Delia Derbyshire

Last summer I threw out a lot of my old cassette tapes as part of a big clear out, but amongst those that I kept was a recording of "Blue Veils and Golden Sands" - a BBC 4 radio play broadcast in 2002 about Delia Derbyshire, considered by many to be "the unsung heroine of British electronic music" due to her work at the BBC Radiophonic Workshop in the 1960s. She's probably most famous for producing the original arrangement of the Doctor Who theme music.

I kept the tape aside to listen to, before promptly forgetting all about it. In the meantime references to Delia kept popping up, most memorably in an article by Warren Ellis called "The Pops and Crackles of Vinyl Poltergeists" in Wired UK. In it Ellis talks about "hauntology" - a contemporary musical phenomenon which frequently references the often eerie 70's and 80's electronica produced by the Radiophonic Workshop. (As he suggests, tracks on Belbury Poly's relatively recent album "From An Ancient Star" sound like they could have accompanied "The Tomorrow People" or "Blakes 7", thirty years or so earlier.)

A couple of months ago the tape turned up again as part of another clear up, and this time I finally listened to it one Sunday afternoon. It focuses mainly on Delia's time with the BBC and her interest in "abstract sound" (in part perhaps inspired by the air raid sirens she heard as a child during the war), before she became disillusioned with the direction of electronic music in the mid-70's. This is cross-cut with episodes from her later life in the 1990's when a new generation of musicians (including Peter Kember, AKA Sonic Boom, played by himself here) rekindled her enthusiasm to return to music.

Given its 30 minute running time it's evitable that the play had to leave out a lot of detail about Delia's life and many of the projects that she was involved in, especially those outside of the BBC. However the dramatisation of how she put together the Doctor Who theme is fascinating - in an era before synthesisers, the process of creating these "electronic" sounds was simultaneously highly organic, extremely primitive and labour-intensive. Very ordinary sounds (for example plucking a guitar string or striking a metal lampshade) would be transformed by esoteric analogue equipment to produce other-worldly effects which were then spliced and looped on sections of tape.

To me the original Doctor Who theme still sounds incredible: haunting and slightly disturbing, like the universe that the Doctor himself inhabits. You can listen to it on the BBC website ("Lost tapes of the Dr Who composer"), alongside a number of other audio clips of Delia's work, including a couple from "Blue Veils and Golden Sands", produced for a documentary about the Tuareg people of the Sahara (the demo clip in particular gives some insight into how sounds would be transformed). Many more audio clips (including "Music of Spheres", which features a symphony of sirens) can be found - along with much more information on Delia's life and career (both of which sadly ended when she died in 2001) - at www.delia-derbyshire.org.

It looks like the play has been repeated on BBC 7 quite a few times over the last couple of years, but unfortunately it's not currently available on the iPlayer. It's definitely worth a listen if you have an interest at all in the history of electronic music, or are just a fan of the old Doctor Who theme, and want to learn more about the work of this amazing pioneer.

The Truth About Leaves on the Line

As frequent travellers will be only too painfully aware, one of the staples of British rail journeys are the intercom announcements by train managers explaining why the service you're on is now delayed, redirected, terminated, side-lined, or whatever. These explanations can vary wildly from the sensibly mundane through to the slightly surreal ("bovine incursion"* is one of my favourites), to the almost completely cryptic.

For me the most recent example of the latter occurred during my last trip back from Oxford: the train manager haltingly explained that the driver had been forced to use the train's one-shot sand dispenser to come to a stop at a signal, as a result of which we were no longer able to run at full line speed and there would be a further delay when we did finally make it to the next station. I'd considered myself a fairly regular rail traveller and I thought I'd heard everything, but this was new to me. "One-shot sand dispenser?" What was that all about? It sounded technical, mysterious and possibly a bit dangerous, and the next day I did a bit of poking on the internet to try and learn more.

Stumbling across an enlightening article from the Independent revealed the shocking truth: trains really do have single-use sand dispensers that provide emergency braking assistance when there's reduced traction between the wheels and the rail. These slippery rail conditions can be caused by moist fallen leaf debris on the track - the infamous "leaves on the line" - and it's become a more common problem now because today's trains use disc brakes. These are generally superior to the previous block brakes - but unlike block brakes, they aren't as effective in "removing leaf mould and other debris".

It was a bit of an eye-opener. I'd found the idea that fallen leaves could be a hazard for several hundred tonnes of passenger train a bit laughable, and the phrases "leaves on the line" and "the wrong kind of snow" just sounded like nonsense excuses for poor service. It's odd but salutary to find out after all these years that it was a real issue after all, although it's also indicative of how poor train operators are at explaining these problems - or maybe of how little the travelling public expect to be told the truth.

So aside from the specifics, I'm sure that buried somewhere (maybe under more fallen leaves?) there's also a wider lesson about trust and communication, which could perhaps be applied to other situations where technical problems have to be explained to a lay audience. It might be worth thinking about next time you're (say) stranded at Stafford station due to leaves on the line.

* Cows on the line to you and me.