Saturday Theme Seven

Today's theme from Saturday is from 1969 and from Delia Derbyshire, the woman at the heart of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. Delia's Theme is a little under one and a half minutes of Delia, a vintage synth and some oscillators. It was originally released on an album called Standard Music Library, sound effects and short pieces of music for radio and tv. If you ever see a copy in a  charity shop, snap it up for me please. 

Delia's Theme

Delia is much better known for this theme, a groundbreaking piece of tv music, built round that famous two note bassline with tons of reverb and some whooshing siren noises. Despite being very well known and instantly recognisable it's still a startling piece of music. 

Dr Who (End Theme)

State Sponsored Weirdness

The BBC Radiophonic Workshop is a thing of brilliance- all that time they spent with old synths and tapes and gizmos making weird noises, sound effects, incidental music and theme tunes. And paid for by the license fee- stick that The Daily Mail and other BBC critics. This clip shows the surviving members (sadly minus the late Delia Derbyshire above) playing the Doctor Who theme recently for the One Show. Although it doesn't need the sound clips from the TV series really. I can take or leave Doctor Who a lot of the time, but the thought of Peter Capaldi swearing his way through space and time could bring me in- 'fucking Dalek omnishambles' and 'fuckety bye you useless alien knobface', that sort of thing.



From 1976, Out Of This World

Delia's Theme

Today HMI arrive for a random single subject inspection. We shall repulse them with the quality of our provision, our tracking system and progress measuring and work sampling, our short, medium and long term plans, our intention to always strive to be outstanding. If that fails maybe I'll distract them with Delia Derbyshire and the BBC Radiophonic Workshop.

Delia's Theme

Meanwhile back at the underground studio/bunker complex, if you're into Astrolab Recordings and their chuggy chuggy sound (featuring Mr Weatherall, Mr Fairplay, Mr Avery, Mr Fraser, Mr Robertson and his Deadstock 33s and Mr Mugwump amongst others) then this compilation looks right up your alley.