Public Library

I am very excited and overjoyed and almost euphoric because I have just released my first library music album. You know that I am a huge fan of vintage library music albums, I have posted about them in the past, in fact there is a search label for library music over on the right of your screen. Some of my favourite albums are library albums! And finally I have now joined the fray, publishing my first record of synth based 100% pure electronic vintage analog sounds and effects. Its released over on the excellent ULTRAPHONIC library - you can check the album out over on their website. Its called Haute Synth

Sorrel Hays

I was browsing over on Toys & Techniques and came across the work of Sorrel Hays. She is interesting to me because she makes experimental music on some of my favourite machines (i.e. vintage Buchla and Synclavier). But it seems there is little info on her out there and also some confusion as to some of her musical output. Here is a wiki page about one release in particular, the Southern library album called Electronic Music from 1971. Here is an extract, which sounds very Buchlaesque:



And some more uploaded by toysandtechniques:




And heres a video of her in action, check out the Buchla 101 at 1.15

UPDATE: MYSTERY SOLVED - As a result of matrix publishing a link to this post and the awesomeness of the internet in general, Sorrel Hays HERSELF confirmed that she did in fact record the Southern library tracks and it was NOT Delia Derbyshire. So Wikipedia was wrong and I was right. It is a Buchla on that record - the very one that Rick has just restored while he was working on my 100 Series

Earphones

During the studio refurb I found quite a few records (black plastic ones) that I had either completely forgotten about or which have been left here by random visitors. As is often the case most of them look better than they sound, but there are some that I want to put up here because I find them interesting. The first one has the rather bland title of The Percussion Album Volume One and side one is so rubbish that I nearly didn't even turn it over and give side two a spin. But I was glad I did because theres something pretty ace about its minimalist meanderings...

Forest of Evil

So just to prove how great some of these lost library treasures are, here is a link to one of my favorite De Wolfe albums, Forest of Evil Part 2 composed by Eric Allen & Frank Reidy in 1981. As a general rule of thumb, I have found whilst searching through the huge amount of library music out there that the albums and tracks I like best are the darker and more suspenseful ones, as opposed to the lighter stuff, and the good news is that in the library music world tracks are generally given very descriptive names, such as 'forest of evil'. I only wish that the rest of the music industry would follow this trend. This album has a very dark edge, and combines acoustic and electronic instruments beautifully, so typical of its time

Here is a link to the zip

Below is track 4 from the album, March of Time

Into the Trunk

There was a great program on BBC Radio 4 this week about library music. Its made by the wonderful Johnny Trunk, he of Trunk Records, who I met in 2008 when he interviewed me on his radio show. I find it slightly troubling that there even needs to be a special program on the BBC about this subject, because in my opinion there should be a regular outlet for this huge archive of amazing music, so come on BBC, give Johnny a weekly show!

So here is the full 30 minute show, called Into The Music Library, first aired on BBC radio 4 on 12th April 2011

The Electric Tunesmiths 1971

As promised in this post, I have uploaded another mp3 from the BBC Radiophonic Workshop's RECORDED PROGRAMMES PERMANENT LIBRARY. The picture below is of Malcolm clarke and the EMS Synthi 100 around the time of the recording

The Sound Makers of 1963

These amazing BBC archive records found their way in to my studio today. I can't explain how this happened due to the Official Electronic Secrets Act of 1957. I have 3 records which I will put up here over the next few days, and as far as I know these are not online anywhere else

The first is titled "The Sound Makers" and is a documentary about synthesis and sound manipulation at the BBC Radiophonic Workshop from 1963. It was part of the BBC's RECORDED PROGRAMMES PERMANENT LIBRARY which is an archive on vinyl, I believe limited to only a few copies of each

I have always felt that it is a shame the BBC don't make their archives available, think how much amazing stuff they have just sitting there in a vault somewhere - and that includes thousands of amazing TV programmes and documentaries

Below are some pictures from this gallery of Radiophonic Workshop images, chosen because they are from the period covered by the Sound Makers documentary

Download Side A
Download Side B

Synthetic Roots

Here is a link to a vinyl rip of Racines Synthetiques, another fantastic find by the Dusty Shelf people. Good work!

Discoid Funk

NOTE: I am struggling with Audio Players on this blog. I have tried muzicons and soundcloud but neither work on all systems, so now I have butchered some code from someone else's blog to try and embed a nice simple player for my audio. Hopefully this one will work, on macs, pcs, ipads, even iphones and other mobiles.... but it probably won't dammit

There is a great library record by Brian Bennett from 1978 called VOYAGE: A JOURNEY INTO DISCOID FUNK. I got it from the rather EGG-cellent Egg City Radio blog, which is well worth checking out for interesting and otherwise lost music that you can't find on itunes. I bought a Yamaha DX5 once on ebay and when I turned up at the sellers house to pick it up I was greeted by Brian Bennett, but I didn't know who he was at the time except for the drummer from the Shadows, but to me his composing for film and tv and general input into the world of library music overshadows even the Shadows. This album is really good and features the keyboard playing of Francis Monkman, who I posted about here because he made the soundtrack to The Long Good Friday, which is also EGG-stremely good

Thomas Clausen-Telegame

In my ongoing search for lost musical treasures that I make on the various Library Music blogs and websites I very occasionally stumble upon a true gem. This short album on the Capitol Production Music label by Thomas Clausen represents everything I love about old music. Thanks to the fantastic Dusty Shelf for doing the hard work. It is so simple and beautiful, and conjures such a strong feeling of a bygone age with about as few ingredients as is theoretically possible. I made a short compilation below, but be assured that the whole album [all 16 mins] is like this, with the exception of a brief detour into more baroque territory. I think the whole album only uses a Fender Rhodes and Minimoog, that's my best guess

Cell Blocks

Like me you probably remember staying up late at night watching re-runs of the classic aussie/lessie-fest Prisoner Cell Block H. What I didin't realise at the time was that all the music was taken from library music albums which were also used on The Professionals / Sweeney etc soundtracks which I have now become such a fan of. Check out this super geeky website which lists every music cue in P:CBH, and bear in mind there were nearly 700 episodes. And for some audio check out this great post on the retro-teque blog

KPM music library

The Manipulator is a piece of music from the KPM music album 'Breath of Danger', recorded in the 70s by various seminal soundtrack composers, in this case Alan Hawkshaw and Brian Bennett.

 

Here is a mix of music from the KPM library, all of which was used in the TV series The Sweeney. Originally the tracks were from a Sweeney tribute site here, but most of them are available from the KPM website, which is worth checking out as it has every single album they ever released available to listen to. The ones to try are the 1000 Series [102 albums] and Themes International [27 albums]. Say goodbye to trudging round charity shops and car boot sales forever. On this mix there are a few links I made at home on old synths and fx....