Daphne Oram - The Oram Tapes Volume One

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Customer reviews
Press release

4...according to our Mike on Wed 14 Dec, 2011.

Since her death in 2003, Young Americans's people have been working overtime panning her archive of tapes for gold, with the highlights being released on a series of 4LP sets. Last year's Oramics set primarily focused on her more melodic offerings, and here the focus shifts to tone experiments and concrete collages. Despite founding the Radiophonic Workshop, Oram's achievements have been somewhat overshadowed by the more accessible work of colleagues such as Delia Derbyshire, which is a shame because while Derbyshire and co's work was more immediate and relaxing, Oram's work is often genuinely creepy and unsettling, with recorded noises manipulated and tweaked into something barely recognisable. In 'Oxford' we have the sound of echoing clangs like steel girders reverberating against one another. The others in the office are now filling me in on how she developed her own 'Oramics machine' and left the Radiophonic Workshop behind in her attempts to progress with her pioneering synth work. With this being collected archive recordings, some of them are just tone tests and the like and it's best enjoyed as an educational tool by those who are already reasonably well versed in the history behind this extraordinary character from the pioneering days of electronic music. If you're just in it for the tunes, this might not be exactly what you're after.

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Two years in the making, this 46 track deluxe
4LP edition features two and a half hours of
previously unreleased material from Daphne
Oram’s archives.

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None of this material has ever been available
before and has been painstakingly compiled and
restored from over 400 tapes at the Daphne
Oram collection at Goldsmiths college, London.

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The audio has been carefully mastered and cut
by Lupo at Dubplates & Mastering, Berlin

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Deluxe quadruple vinyl comes in a gatefold
edition, a double CD version will follow in early
2012.

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This is the first in a series of archival Daphne
Oram editions due for release on Young
Americans/Modern Love over the next few
years.

Daphne Oram, founder of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop,
died in 2003 leaving a colossal archive of reel-to-reel tapes
and documents behind. This important collection of material
eventually made its way to Goldsmiths College, London, who
have been administering it on behalf of the Daphne Oram
Trust for the last few years. The collection holds over 400
tapes made by Oram during her lifetime, and 211 of those
have been archived and catalogued by the college so far.

"The Daphne Oram Tapes: Volume One" is the result of
almost two years spent trawling through the archive in an
attempt to piece together a coherent document of one of the
most pioneering and genuinely experimental characters in
electronic music history. Although some of Oram's recordings
have surfaced on the "Oramics" compilation (YoungAm001),
this compilation reveals a complex, dark and sometimes
disturbing body of work which has, until now, been partially
obscured by the more recognisable Radiophonic bleeps and
whirrs the Workshop is best known for.

This first volume focuses on Oram's love of experimental
forms, of Musique Concrète, of the science and mystery of
sound and composition. It comes at a time when her work is
only just starting to gain wider acknowledgment in scholarly
as well as popular circles. The "Oramics" machine (the first
electronic musical instrument in history to be designed and
built by a woman) has gone on display at the Science Museum
in London, an important step in what will no doubt be a
sustained effort to assert Oram's rightful position as one of
the most important figures in modern music.

Working through the archive has been a lifechanging
experience, revealing a wealth of musical treasures that
include recordings and sound effects made for Stanley
Kubrick's '2001' and Jack Clayton's "the Innocents", all the
way through to field recordings made in Africa. This first
volume, put together with the help of Goldsmiths and
Daphne's family, is the first in a planned series that will, for
the first time, make Oram's most important and personal
recordings available for public consumption.

Tracklisting:

A1/. Just For You (Excerpt 1) - 03:00
A2/. Eton - 02:00
A3/. The Innocents - Savage Noises
A4/. Anchor Butter - 00:40
A5/. Manchester 2 - 08:00 (1962)
A6/. Wool (1967) - 00:40
B1/. Oxford - 12:57
B2/. Hydrogen Tones - 03:30
C1/. 2001 Effects Tape 1 - 02:52
C2/. 2001 Effects Tape 2 (Excerpt) - 05:23
C3/. Phensic (1961) - 00:41
C4/. New Atlantis (1963) - 06:03
C5/. Just For You (Excerpt 2) - 01:13
D1/. Winters Journey (Intro) (1958) - 00:14
D2/. Pulse Persephone (Alternate Parts)
D3/. Light Music (Excerpt) - 04:35
D4/. Stroke - 05:53
D5/. Shell Flight (Excerpt) - 00:27
E1/. Anacin Components - 06:43
E2/. G.O.S. (Excerpt - 15" tape transferred at 7.5"
PS) - 01:39
E3/. Costain Outtake - 03:15
E4/. London University (Excerpt) (1968) - 01:26
E5/. Encephalagraph - 02:48
E6/. Anacin (Excerpt) - 00:43
F1/. Hamlet - Youth Theatre (1963) - 12:02
F2/. For Granada (1967) - 01:00
F3/. Oramics Demonstration (Excerpt) - 01:39
F4/. Electronic Sound Patterns (Excerpt)
F5/. Pure Tone Excerpts - 01:07
G1/. Canadian Idyll - 06:37
G2/. Hospital - 03:29
G3/. Mermaid (Excerpt) - 01:25
G4/. Shell - 03:12
G5/. illustrations (Fireworks )
H1/. Ursa Major (Outtake) (1962) 00:21
H2/. Ursa Major (Sun Mix) (1962) 03:14
H3/. Oddments (Excerpt) - 01:22
H4/. Osram & Rank / Pulse Experiment
H5/. Pulse Pitch Experiment (1963)
H6/. Sardonica (Excerpt) - 01:23
H7/. Progs (Excerpt) - 01:22
H8/. Barclays Bank (Excerpt) 01:55
H9/. Birth Of Baby - 01:47
H10/. Speech Test - 01:00