BBC Radiophonic Workshop - A Retrospective – William L Weir

Softback

176 pages

Bloomsbury

In 1958 an anonymous group of overworked and under-budgeted BBC employees set out to make some new sounds for radio and TV. They ended up changing the course of 20th-century music. For millions of people the work of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop was the first electronic music they had ever heard. Sampling loops and the earliest synthesizers-long before audiences knew what they were-made up the groundbreaking scores for news programs auto maintenance shows and children s programming. They also produced the Doctor Who theme one of the first electronic music masterpieces. The Beatles Pink Floyd and others borrowed from them. A generation of musicians raised on BBC programming-Aphex Twin Portishead and Prodigy among them-took these once-alien sounds and carried on the Workshop s legacy. Ignored for decades by music historians the Workshop is now recognized as one of the most influential forebears of electronica psychedelia ambient music and synth-pop.