Source: http://ubu.com/film/alchemists.html

The BBC's Radiophonic Workshop was set up in 1958, born out of a desire to create 'new kinds of sounds'. The Alchemists of Sound looks at this creative group from its inception, through its golden age when it was supplying music and effects for cult classics like Doctor Who, Blake's Seven and Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, and charts its fading away in 1995 when, due to budget cuts, it was no longer able to survive.

There are interviews with composers from the Workshop, as well as musicians and writers who have been inspired by the output. Great archive footage of the Workshop and its machinery is accompanied by excerpts of the, now cult, TV programmes that featured these sounds.

The Alchemists of Sound (2003)
Duration: 60 minutes

BBC Radiophonic Workshop
Director: Roger Pomphrey

Cast:

Oliver Postgate ... Narrator (voice)
Mark Ayres ... Himself
Milton Babbitt ... Himself (archive footage)
John Baker ... Himself (archive footage)
Desmond Briscoe ... Himself
David Cain ... Himself
Wendy Carlos ... Himself (archive footage) (as Walter Carlos)
Malcolm Clarke ... Himself
Delia Derbyshire ... Herself (archive footage)
Maddalena Fagandini ... Herself
Brian Hodgson ... Himself
Peter Kember ... Himself
Paddy Kingsland ... Himself
Roger Limb ... Himself
Dick Mills ... Himself
Robert Popper ... Himself
Peter Serafinowicz ... Himself
Adrian Utley ... Himself
Frazer Hines ... Jamie McCrimmon (archive footage) (uncredited)
Peter Jones ... The Book (voice) (archive footage) (uncredited)
Wendy Padbury ... Zoe Heriot (archive footage) (uncredited)
Patrick Troughton ... The Doctor (archive footage) (uncredited)

Source: http://ubu.com/film/alchemists.html

Delia Derbyshire worked at the BBC Radiophonic Workshop in the 1960s and early 70s. She is known for performing the original Doctor Who theme, collaborating on White Noise's An Electric Storm album (a cult classic), "Dreams" (a collage of recordings describing dreams accompanied by electronic synth textures), and her many other experimental electronic compositions.

Delia’s works from the 60s and 70s continue to be used on radio and TV some 30 years later. A recent Guardian article called her ‘the unsung heroine of British electronic music’. She collaborated with such greats as Karlheinz Stockhausen, George Martin, Paul McCartney, Pink Floyd, Brian Jones, Ringo Starr and Harry Nilsson.

Daphne Oram (1925-2003) was a pioneering electronic musician and sound engineer at the famed BBC Radiophonic Workshop. At the BBC and after, Oram developed an incredible new kind of sound synthesis technology, called Oramics.
From DaphneOram.org:

Not only is this one of the earliest forms of electronic sound synthesis, it is noteworthy for being audiovisual in nature - i.e. the composer draws onto a synchronised set of ten 35mm film strips which overlay a series of photo-electric cells, generating electrical charges to control amplitude, timbre, frequency, and duration. This system was a key part of early BBC Radiophonic Workshop practice. However, after Daphne left the BBC (in 1959), her research, including Oramics, continued in relative secrecy.
"Oram was the first (and only?) woman to design and build an entirely new sound recording medium." (Hutton, J. 2003. Daphne Oram: Innovator, Writer and Composer. Organised Sound 8(1): 49-56. Camb: CUP).

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Oramics from Nick Street on Vimeo.

Read full review of The Oram Tapes: Volume One - DAPHNE ORAM on Boomkat.com ©