The BBC Radiophonic Workshop

Necessary vinyl reissues of this pair of classic LP’s from the legendary British institute that is the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. These LP’s have been unavailable individually on vinyl in their original format/ running order for donkeys years (Rephlex reissued both as a four 10” set back in 2004 with each record grouping tracks by the individual artists). Here they’ve been fully remastered from the original tapes by the workshops archivist Mark Ayres and pressed on 180g wax. This pioneering work still holds up incredibly well, their influence on electronic music today immeasurable. The workshop’s team were a group of visionaries that included Malcolm Clarke, Dick Mills, Delia Derbyshire, John Baker, Paddy Kingsland, Glynis Jones, David Cain and Roger Limb. Together their work for film and television was at the absolute cutting edge of tape music, synthesizer twiddling, sound design, early sampling and so on. They imagined and created sounds of new worlds, sounds that didn’t exist, creating not only science fiction sound effects but quirky musical scores and vivid soundscapes. No electronic music collection should be without these sounds, realized between 1968-1975 they sound as relevant as ever. They are not only a piece of electronic musical history but are absolute milestones in the history of music and recorded sound. Essential stuff to say the least. Without Paddy Kingsland’s ‘The Panel Beaters’ I’ve no doubt Boards Of Canada wouldn’t sound the way they do and that goes for the whole Ghost Box aesthetic too.