experimental

The gorgeous expérimental work of Thorn Wych ‘s “Aesthesis”

by

Released on Hood Faire (Cassette, Vinyl, Digital), the sibling record label of Folklore Tapes, Aesthesis is the debut release of Thorn Wych, an instrument maker and musician based in the Lancashire town of Bacup. From her backyard workshop, she makes instruments from the branches of UK native trees, especially Wych Elm, Lime, Wild Cherry, Oak, and Yew. She records these bowed string instruments, flutes and percussion at home and then loops and contorts them through effect pedals to create some of the most unexpected music, made in a world cut off from our own…an earthy and ancient-sounding form of off-grid music.

Auld Hunt resembles the long drones of Tibetan ritual music crossed with the ancient folk sound of Epirus. Her singing, especially on Ramble in the Brambles, is wonderfully universal sounding, like an amalgamation of tribal music that restlessly flutters East then West.

While there are wonderful traditional-sounding touchstones across this release, it’s also a uniquely individual sound that sits well alongside the likes of Milkweed’s Folklore 1979 release for its equally invigorating and engaging approach.
– Alex Gallacher | KLOF | 28 January, 2025

The women who invented electro: inside the BBC Radiophonic Workshop

by

For decades women were systematically sidelined at the BBC.

The female voice was thought to lack the necessary gravitas for newsreading – being a discreet and efficient PA to a busy male director or producer was the best that could be hoped for.

Nowhere was this exclusion more rigidly enforced than in the technical aspects of programme-making where the hands-on world of studios, microphones and cameras was believed to be a man’s domain. Yet from an unexpected corner came a quiet revolution. The BBC Radiophonic Workshop was a pioneering studio for electronic music which flourished from 1958 until 1998. Its function was to provide incidental music and soundtracks for television and radio drama and documentaries. Despite its rigidly utilitarian brief it produced music of astonishing originality.

The soundtracks the Workshop produced became part of the soundtrack of people’s lives in the Fifties and Sixties. Who could forget the uncanny electronic score of the classic sci-fi series Quatermass and the Pit, or the stomach gurglings of Major Bloodnok, a stock character in the comedy series The Goon Show?

Among the composer/technicians working there was a remarkable visionary woman, Daphne Oram. In her childhood she showed a flair for inventing ingenious mechanical devices, and was also fascinated by electronic sound and by the microphone, which she declared had vast potential as a musical instrument. [ . . . ]

Read more at source: The women who invented electro: inside the BBC Radiophonic Workshop