect -- anything to stop it sounding quite so much like him. And Geoff Emerick had the perfect idea. There's a type of speaker called a Leslie speaker, which was originally used to give Hammond organs their swirling sound, but which can be used with other instruments as well. It has two rotating speakers inside it, a bass one and a treble one, and it's the rotation that gives the swirling sound. Ken Townsend, the electrical engineer working on the record, hooked up the speaker from Abbey Road's Hammond organ to Lennon's mic, and Lennon was ecstatic with the sound: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Tomorrow Never Knows", take one] At least, he was ecstatic with the sound of his vocal, though he did wonder if it might be more interesting to get the same swirling effect by tying himself to a rope and being swung round the microphone The rest of the track wasn't quite working, though, and they decided to have a second attempt. But Lennon had been impressed enough by Emerick that he decided to have a chat with him about music -- his way of showing that Emerick had been accepted. He asked if Emerick had heard the new Tiny Tim record -- which shows how much attention Lennon was actually paying to music at this point. This was two years before Tim's breakthrough with "Tiptoe Through the Tulips", and his first single (unless you count a release from 1963 that was only released as a 78, in the sixties equivalent of a hipster cassette-only release), a version of "April Showers" backed with "Little Girl" -- the old folk song also known as "In the Pines" or "Where Did You Sleep Last Night?": [Excerpt: Tiny Tim, "Little Girl"] Unfortunately for Emerick, he hadn't heard the record, and rather than just say so he tried bluffing, saying "Yes, they're great". Lennon laughed at his attempt to sound like he knew what he was talking about, before explaining that Tiny Tim was a solo artist, though he did say "Nobody's really sure if it's actually a guy or some drag queen". For the second attempt, they decided to cut the whole backing track live rather than play to a loop. Lennon had had trouble staying in sync with the loop, but they had liked the thunderous sound that had been got from slowing the tape down. As Paul talked with Ringo about his drum part, suggesting a new pattern for him to play, Emerick went down into the studio from the control room and made some adjustments. He first deadened the sound of the bass drum by sticking a sweater in it -- it was actually a promotional sweater with eight arms, made when the film Help! had been provisionally titled Eight Arms to Hold You, which Mal Evans had been using as packing material. He then moved the mics much, much closer to the drums that EMI studio rules allowed -- mics can be damaged by loud noises, and EMI had very strict rules about distance, not allowing them within two feet of the drum kit. Emerick decided to risk his job by moving the mics mere inches from the drums, reasoning that he would probably have Lennon's support if he did this. He then put the drum signal through an overloaded Fairfield limiter, giving it a punchier sound than anything that had been recorded in a British studio up to that point: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Tomorrow Never Knows", isolated drums] That wasn't the only thing they did to make the record sound different though.  As well as Emerick's idea for the Leslie speaker, Ken Townsend had his own idea of how to make Lennon's voice sound different. Lennon had often complained about the difficulty of double-tracking his voice, and so Townsend had had an idea -- if you took a normal recording, fed it to another tape machine a few milliseconds out of sync with the first, and then fed it back into the first, you could create a double-tracked effect without having to actually double-track the vocal. Townsend suggested this, and it was used for the first time on the first half of "Tomorrow Never Knows", before the Leslie speaker takes over. The technique is now known as "artificial double-tracking" or ADT, but the session actually gave rise to another term, commonly used for a similar but slightly different tape-manipulation effect that had already been used by Les Paul among others. Lennon asked how they'd got the effect and George Martin started to explain, but then realised Lennon wasn't really interested in the technical details, and said "we take the original image and we split it through a double-bifurcated sploshing flange". From that point on, Lennon referred to ADT as "flanging", and the term spread, though being applied to the other technique. (Just as a quick aside, some people have claimed other origins for the term "flanging", and they may be right, but I think this is the correct story). Over the backing track they added tambourine and organ overdubs -- with the organ changing to a B flat chord when the vocal hits the B-flat note, even though the rest of the band stays on C -- and then a series of tape loops, mostly recorded by McCartney. There's a recording that circulates which has each of these loops isolated, played first forwards and then backwards at the speed they were recorded, and then going through at the speed they were used on the record, so let's go through these. There's what people call the "seagull" sound, which is apparently McCartney laughing, very distorted: [Excerpt: Tomorrow Never Knows loop] Then there's an orchestral chord: [Excerpt: Tomorrow Never Knows loop] A mellotron on its flute setting: [Excerpt: Tomorrow Never Knows loop] And on its string setting: [Excerpt: Tomorrow Never Knows loop] And a much longer loop of sitar music supplied by George: [Excerpt: Tomorrow Never Knows loop] Each of these loops were played on a different tape machine in a different part of Abbey Road -- they commandeered the entire studio complex, and got engineers to sit with the tapes looped round pencils and wine-glasses, while the Beatles supervised Emerick and Martin in mixing the loops into a single track. They then added a loop of a tamboura drone played by George, and the result was one of the strangest records ever released by a major pop group: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Tomorrow Never Knows"] While Paul did add some backwards guitar -- some sources say that this is a cut-up version of his solo from George's song "Taxman", but it's actually a different recording, though very much in the same style -- they decided that they were going to have a tape-loop solo rather than a guitar solo: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Tomorrow Never Knows"] And finally, at the end, there's some tack piano playing from McCartney, inspired by the kind of joke piano parts that used to turn up on the Goon Show. This was just McCartney messing about in the studio, but it was caught on tape, and they asked for it to be included at the end of the track. It's only faintly audible on the standard mixes of the track, but there was actually an alternative mono mix which was only released on British pressings of the album pressed on the first day of its release, before George Martin changed his mind about which mix should have been used, and that has a much longer excerpt of the piano on it. I have to say that I personally like that mix more, and the extra piano at the end does a wonderful job of undercutting what could otherwise be an overly-serious track, in much the same way as the laughter at the end of "Within You, Without You", which they recorded the next year. The same goes for the title -- the track was originally called "The Void", and the tape boxes were labelled "Mark One", but Lennon decided to name the track after one of Starr's malapropisms, the same way they had with "A Hard Day's Night", to avoid the track being too pompous. [Excerpt: Beatles interview] A track like that, of course, had to end the album. Now all they needed to do was to record another thirteen tracks to go before it. But that -- and what they did afterwards, is a story for another time. [Excerpt, "Tomorrow Never Knows (alternate mono mix)" piano tag into theme music]

For this episode I had the pleasure of speaking to Paul Hartnoll from legendary electronic act Orbital. Paul, who formed Orbital back in 1989 with his brother Phill, spoke to me about the soundtrack he made for the British thriller 'Concrete Plans', his memories playing Top Of The Pops and the time he nearly killed, not one, but TWO members of the Radiophonic Workshop.

Clive Anderson and Emma Freud are joined by Donny Osmond, Rebecca Frecknall and James Nesbitt for an eclectic mix of conversation, music and comedy. With music from Stealing Sheep and The Radiophonic Workshop and Maia Miller-Lewis.

A mellow but extraordinarily varied podcast this week, as we explore some of the latest releases across the musical spectrum. From Japanese folk to ferocious noise rock, stopping off at hip hop, Indonesian avant garde experimentation, roots reggae, and library music. There's a lot to enjoy on this relatively short – but packed full of goodness – episode of the Independent Music Podcast. Tracklisting Stealing Sheep and the Radiophonic Workshop – Council of Draags pt.I (Fire Records, UK) Disrupt – Setting Out (Zonedog, Germany) Ben LaMar Gay – Sometimes I Forget How Summer Looks On You. (feat. Ohmme) (International Anthem, USA) Tamami Pearl – 竹田の子守唄 (Kashual Plastik, Germany) X'ed Out – Bathe In It (Human Worth, UK) Mike G feat. Lil B – Champion (All City Records, Ireland) Lotic – Emergency (Houndstooth, UK) Aryo Adhianto – Mikr (Divisi62, Indonesia) Grouper – Unclean Mind (Kranky, USA) Danny Red & Jah Disciple – Tell Jah Sorry (Blackboard Jungle, France) Produced and edited by Nick McCorriston.

Are you obsessed with early electronic music?? We started a private group for people like you: https://www.facebook.com/groups/cosmictapemusicclub/ Thanks for joining us for Episode 8 of the Cosmic Tape Music Club monthly Podcast! Join your hosts Jacqueline and Augustus of the experimental pop band The Galaxy Electric as they get cosmic on the topic of Robin the Fog. Robin was a blast to chat with and we carried on way longer than the finished piece, so you are getting the goods! Robin works exclusively with tape as his medium. You're likely familiar with his work as Howlround and his collaborative effort with DJ Food and others called The New Obsolescents. Topics covered were things like Reel Tape, MST3K and The Radiophonic Workshop just to get ya started...   https://robinthefog.com/ @RobinTheFog  

For this episode we are honoured to be joined by the wonderful filmmaker Caroline Catz to discuss her brilliant debut feature film Delia Derbyshire: the Myths and Legendary Tapes, which Catz wrote, directed and stars in, as Derbyshire. It's a unique music doc/drama hybrid that is well worth the time and is currently on the BBC iPlayer in the UK. The conversation covers Caroline's process for the film, her relationship to Derbyshire's music and that of the Radiophonic Workshop, as well as venturing into women as artists in relation to Derbyshire, one of the film's collaborators Cosey Fanni Tutti and Catz herself. We are grateful that Caroline took time out to talk to us and we really like this conversation. Please excuse Neil's cold but as the intro makes clear, this was not our usual day at the Cinematologists office.   You can listen to The Cinematologists for free, wherever you listen to podcasts: click here to follow. We also produce an extensive monthly newsletter and bonus/extended content that is available on our Patreon page: https://www.patreon.com/cinematologists. You can become a member for only $2.50. We also really appreciate any reviews you might write about the show (please send us what you have written and we'll mention it) and sharing on Social Media is the lifeblood of the podcast so please do that if you enjoy the show.   ——— Show Notes: In the bonus episode, we discuss the music of the following artists [spiritual heirs of Derbyshire and the Radiophonic Workshop] - Kelly Lee Owens, Jane Weaver and Broadcast, who are all amazing and who you should all check out. And of course, the composer of our own theme tune, the mighty Gwenno.   ——— Music Credits: ‘Theme from The Cinematologists' Written and produced by Gwenno Saunders. Mixed by Rhys Edwards. Drums, bass & guitar by Rhys Edwards. All synths by Gwenno Saunders. Published by Downtown Music Publishing.

Nile Rodgers – guitarist, producer, songwriter, arranger, and co-founder of Chic in the 1970s – is the subject of what claims to be the world’s first voice-interactive digital portrait, In the Room with Nile Rodgers, in association with the National Portrait Gallery. Nile Rodgers and the artist behind the project, Sarah Coward, discuss and explain the ambitious artwork. Hannah Peel’s latest album Fir Wave is inspired by nature, and finds links between patterns in nature and in early electronic music. She explains the inspiration behind her new album, how she’s reinterpreted iconic music by the Radiophonic Workshop, and why Delia Derbyshire is such an important figure for her. Presenter: John Wilson Producer: Jerome Weatherald Main image: Nile Rodgers Image credit: Dimitri Hakke/Getty Images

The actor Caroline Catz chooses Delia Derbyshire, the musician and composer who is best known for her work at the BBC Radiophonic Workshop where she realised the theme tune to Doctor Who. With Dr David Butler from the University of Manchester who looks after Delia's archive. Delia was born in Coventry in 1937 and describes her earliest recollections of sound as the sound of the German blitz and the air-raid sirens. She studied music and maths at Cambridge and joined the BBC Radiophonic Workshop where she could create sounds that had never existed in the world before. Her 'realisation' of Ron Grainer's theme tune to Doctor Who brought both her and the Workshop to greater prominence, but she later left the BBC and London and moved to Cumbria where she worked on a series of projects, as well as being briefly employed as a radio operator at the Gas Board. She was a pioneer of sound and her work is celebrated each year by Delia Derbyshire Day. Caroline was terrified by the Doctor Who theme tune as a child but fascinated by the woman, and later discovered tracks like 'Ziwzih Ziwzih OO-OO-OO' and 'Blue Veils and Golden Sands' from Radiophonic Workshop mix tapes. The discovery of 267 tapes in Delia's attic provided another portal into the extraordinary sonic world of Psyche-Delia and the mystery surrounding both how she created her music and the choices she made in life provided the inspiration for Caroline's film 'Delia Derbyshire: The Myths and the Legendary Tapes' in which she plays the lead. Delia appears in archive recordings to give Matthew Parris his first taste of a Wobbulator. Producer: Toby Field

Welcome to The Head Ballet podcast! Paul Abbott invites guests to discuss their favourite novelty songs. Returning to the show, laden down with a bag full of Skaro™ Brand Plum Pudding, is Tim Worthington who is transporting us in his own personal TARDIS back to December of 1964 so we can get together and twist along to The Go-Go's novelty Christmas offering, I'm Gonna Spend My Christmas With A Dalek. Along the way we'll find out about the writer/producer Les Vandyke, the Oriole record label and investigate a seasonal snippet from the Radiophonic Workshop. Find all of Tim's podcasts and books via his website, www.timworthington.org.    

On this week's show - a classic from the BBC's Radiophonic Workshop, plus a new one from King Creosote (using modular synths) and introducing a fantastic new band from West Yorkshire - Working Men's Club. Plus Django Django and Spacemen 3.

The BBC Radiophonic workshop was founded in 1958 by Desmond Briscoe and Daphne Oram. This group of experimental composers, sound engineers and musical innovators provided music for programmes including The Body in Question, Horizon, Quatermass, Newsround, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Chronicle and Delia Derbyshire's iconic Doctor Who Theme before being shut down by Director General John Birt in 1998. Tying into the 2020 celebration of classic Prom concerts, this episode of Free Thinking is being rebroadcast It was recorded in 2014, as the Workshop prepared to release an album, and tour the UK, Matthew Sweet brought together Radiophonic Workshop members Dick Mills, Paddy Kingsland, Roger Limb, Peter Howell, and Mark Ayres to reflect on the days and nights they spent in the workshop, coaxing ageing machines into otherworldly life, and pioneering electronic music. Also in the programme, producer and former drummer with The Prodigy Kieron Pepper, Oscar winning Gravity composer Steven Price, Vile Electrodes, and Matt Hodson, on the influence the Radiophonic Workshop had on them. Producer: Laura Thomas

Chapters00:00 - Introduction00:31 - Peter Vogel and the Fairlight CMI01:51 - First Fairlight in the UK03:25 - That Fairlight sound05:32 - Stravinsky Firebird Suite, London Philharmonia06:38 - The KPM albums08:25 - Working with Delia Derbyshire11:15 - Early technological limitations13:20 - Sequential Circuits14:56 - 12 bit sampling16:27 - The Kaleidophon18:40 - Interlude19:05 - The Maniac sequencer21:59 - Modern sampling24:35 - Using Reaktor25:50 - Sample libraries vs sound design28:17 - Creating something unique30:00 - EndingPhotographs on our website.https://www.soundonsound.com/people/david-vorhaus-podcastDavid Vorhaus BiogAn experimental electronic musician with a background in Physics and Electronic Engineering, David Vorhaus has been a pioneer of electronic music in Britain for over 30 years. In 1968 he formed the band White Noise with Delia Derbyshire and Brian Hodgson of the Radiophonic Workshop. Their debut release, An Electric Storm, has since garnered cult status and is recognised by Island Records as being an important album in its genre. One of his early samples on the Fairlight CMI was of an orchestral stab, taken from a recording of Stravinsky's Firebird by the Philharmonia Orchestra, that has since become the most used sample in music history. As a bassist with no interest in playing keyboards, David developed the Kaleidophon ribbon controller and the Maniac analogue sequencer, something he has since rebuilt in digital form using Reaktor.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Noise_(band)Rob PuricelliRob Puricelli is a Music Technologist and Instructional Designer who has a healthy obsession with classic synthesizers and their history. In conjunction with former Fairlight Studio Manager, Peter Wielk, he fixes and restores Fairlight CMI's so that they can enjoy prolonged and productive lives with new owners.He also writes reviews and articles for his website, failedmuso.com, and other music-related publications, and has guested on a number of music technology podcasts and shows. He can often be found at various synthesizer shows demonstrating his own collection of vintage music technology.www.failedmuso.com

Censorship and jamming; Isle of Wight Radio and Beacon arrive; the BBC Radiophonic workshop; and the tale of the small scale BBC radio optouts. Enjoy the last week in radio history, ending April 17th 2020.

The Lunar Saloon Every Friday from 10P - 12A PST 99.1 FM Long Beach Streaming at KLBP.org/listen Air date : June 17, 2019 -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Workdub, Just Pump It, Workdub Cybe, Bali Pulau Bagus, Tropisch Verlangen Soft Rocks, 200 Satsumas, The Curse Of Soft Rocks Ytamo, Human Ocean, Mi Wo Peter Westheimer, Circular Walkways, Cool Change Orquesta De Las Nubes, Como Un Guante, The Order Of Change W. Barthel / M. Böhm / R. Bauer, Through Desert Plains, Timeless Horizons Gang Gang Dance, Snake Dub, Kazuashita Jako Maron, Maloya Valsé chok 1, Les Experiences Electro Maloya de Jako Maron Ironing Music, Questions, Ironing Music Demo Matias Aguayo & The Desdemonas, Vocal Arranger, Sofarnopolis Blood Wine or Honey, Peak Helium IV, Fear & Celebration Violent Quand On Aime, I Don't Know, Violent Quand On Aime Muziekkamer, Walkman, II - Popmuziek Ovifornia SCI, Mao's Children, La Contra Ola The Lord, Space Is The Bass, Cold Waves Of Color Gökçen Kaynatan, Doganin Ötesi, Gökçen Kaynatan Eva Geist, Dniheb, Dniheb Martial Canterel, Sister Age, Refuge Underneath Jako Maron, Katangaz, Les Experiences Electro Maloya de Jako Maron Thick Pigeon, Babcock + Wilcox, Too Crazy Cowboys Gianni Safred & His Electronic Instruments, Last Rain, Futuribile (The Life To Come) BBC Radiophonic Workshop, Fancy Fish (Aquarium, from 'The Carnival of the Animals'), The Soundhouse: Music From The BBC Radiophonic Workshop Orquesta De Las Nubes, El Orden Del Azar, The Order Of Change Midori Hirano, Cells That Smell Sounds, Add To Friends Yutaka Mogi ‎(茂木由多加), =Aurora, Flight Information Peter Howell & The Radiophonic Workshop, The Astronauts, Through A Glass Darkly Gareth John, Playtime 1930, The Synthesiser Album Georges Rodi, Outer Space, Spaciology Motohiko Hamase (浜瀬元彦), Lung, Intaglio (インタリヨ) Sam Spence, Moog Shot 28, Sam Spence Sounds

The post-Gallifrey One concrud, blues and longing for the next Gallifrey One have begun, but that won’t stop the Three Who Rule from discussing the various tidbits of news that wandered over the transom over the last week, as well as an interview with Doctor Who DVD and Blu-Ray maestro Chris Chapman about the upcoming Season 18 Blu-ray set, plus some teasers about what is to come! And as an added bonus, the Randomizer is hauled out to select the first Classic Series Commentary and Miniscope instalments for the upcoming year! And send flowers, sympathy and lozenges to Steven’s voicebox! Links: – Support Radio Free Skaro on Patreon! – Radio Free Skaro Fluid Links Advent Calendar on YouTube – Gallifrey One – First Series 12 production staff – Stephen Fry in Series 12? – Win breakfast with Whittaker and Gill – Mission to the Unknown being remade – Radiophonic Workshop at Hastings Fat Tuesday – 1968 Radiophonic Workshop album re-released Interview: – Chris Chapman

Join Mark and the Jons as they continue through the R section of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Radiophonic Workshop The Radiopohinc Workshop was a BBC department that mae music and noises for BBC programmes, originally for radio and then for TV too. Arguably their most famous contribution is the Doctor Who theme. They were formed in 1958 and carried on for another 40 years until John Birt, the then Director General shut them down as they weren't profitable enough. Random Dent Random Dent is Arthur's daughter, mothered by Trillian from sperm donated by Arthur in order to travel around the Galaxy. She'd been born in a spaceship that had been going from somewhere to somewhere else, and when it had got to somewhere else, somewhere else had only turned out to be another somewhere that you had to get to somewhere else again from, and so on. Ratchet screwdriver fruit Once picked, ratchet screwdriver fruit needs a dark dusty drawer in which it can lie undisturbed for years. Then one night it suddenly hatches, discards its outer skin which crumbles into dust, and emerges as a totally unidentifiable little metal object with flanges at both ends and a sort of ridge and a sort of hole for a screw. This, when found, will get thrown away. No one knows what it is supposed to gain from this. Nature, in her infinite wisdom, is presumably working on it. Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal The ravenous bugblatter beast of Traal is a mind-bogglingly stupid animal with a gaping mass of slavering fangs. You can easily fool it by putting your hands over your eyes, because it assumes that if you can't see it, it can't see you. The Reason One night, a spaceship appeared in the sky of the planet Dalforsas, which had never seen one before. The tribesmen who saw it swore that they'd seen a sign from their gods which meant that they must now arise and slay the evil Princes of the Plains, who likewise had seen the sign and assumed it to be an order to kill the tribesmen. This sort of thing happened a lot, as pretty much eeryone on the planet took everything that happened as some sort of sign. This was mainly a problem for the forest dwellers who lived where the battle would inevitably and repeatedly take place. Whenever the forest dwellers complained and asked why their forest needed to be destroyed yet again, someone from either side would tell them the Reason, in very calm and rational tones. The forest messenger would nod dumbly and walk back to his tribe, where he'd try to explain this very sensible Reason, only to have completely forgotten it. Reg Nullify Reg Nullify leads the Cataclysmic Combo band at Milliways. He can be a little proactive on the drums, if Max Quordlepleen is any judge. Links Follow Danny on Twitter Follow Jon Bounds on Twitter Follow Jon Bounds on Twitter Follow Mark on Twitter Leave us a review on Apple Podcasts Find more shows from the Outpost BBC Radiophonic Workshop - Wikipedia (20) THE TIMELORDS / KLF - Doctorin' The Tardis - YouTube Hal Robson-Kanu - Wikipedia Press Release: Jon Bounds and Jon Hickman first satirists to accept Bitcoin - Paradise Circus: A Birmingham Miscellany 4 Poofs and a Piano - Wikipedia Paul Ableman - Wikipedia The Barron Knights - Wikipedia Shane Richie - Wikipedia The Grumbleweeds - Wikipedia Shirehorses - Wikipedia Stuart Millard is creating words | Patreon

Join Mark and the Jons as they continue through the R section of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Radiophonic Workshop The Radiopohinc Workshop was a BBC department that mae music and noises for BBC programmes, originally for radio and then for TV too. Arguably their most famous contribution is the Doctor Who theme. They were formed in 1958 and carried on for another 40 years until John Birt, the then Director General shut them down as they weren't profitable enough. Random Dent Random Dent is Arthur's daughter, mothered by Trillian from sperm donated by Arthur in order to travel around the Galaxy. She’d been born in a spaceship that had been going from somewhere to somewhere else, and when it had got to somewhere else, somewhere else had only turned out to be another somewhere that you had to get to somewhere else again from, and so on. Ratchet screwdriver fruit Once picked, ratchet screwdriver fruit needs a dark dusty drawer in which it can lie undisturbed for years. Then one night it suddenly hatches, discards its outer skin which crumbles into dust, and emerges as a totally unidentifiable little metal object with flanges at both ends and a sort of ridge and a sort of hole for a screw. This, when found, will get thrown away. No one knows what it is supposed to gain from this. Nature, in her infinite wisdom, is presumably working on it. Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal The ravenous bugblatter beast of Traal is a mind-bogglingly stupid animal with a gaping mass of slavering fangs. You can easily fool it by putting your hands over your eyes, because it assumes that if you can't see it, it can't see you. The Reason One night, a spaceship appeared in the sky of the planet Dalforsas, which had never seen one before. The tribesmen who saw it swore that they'd seen a sign from their gods which meant that they must now arise and slay the evil Princes of the Plains, who likewise had seen the sign and assumed it to be an order to kill the tribesmen. This sort of thing happened a lot, as pretty much eeryone on the planet took everything that happened as some sort of sign. This was mainly a problem for the forest dwellers who lived where the battle would inevitably and repeatedly take place. Whenever the forest dwellers complained and asked why their forest needed to be destroyed yet again, someone from either side would tell them the Reason, in very calm and rational tones. The forest messenger would nod dumbly and walk back to his tribe, where he'd try to explain this very sensible Reason, only to have completely forgotten it. Reg Nullify Reg Nullify leads the Cataclysmic Combo band at Milliways. He can be a little proactive on the drums, if Max Quordlepleen is any judge.

The ES editors discuss edition 43, which features the Radiophonic Workshop and lots of other interesting music, including Jeff Wayne. But not Jeff Lynne.

In this episode I have a blether with writer/director/actor Matthew Holness about the dark Possum, and some of the cast of the bright and breezy British comedy, Patrick. In this episode I mention the brilliant Scarfolk, head to https://scarfolk.blogspot.com/ for more on that world. Find out more about the Radiophonic Workshop over at https://twitter.com/radiophonicwork Follow this podcast on Twitter at www.twitter.com/reelscotland and Facebook at www.facebook.com/reelscotland or you can email me at reelscotland@gmail.com

In this episode I have a blether with writer/director/actor Matthew Holness about the dark Possum, and some of the cast of the bright and breezy British comedy, Patrick. In this episode I mention the brilliant Scarfolk, head to https://scarfolk.blogspot.com/ for more on that world.Find out more about the Radiophonic Workshop over at https://twitter.com/radiophonicworkFollow this podcast on Twitter at www.twitter.com/reelscotland and Facebook at www.facebook.com/reelscotland or you can email me at reelscotland@gmail.com This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit reelscotland.substack.com

And so the Peter Capaldi era ends, the Jodie Whittaker era begins, and the David Bradley era sneaks in through the side door for “Twice Upon A Time”, the 2017 Doctor Who Christmas Special. But what did the Three Who Rule think? Join them as they examine the final story of the Steven Moffat era, and the precious few seconds we have until Autumn 2018 of an entirely new Doctor! And, by popular (two people, let’s be honest) request, we also have a spoiler-filled discussion of Star Wars: The Last Jedi, squared away near the end for those of you who enjoy that sort of thing. Links: – Twice Upon A Time review – Twice Upon A Time regeneration scene – Twice Upon A Time fan show – Doctor Who topped Twitter trends – Series 9 soundtrack due early 2018 – Radiophonic Workshop 60th Anniversary celebration – Roger Delgado biography – Doctor Who stuff for Free Comic Book Day 2018 – Regeneration effect available on Facebook

Toby Hadoke - comedian, actor and TV expert - continues on with a 2013 challenge to talk to at least one person involved with all of Doctor Who's televisual history. Today's free download and podcast is just the latest of this epic journey...

Warren returns to the fold this week, to examine both various dribs and drabs of Doctor Who news and to debate amongst the Three Who Rule as to the worth of the new Star Trek: Discovery series. What would a podcast between three nerds be without spurious Trek talk, you ask? Well, it would be a podcast with pop culture reporter Edie Nugent taking a look at Series 10’s space-set not-zombie nail-biter, “Oxygen,” in our Second Chances series! Links: – Alex Kingston at Edmonton Expo – The Wheel in Space recons on BritBox – Gallifrey One ticket transfers open – Gallifrey One supports the Pop Culture Hero Coalition – Milk VFX Doctor Who Series 10 showreel – Doctor Who Fan Show with RTD & James Goss – Now We Are All 600 podcast with Russell T Davies, James Goss and Richard E Grant – The Barrowmans honour Lis Sladen – Child Out of Time book due October 16 – Radiophonic Workshop on Radio 6 – Doctor Who Infinity game due Spring 2018 – Titan Kawaii Doctor Who figures coming January 18 Second Chances: – Edie Nugent – Oxygen

Here's this week's brand new podcast and free download from man-with-a-mission Toby Hadoke...

We’re at the midway point of Series 10 (sniff) so what better time for Steven Moffat to check in on the show he runs by penning another episode himself in the form of “Extremis”, a mind-bending escapade that took viewers from England to the Vatican and all points in between. Or did it…? Once again, the inestimable Kyle Anderson steps in as a replacement for one of the Three (in place of Warren this time) to join Chris and Steven on this review. What did they think? What of the Monks? And the occupant of the Vault? In this podcast we are revealed… Links: – Episode 6 – “Extremis” – Moffat and Mulkern talk “Extremis” – “Extremis” BBC One overnight viewing figures – “Oxygen” overnight viewing figures – Oxygen Appreciation Index – Jamie Mathieson talks Gus and Oxygen – “Knock Knock” final BBC One viewing figures – “The Lie of the Land” synopsis – Michelle Gomez leaving Who along with Moffat & Capaldi – …or is she? – Michelle Gomez reddit AMA – Big Finish releasing second Tenth Doctor audio series – BBC shutting down TV episode downloading service – Radiophonic Workshop’s “Burials in Several Earths” released – Who poetry book written by James Goss and Illustrated by Russell T Davies due in September – Doctor Who Time Vortex 360 web-based game released – Eric Pringle reportedly died

Is the Age of the Rock Star finished? David Hepworth’s new book reckons so. We argue the toss with this week’s special guests DJ Justin Robertson and actor-comedian Wendy Wason. Plus: the first Radiophonic Workshop album in 32 years, BBC4’s new epic documentary on American roots music, and much much more. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

An Alien at the end of time listens to Dolly Parton; Exegesis on 35 sentences (sentence 1); reads about Daphne Oram and the Radiophonic Workshop.Show notes at http://www.zenglop.net

An Alien at the end of time listens to Dolly Parton; Exegesis on 35 sentences (sentence 1); reads about Daphne Oram and the Radiophonic Workshop.Show notes at http://www.zenglop.net

The Three Who Rule are at conterminous space coordinates this week, and despite the ever-present danger of the Blinovich Limitation Effect (not to mention cooties, con crud, and wayward glitter), they were able to record this episode "live" at Edmonton Expo! Besides controversy embroiling Class's premiere next month in the UK and Canada and next year (!) in the USA, they were also able to tackle some of your Fluid Links, all while surrounded by cosplayers, fans, furries, and the ever present smell of onions. Links:  – Class premieres October 22 on BBC Three; Peter Capaldi appears in Episode 1 – Class premieres October 22 on Space – Class premieres Spring 2017 on BBC America – 2016 Doctor Who Christmas special enters production – Writing Doctor Who with Steven Moffat from BBC Writers Room – BFI Power of the Daleks screening details – Silva Screen re-release of 1983 Radiophonic Workshop album – “Anoraks” Kickstarter – Andrew Smith Just Giving page – Radio Free Skaro at Edmonton Expo!

In a melting magical funnel of musical love (and the odd bit of reverb), musician David Bramwell investigates the unlikely story of how, in 1969, an amateur dramatic production of "Alice Through the Looking Glass", starring a young Martha Kearney, became one of the most sought-after psychedelic records in the world. Sony Award-winning musician David Bramwell heads out over the Downs to Ditchling, Sussex, where Peter Howell and John Ferdinando first met as teenagers - creating the soundtrack for the Ditchling Players' performance of "Alice", using not only musical instruments, but also kitchen appliances and field recordings, utilising the possibilities of the latest domestic recording gadget - a reel-to-reel tape machine. Bramwell travels across the Downs to meet folk chanteuse Shirley Collins and her tales of ghostly morris bells; dives beneath the waters of the Ouse with musician Isobel Anderson; is serenaded on the chalky hillsides by God of Hellfire, Arthur Brown; encounters a modern day Puck of Pook's Hill - poet Sam Walker; and finds out about the Ditchling Players from Ian Clayton, member since 1948, and his son Matthew; before enticing Martha Kearney, the young Alice, to recall the production's eccentric Englishness. For the confused, he grapples with the term 'pastoral psych folk' with former Oz and NME journalist John May, and rare groove aficionado Richard Norris, who moved to Sussex under the influence of this strange piece of musical history. And what became of those two young musicians? One is now a local surveyor - though he still plays in a band - whilst the other went on to re-master the Dr Who theme tune as a member of the Radiophonic Workshop. With music from the original album, and composer David Bramwell, 'White Rabbits in Sussex' is a psychedelic journey of its own, blending experimental studio techniques with music and narrative as we traverse the waterways and bottoms, the beacons and duck ponds of Sussex, in search of the muse. Producer: Sara Jane Hall.

We approach another weekend with another free podcast from Toby Hadoke on his Doctor Who 50th Anniversary quest to track down someone to interview involved with every story...

Toby Hadoke set out to interview someone involved with every TV Doctor Who story in the show's first 50 years. Can he make it for intended #100 milestone...? And today's part two of the last interview means there's even less time to make it...

The Daleks are back with a brand new design thanks to a sinister amoral corporation known only as the Radiophonic Workshop...The Doctor - Daniel SherrattDavid - David McLaughlinThe Daleks - Benji CliffordThe Entrepreneur - Jon GransdenNarrator - Richard B BrookesSiri - Jon GransdenOld Woman - Billy TreacyOld Man - Jon GransdenWritten by - Billy TreacyMusic - Daniel SherrattTheme Tune - Daniel SherrattSound Design - Billy TreacyCover Art - Daniel SherrattOriginally Released: 14th May 2014

The BBC Radiophonic workshop,opened in 1958 with an aim to experiment and produce original music for various iconic BBC programmes. It was shut down 40 years later by Director General John Birt. In an edition recorded just as the Workshop prepare to release a new album, and tour the UK, Matthew Sweet brings together Radiophonic Workshop members Dick Mills, Paddy Kingsland, Roger Limb, Peter Howells, and Mark Ayres to reflect on the days and nights they spent in the workshop, coaxing ageing machines into otherworldly life, and pioneering electronic music.

This week Outriders looks at the Heartbleed bug, veterans of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop talk about the prospect of performing live at Glastonbury and how robots are helping to preserve a trillion words.

A preview of a day celebrating the wonky electronic wonders of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, plus memories of Frankie Knuckles, and singles from Rita Ora, SZA and Chance the Rapper, and Joyce Muniz

It's a new Who's Round, Toby Hadoke's Doctor Who 50th anniversary quest to get an anecdote about every single episode of Doctor Who to date. In this instalment, Toby pops on an LP.

Statspocalypse! Yes, in a moment that Warren has feared since the inception of Radio Free Skaro, the 50th Anniversary generated stats to such a degree that they may have become sentient and declared war on humanity. And despite Warren’s hatred of the Devil Numbers, Radio Free Skaro gave you, the listener, comprehensive coverage of viewing figures, iPlayer requests, and other such pointless spreadsheetery. But it wasn’t all stats (thankfully)! News of Other Doctor dollies, in-depth articles on 3D and the Radiophonic Workshop and more besides peppered the news list, leading up to the main event, the Missing Episodes panel from Chicago TARDIS, featuring Ed Stradling and Dan Hall of the DVD range and our own Steven as moderator. Note to Gallifrey Base users: Try not to divine rumour and nonsense from the facts and statements of truth in said panel. That is all. Thank you and good day! (puts on bowler hat, storms off stage left) Check out the show notes at http://www.radiofreeskaro.com

Dick Mills (born 1936) is a British sound engineer, specialising in  sound effects which he produced at the . Mills was one of the original staff at the Radiophonic Workshop, joining in 1958 as a technical assistant. At first he was employed to handle the hardware of the Workshop but soon found himself recording effects. Some of his earliest, uncredited sound work was on the 1958  science-fiction serial . Another of his prominent early recordings was the "'s Stomach" sound effect, a significant part of the popular . Although he recorded much in those early years, it is his later work on  for which he most remembered. In 1972, he took over from fellow BBC Radiophonic Workshop sound effects producer , whom he had sometimes previously assisted, and continued providing "special sound" for every episode of the programme, with the exception of two four-part stories, until it ended in 1989. He also provided special sound for the Doctor Who spin-off . As such, he has the distinction of having more on-screen credits than anyone else in the history of the series. Owing to his technical know-how, he managed to bring to the position new methods of recording sound effects quicker than before. Besides his sound effects on Doctor Who, he also produced and compiled the first of the programme's music compilations,  and . Over the years, many of his own sound effects have also appeared on various compilations. Other sound effects he provided included material for the cult series , produced in 1973 by then-Doctor Who producer , and also occasionally sounds for . Mills' work was acknowledged in a Doctor Who documentary broadcast on  in 1977. The same year, he appeared on the BBC's children's magazine programme  to demonstrate how some of the Doctor Who effects were realised and how children could make their own sound effects at home. He also appeared in the 2004 BBC Radiophonic Workshop  documentaryAlchemists of Sound. He is also the author of many books on  and tropical fish, as well as a former editor of The Aquarist and Pondkeeper magazine and a member of the Federation of British Aquatic Societies Council

In GBA 127 we get better acquainted with Robin the Fog. He talks radiophonics, records, finding sounds, Resonance FM, why he's called the fog and so much more. We go from The Prodigy to John Cage to Simon and Garfunkle to Thundercats, all the time talking about how you find sounds and how you find ideas. Robin at one point quotes Charlie Parker: "Music is your own experience, your own thoughts, your wisdom. If you don't live it, it won't come out of your horn." And that is pretty much what this conversation is about! Robin plugs (plus extras): His website: http://www.robinthefog.com His releases: http://www.thefogsignals.com The Ghosts of Bush: http://thefogsignals.com/album/the-ghosts-of-bush The Original Sound Track Show (OST) resonance: BBC Records Special: http://robinthefog.com/2012/10/23/a-living-sermon-ost-bbc-records-special/ Howlround: https://twitter.com/Howlroundmusic Howlround play London Analogue Festival on Sunday 8th September: http://www.londonanalogue.com/ Howlround LP. Secret Songs Of Savamala will be released September 16th on The Fog Signals in a strictly limited vinyl edition of 300 copies (plus download), with spine sleeve and beautiful cover photography by Milica Nikolic. Prequel to Ghosts of Bush: http://thefogsignals.com/album/earl-grey-whistle-test Resonance FM: http://resonancefm.com/ You can catch the follow up to The Ghosts of Bush Whirled Service is a twenty-minute nocturnal perambulation around the empty corridors, studios, stairwells and basements of the BBC’s recently completed home, New Broadcasting House on BBC3's Late Junction which is still on the iplayer till Thursday 5th http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b038ygzc We mention: The Radiophonic Workshop: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_Radiophonic_Workshop In the Dark: http://www.inthedarkradio.org/ John Cage: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Cage Stockhausen: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karlheinz_Stockhausen altern-8: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altern-8 Lone: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lone_(musician) Alern-8 active - 8 on top of the pops: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cSWTNeg-uog The Prodigy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Prodigy Smack My Bitch Up - video: http://vimeo.com/44561183 Out of Space: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qriH-8yeqcE Take That: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Take_That Cradle of Filth: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cradle_of_Filth Simon and Garfunkle: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_%26_Garfunkel DJ Shadow: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DJ_Shadow Everybody in the Place - Prodigy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKmhlA2S2KU Robin the Fog in Wire magazine: http://robinthefog.com/2012/05/29/fog-on-the-wire/ Charlie Parker: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Parker Decasia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decasia Resonance FM Inteview with Stewart Lee: https://soundcloud.com/resonance-fm/til-debt-do-us-part-the-entire Stewart Lee on Blasphemy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N9EUe8jNr6o Stewart Lee: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stewart_Lee James Baldwin: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Baldwin Captain Planet: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captain_Planet_and_the_Planeteers Thundercats: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ThunderCats Oasis: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oasis_(band) The Dave Album: https://soundcloud.com/the-dave/sets/going-back-to-finish-the-job Canary album: http://www.discogs.com/Jim-Fassett-Symphony-Of-The-Birds/release/3973873 You can hear Getting Better Acquainted on Stitcher SmartRadio, Stitcher allows you to listen to your favourite shows directly from your iPhone, Android Phone, Kindle Fire and beyond. On-demand and on the go! Don’t have Stitcher? Download it for free today at www.stitcher.com or in the app stores. Help more people get better acquainted. If you like what you hear why not write an iTunes review?

Soundtracks, library and TV music with Jonny Trunk. This week’s special guest is Radiophonic Workshop legend Paddy Kingsland. Having found this show down the back of the Resonance sofa, we literally cannot believe listeners haven’t been picketing the Resonance studios for it’s release. Get downloading, quick!

With Mark Lawson. Colin Dexter received the Theakston's Old Peculier Outstanding Contribution to Crime Fiction award at this year's Harrogate Crime Writing Festival. Dexter wrote his last Inspector Morse novel, The Remorseful Day, in 1999, but his Oxford-based detective remains a giant on the crime fiction landscape. He talks to Mark Lawson about starting the Morse series and life after Morse. Crime expert Jeff Park presents his list of the best of current crime fiction. Kronos Quartet's David Harrington and composer Nicole Lizee discuss their latest collaboration, The Golden Age of Radiophonic Workshop, a tribute to the work of Delia Derbyshire and the other composers who produced some of the most memorable and unusual music for the BBC, including the Dr Who theme. Michael Dobbs, politician and best-selling author of House of Cards - and four novels about Winston Churchill - casts his critical eye over the latest televisual offering from David Starkey, The Churchills. Producer Ellie Bury.

Join Stevie K. Farnaby (Producer / Engineer) and Jay Ellington-Lee (AKA JEL) aboard the TARDIS, for an exclusive chat as we discuss the new BrokenSea Doctor Who Theme and Jay’s incredible experiences with Delia and Co. at The Radiophonic Workshop. … Continue reading →

Setting the wayback machine all the way… um, back… to Radio Free Skaro #230 you’ll remember the lads had the Randomizer throw them a curve ball in the shape of Dick Mills as a miniscope subject. As those familiar with the sound design of Doctor Who are aware, Mills is the most-credited person on the show thanks to his long tenure with the Radiophonic Workshop. Where to begin? What to discuss? The only answer was to bring in a ringer in the form of Radiophonic Workshop archivist and Doctor Who composer in his own right, Mark Ayres. Settle in with your Doctor Who sound effects LP, a nice hot beverage, and join not one but two special guests in this episode of Radio Free Skaro as we also have Chip from the Two-minute Time Lord sit in Warren’s seat for some tantalizing nerdery.   Check out the show notes at www.radiofreeskaro.com.

  Rare Frequency Podcast 35: The New Number Two 1 Albert Elms, "Speadlearn Broadcast" Prisoner File #2 (Silva America) CD 2003 2 Felix Kubin & Wechsel Garland, "Binaural Headphone Music" Axolotl Lullabies (Oral) CD 2008 3 John Baker, "Milky Way" The Radiophonic Workshop (The Grey Area of Mute) CD 2008 4 The Focus Group, "Jout Sections" Sketches and Spells (Ghost Box) CD 2002 5 Cecil Leuter, "Pop Electronique No. 2" Pop Electronique (Pulp) CD 2001 6 COH, "Grain:Loop" New Forms: Compilation (Raster-Noton) 2CD 2000 7 Lithops, "Sebquenz" Ye Viols! () CD 2009 8 Wendt, "003 Tag" Montage (Privatelektron) mp3 2007 9 Monolake, "Macau" Hong Kong Remastered (Imbalance Computer) CD 2008 10 Martyn, "Suburbia" All I Have is Memories (Apple Pips) 12” 2008 11 Lawrence English, "Unsettled Sleep" For Varying Degrees of Winter (Baskaru) CD 2008 12 Colin Andrew Sheffield, "Awake" Signatures Invisible Birds) CD 2008 13 Washington Phillips, "Train Your Child" The Key to the Kingdom (Yazoo) CD 2007 13 Machinefabriek, "Fonograaf" Dauw (Dekorder) CD 2007 13 Cliff Edwards, "I Ain’t Got Nobody" Sprigs of Time (Honest Jon’s) CD 2008 13 DJ Scud & Nomex, "Total Destruction" Total Destruction (Machinenbau) 12” 1998

Synopsis Following on from , the Valeyard and the argue about the Doctor's involvement in those events. The warns them both to pay due respect to the judicial process. The Valeyard proceeds to present his second block of evidence - the Doctor's arrival on the planet Thoros Beta. The arrives on the planet, where the Doctor shows a weapon given to him by the "Warlord of Thordon", made on Thoros Beta. He states that has come to find out how the warlords obtained such technology. They enter a cave, where Peri is grabbed by a large monstrous creature, which during a struggle the Doctor shoots with the gun. The Valeyard accuses the Doctor of deliberately shooting the monster, but he replies that the weapon went off accidentally. A figure arrives and accuses the Doctor and Peri of murdering the , despite their protestations that it attacked them first. The figure asks if they are part of 's group, and the Doctor says that he is. They flee before they can be identified as imposters, but are quickly faced by another monster, but it reacts kindly when the Doctor is nice to it. They are forced to flee further, and as they hide they see three reptilian figures being carried along by guards, the third of the figures is shown to be their old enemy . The Doctor realises that Sil is probably behind the arms sales, and informs Peri that Thoros Beta is the home world of Sil's race, the . In Crozier's laboratory, King Yrcanos is being experimented on, and the Doctor and Peri sneak inside. As the Doctor sabotages some of Kiv's equipment, Sil arrives in the laboratory. The Doctor is strapped to a table, and Crozier applies a metal helmet to his head. Crozier states that the equipment to extract the truth from a suspect, and that technique could prove fatal. He starts to probe the Doctor's mind, but Yrcanos awakes and destroys the equipment. Overpowering the guards he departs the laboratory, followed by a stunned Doctor and Peri. Yrcanos outlines his plans to attack the Mentors. The Doctor says he would enjoy that, and then collapses. The Doctor tells the Inquisitor that he cannot remember these events. The Valeyard tells him he is in for a surprise if this is true. Yrcanos, the Doctor and Peri go to where new slaves are brought into the base. Yrcanos plans to attack the guards and steal their weapons, but as he sneaks into the room, the Doctor calls out to the guards, giving him away. Yrcanos, unable to fight the guards, flees. Peri points a weapon at Sil, and asks the Doctor for help, but he ignores her. Peri drops the weapon and flees after Yrcanos. Sil asks the Doctor why he helped the Mentors, and he replies that the odds were on their side. The Doctor insists that the footage is not of him, but the Valeyard tells him that the Matrix cannot lie. Peri comes across Matrona, who allows her to join the Mentors' servants rather than turn her over to the guards. Covered with a veil, she enters the Commerce Room with Kiv's medication. The Doctor calls to her to get him a drink, so she disguises her voice to avoid being recognised. When she brings him a new drink, the Doctor uncovers her and denounces her as an enemy to the Mentors. The Doctor tells the Courtroom that what they are seeing is all part of his ploy. He says he planned to gain the Mentors' trust so that he would be allowed to interrogate her alone, giving them a chance to escape. Peri is lashed to rocks on the shoreline and the Doctor stands over her, accusing of being a spy. She asks why he is behaving the way he is, and the Doctor tells her that Crozier is planning to put Kiv's brain into his body unless he can help them. Crozier stops the interegation, saying that they have more effective methods of extracting the truth from Peri. As they re-enter the complex, Yrcanos attacks the guard, and threatens to kill the Doctor. However, Peri smashes the gun from Yrcanos's hands allowing the Doctor to flee. In Crozier's laboratory, the scientist prepares to transplant Kiv's brain into a recently deceased Mentor corpse with the help of The Doctor. The operation proves successful. Meanwhile, Yrcanos, Peri and Dorf team up with members of the Alphan resistance. Agreeing to allow Yrcanos to lead them in an attack on the Mentors, they go to the resistance arms dump, but they are ambushed by Mentor guards and shot down. However, it is revealed they have merely been stunned, and they are taken to cells. In Crozier's laboratory, Lord Kiv is rambling due to the body of the fisherman influencing his brain. Crozier makes plans to transfer the brain into another more suitable body, and suggests using Peri. The Doctor says he would prefer that she is not experimented on, but while he is trying to find another candidate, Peri is brought to the laboratory, and strapped to the operating table. Crozier begins to prepare her for the surgery. The Doctor goes to Yrcanos's cell and tricks the guard allowing Yrcanos and Dorf to escape. Together they free the remaining resistance members. They head towards the control room from where all the slaves are mentally controlled and succeed in freeing the slaves from mental control, but Dorf is killed by a passing guard. Lord Kiv is taken to the laboratory to prepare for the operation. As the Doctor heads towards the lab, he is summoned by the Time Lords and promptly vanishes. The Inquisitor tells the Doctor this was the result of an order from the High Council, because the result of Crozier's experiment would affect all life in the Universe. As Yrcanos prepares his attack on the laboratory, the Time Lords capture him in a time bubble so that his attack is perfectly timed. When Kiv awakes in Peri's bald body, the time bubble dissipates and Yrcanos bursts into the laboratory. He is consumed with fury and begins firing his gun wildly. The Doctor is shocked by what he has seen. The Inquisitor and the Valeyard tell him that it was necessary to end Peri's life to prevent the disastrous consequences of Crozier's experiment. The Doctor insists that he was fetched out of time for some other reason, and he is going to find out what. Continuity Sil appeared in the previous season in the serial .It's often debated amongst fandom[] as to what exactly happens during this story. It is stated on screen that the Valeyard has somehow distorted events, and that the actual scenes are by and large presented correctly but merely that the Doctor's performance has been distorted to show him in the worst possible light to the court. Many such scenes are prevalent throughout the story, leading fandom to great confusion as it isn't entirely clear which bits are "real" and which were concocted by the Valeyard. There are several theories: That the events seen are the true events, but distorted to show the Doctor in the worst possible light. For example, his line 'Look out behind you' is shown on screen as the Doctor giving King Yrcanos away to some guards, whereas the "true" events might very well have been the Doctor warning him of an attacker sneaking up ('Look out, behind you!'). It's all in how the line is pronounced rather than what the line is.That the Doctor was fried by the "Mindwarp" machine, which is why he exhibits 'out of character' behaviour throughout the story. The event is shown on screen, but as to whether it really occurred or not is still an event of great contention.That the Doctor is pretending to have been twisted by the "Mindwarp" machine, whilst really seeking to find a way to put things right. In the courtroom the Doctor claims this is the case, though he is at this stage unable to recall events. The Doctor meets Peri again in two spin off stories. She features in the novel by . A post-Mindwarp hallucination of Peri appears in the play . The relationship of spin off media to the television series is open to interpretation by the individual. Production Serial details by episode: Episode Broadcast date Run time Viewership (in millions) "Part Five" 4 October 1986 24:42 4.8 "Part Six" 11 October 1986 24:45 4.6 "Part Seven" 18 October 1986 24:33 5.1 "Part Eight" 25 October 1986 24:44 5.0 Music Initially it was intended that the would provide music scores for both this and the following segment of The Trial of a Time Lord; both were assigned to to begin with, although got re-assigned to shortly afterwards. However, fellow Radiophonic Workshop composer left early in 1986 and was not replaced until the following year, leaving the other composers backlogged and no-one free to do the incidental music for Mindwarp. It was suggested that could provide both the music and sound effects, but rejected this idea and instead hired film composer to create the incidental music for this segment. It would be the only time that Hartley worked on the series. Casting Trevor Laird returned to Doctor Who in the era as , father of the Doctor's companion . Similarly, Christopher Ryan returned in 2008 as leader General Staal in and . Commercial releases In October 1993, this story was released on as part of the three-tape The Trial of a Time Lord set. A DVD release is due on September 29th , similarly packaged with the other stories in The Trial of a Time Lord season. Special Features include: deleted and extended scenes • "The Making of the Trial of a Time Lord - Part Two - Mindwarp" (a 20-minute feature) • "Now and Then - On the Trial of a Time Lord" (a 21-minute feature) • "A Fate Worse Than Death" Feature • Doctor Who Lenny Henry sketch • BBC archival footage • TV Talkback archival footage • photo gallery • trails and continuities. In print book Mindwarp Series Release number 139 Writer Publisher Cover artist ISBN 0 426 20335 6 Release date 15 June 1989 Preceded by Followed by A novelisation of this serial, written by , was published by in June 1989 and was the final segment of the Trial arc to be adapted. Martin's novelisation adds a joke ending that gives away the revelation regarding Peri's fate in The Ultimate Foe, suggesting an entirely different outcome for the character (and for Yrcanos) than is suggested in the serial.