Delia Derbyshire and Barry Bermange -"Inventions For Radio No.4: The Evenings Of Certain Lives " (1965)

In the grand old tradition of the BBC, the tapes for Inventions for Radio No.4 have been 'lost'(which usually means thrown away or erased), All that remains is this short edited extract for the "Sculptress of Sound" documentary taken from a ten minute section from one of the reels in the box of tapes that were recovered from Delia's house, from the attic, after she died. That is now the property of the university of Manchester,and they don't seem keen to allow anyone to make a complete copy of it.
The programme is about life at a certain age, not at the extreme point when people ‘just give up and wait’ but, perhaps more poignantly, at the point where old age begins and the body just won't work like it used to and the eyes just won't see, the ears just won't hear, and the memory of what you were is dim.
The Evenings of Certain Lives is about the sense of isolation, and the private agony of aging.Fun stuff,but it looks like we will never get to hear the whole 40 minutes worth.

A typical story is on the day that the Radiophonic workshop was finally closed, the Workshop archivist Mark Ayres,discovered 9000 tapes dumped in a skip,which he recovered,and spent the next few years digitising and cataloging.

Despite, again not being credited (BBC policy),these Inventions for radio are probably Delia's greatest works,and i was amused to hear of a series of complaints from the 'public' at the time of transmission.Indeed, the BBC received complaints from a number of listeners about some of the 'harsh' or 'uneducated' accents and opinions that were featured in the 'Inventions'.

Don't you just love the ignorance of the 'Public' and the stupidity of of government corporations? It still goes on of course, but at least Aunty Beeb has stopped throwing stuff away,but there's a new wave of mass ignorance that dwarves the old skool version,which was mainly due to lack of information as opposed to too much information,or rather, too much incorrect information,where one man's truth is anothers lies if it doesn't fit their agenda.

And.....Oh yeah....University of Manchester people!.....put the archive online will you? Its not just for academics!?

Unbelieveable!?

Tracklisting:

1. The Evenings Of Certain Lives (extract) 2:11

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Delia Derbyshire and Barry Bermange -"Inventions For Radio No.3: The Afterlife" (1965)

The third in a cycle of inventions for radio by Barry Bermange, in collaboration with the BBC's Radiophonic Workshop.An attempt to reconstruct in sound the spiritualistic vision of Death and Eternity. It is conceived as a dream of Death. Using the montage process of the earlier programmes, 'The Dreams' and 'Amor Dei', the author has arranged in settings of electronic sound provided by the immortal Delia Derbyshire.A collection of voices of people who are now likely to have found out if their beliefs were correct,or have disappeared into the eternal darkeness and silence of oblivion. Recorded from life before death in four movements.

Its this kind of stuff that makes paying your taxes a pleasure.
If Kluster had made this in 1969,it would have been hailed as a proto-industrial masterpiece,and proof of how the Krautrockers invented Ambient.Nah! It all began here,with a bit of help from John Cage,Pierre Henry,Edgard Varese, and maybe Louis And Bebe Barron....but none of those got anywhere near the articulate structured brilliance of the Dr.Who theme from whence sprung electronic pop.

Tracklisting:

1.Death is Going from Shadow into Reality 7:41
2.It's Just Like Going to Sleep 11:09
3.Light. Everywhere is Light 10:27
4.Death is Just a Changing 10:37
5.The Afterlife (Extended ) 40:00

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Delia Derbyshire and Barry Bermange -"Inventions For Radio No.2: Amor Dei" (1964)

The second fantastic slice of 'Inventions For Radio' by the legend that is Delia Derbyshire, and Barry Bermange.This time the subject for the public of 1964 to discuss is the subject of 'God'.
Then there's the task of creating backing music that invokes a feeling of the true horror of life,fear of death,yet can also represent the natural spirituality of human superstition.
When Delia asked Barry Bermange what he wanted musically, he drew a sketch of a church altar over the notes for the dialogue track.
"He wanted sounds which would sound like a Gothic altarpiece. 'Oh,' I said, 'yes. What a good idea. But what do you really mean? What sort of sounds?' He said 'Well, give me a pencil and paper'. I did, and with great care and elaboration he drew me a beautiful Gothic altarpiece and said 'That's the sort of sound I want'." (Delia Derbyshire 1964)

Barry's inspiring sketch...a lesson in how to write music.

Barry Bermange said that he himself thought of Amor Dei as ‘rather in the manner of a Renaissance painting with the believers in God in the foreground or centre and half-hidden disbelievers looking out from shadowy places round the edge of the painting.’
This programme was made in four sections. In the first you will hear several thoughtful voices groping towards God, feeling their way into something undefined. In the second, some more assured voices cite concrete images; a defined notion of God begins to emerge. The third is a contest between those who love God and those who cannot believe in Him. The assured and confident voices in the last section are inspired by absolute faith.

The actual effect of this haunting piece,is the pure gothic horror of mortality and the plunging depths of infinity,in which the abstract choirs and aging believers seem to be drowning.
Quite an extraordinary and powerful piece of work that lay hidden in the vaults of the BBC for decades,and I struggle to think of another piece that can match its wide ranging encapsulation of this profound subject. 

Tracklisting:

1.Groping towards God
2.Rorate Coeli
3.I'd like to believe in God but...
4.There IS a God!

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Delia Derbyshire and Barry Bermange -"Inventions For Radio No.1: The Dreams" (1964)

"Dreams" was made in collaboration with Barry Bermange (who originally recorded the narrations). Bermange put together The Dreams (1964), a collage of people describing their dreams, set to a background of electronic sound,provided by Delia Derbyshire.In true BBC style, Delia's name isn't mentioned in the Radio Times listing,it's just the BBC Radiophonic Workshop that gets the collective credit.

The original PsycheDelia 

However, Dreams is a rather sinister collection of spliced and reassembled interviews with people describing their dreams, particularly the recurring elements,represented here in five movements,such as running away, falling, landscape, drowning, and colour.The stuff of nightmares.
These programmes,only designed to be broadcast once,then earmarked for erasure, with Barry Bermange,are arguably Delia's second greatest moments......the greatest, much to her chagrin, is obviously the original Doctor Who Theme;but artistically,Inventions for Radio blow that proto-synth pop miesterwerk out of the very water that the subjects of this broadcast were drowning in.

Tracklist:

1 Intro/Edited version 27:24

2 Running 8:22
3 Falling 7:19
4 Land 5:32

5 Sea 9:16
6 Colour 8:59
7 Outro 0:31

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