Library Music

Last week I played a track recorded a song by Delia Derbyshire under the name Episonic. In the late 50s and early 60s BBC opened an advanced sound effects studio, the Radiophonic Workshop, to record jingles, theme songs, and commercials for programming. While the studio was intended for commercial purposes, it was frequently used for tape loop and music concrete experiments. Delia Derbyshire’s pioneering work in the studio would become very influential for contemporary artists such as Stereolab and Broadcast. The artists on the UK record label Ghostbox look to Derbyshire’s work as precedent for their b-movie science fiction electronic aesthetic. Sampling lost pieces of popular culture allows memories to be transplanted into new contexts through different media, creating new connections between space and time. Drawing inspiration from library music: old movie and television soundtrack recordings, the songs of Belbury Poly, Advisory Circle, and Broadcast are drenched in grain and haze of electronic music’s memories. Listen to the show here.