Even better than the BBC Radiophonic Workshop doc, “The Alchemists of Sound”, is this BBC Krautrock documentary “Krautrock; The Rebirth of Germany”. Drink 5 beers and watch this, just like I did.
In what has been a glorious improvement in my state of being, I have joined a band with enough people in it that we are fully able to adequately cover all the positions between guitarists and drummer. Even more astounding is that fact that three of us have decided that the goals of the first band are too small in terms of our capabilities and have now elected to start a second band to play actual shows and write actual songs.
I’ve been trying to expand some of my influences and inspirations in order to keep bringing new ideas to the table. One inspiration is work of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, which was an in-house studio for the BBC in the 1950’s-1990’s, which began manipulating tape, bending circuits of audio equipment, and utilized some unorthodox means. I’m more partial to the work of Delia Derbyshire than some of the other members of the workshop through the years, but this 2003 BBC documentary is worth a watch, even though it seems to try a little hard to arrive at the point that their work directly resulted in electronica. I’m not sure who the guy is who keeps appearing in the background.
If you have 30-45 minutes and want to get your well-shot documentary fix in, I highly recommend Laboratory Conditions, a film about a man, a town, and the industry and politics that drive it.
It’s in five parts, so if you need to get beers in between the chapters, you can.
