Felix NEill

In the hunt for out of print exotica, lost libriary music, and particularly, crazed soundscapes oozing from the radiophonic workshop that has taken place over the last decade, there has been a mighty amount of amazing music unearthed. This, however, might be one of the best, one of the most crazed, one of the most out-there gems that has been brought to light, heavily featuring as it does, the very, very, wonderful Delia Derbyshire.

Wikipedia:

In 1969 White Noise released the groundbreaking album An Electric Storm on Island Records. The album was created using a variety of tape manipulation techniques, and is notable for its early use of the first British synthesizer, the EMS Synthi VCS3. Amongst many oddities, the first track on the album Love Without Sound employed sped-up tape edits of Vorhaus playing the double bass to create violin and cello sounds.

"I use voices a lot too, but not as conventional vocals. I always use a lot of voices, and if somebody having an orgasm in the background is used as part of one of the waveforms, it makes the sound more interesting, without the listener actually knowing what they're hearing."

- Interview with David Vohaus

Although not initially commercially successful for Island, it has over the years proved to be a cult classic, going on to sell hundreds of thousands of copies worldwide, namechecked by such contemporary artists as The Orb and Julian Cope, influencing contemporary acts such as Broadcast, Add N to (X), and Secret Chiefs 3.

White Noise is at its core a psychedelic record, it's just psychedelic with a desire to create sounds that had never before been committed to vinyl. The Silver Apples are a good reference point, but what White Noise managed was even beyond their breaks-heavy innovations. Just check the opening track's vocoded vocals, epic soundscapes, clattering percussion and the kind of loungey bass that Stereolab and Broadcast would end up making their own. It's a struggle to believe that this was made in 1969 as you are launched through a collage of samples, noise, synthesis and tape effects. Every synthesizer part, every edit, every sound seems so perfectly placed and is the absolute showcase of Derbyshire's unique and virtuoso talents.

'White Noise' is innovative, genre-bending, utterly insane and with a twisted sense of humour that echoes down through the years.

320 Kbps.

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