Daphne Oram and Delia Derbyshire were two pioneers in the development of experimental electronic music. Oram was not only the co-founder and first director of The BBC Radiophonic Workshop, she also invented an entirely new medium of sound recording - oramics. Oramics is a technique which involves drawing on 35mm film strips to control the sound produced. Here's a clip from Daphne Oram's Rockets in Ursa Major:

 

Delia Derbyshire joined the The BBC Radiophonic Workshop in the 1960s after working as a trainee studio manager and after  only a few months she had created the famous recording of Rob Grainer's Dr Who theme, which you can hear below:

 

There is a great documentary about The BBC Radiophonic Workshop called The Alchemists of Sound, which you should definitely check out.

 

Okay, I'm not going to lie and claim that the following recording was made this morning,or even a few days ago. In fact it was recorded almost exactly a year ago in Sweden. It was about minus 10 degrees Celsius and the snow was so deep it nearly reached up to my knees.

 

About three years ago I made a documentary about a community of people who were in the process of moving from a mooring at Regent's Canal, near King's Cross station. Due to some major changes to the local area they all had to leave, and my documentary was about this community during their last days at the mooring. I will post clips from this documentary later on, but first, as an introduction, is a recording of the atmosphere down by the canal.

The following clip is a recording I made while walking down the pontoon on a windy day in the beginning of December 2007. You can hear the noisy London traffic as a constant hum in the background, while the mooring itself has it's own unique sounds, with water clucking, running and dripping against the boats while another narrow boat passes by...

 

 

 

 

Otaku's Anorak is all about the sounds of everyday life. No sounds - as long as they are audible to man -  are ever too small, insignificant, unspecific or pretentious to be explored in this blog. Having said that, the complete lack of sounds, i.e. silences and awkward pauses, are far too interesting to be ignored and will therefore be explored in this blog as well.

A few years ago I was working on a podcast for which I needed a large amount of sound effects. I started collecting sounds, both by downloading them from the internet and by recording them myself. After the podcast project as finished I found that I simply couldn't stop hamstering sounds. Wherever I went I heard sounds that were such perfect representations that I just had to record them and put the in my sfx vault.

I am a huge fan of vintage radio horror, much because of the impressive work of the foley artists who worked on these productions. The CBS radio drama series Suspense (1942-1962) is a treasury of great sound effects and the amazing thing is that most of these episodes are available online.

My first post is a Suspense episode from 1950. David and Dorothy are driving home from a picnic while a storm is brewing. In an attempt to avoid the busy traffic they take a short cut and end up on a country road. They hear an announcement on the radio that a mad woman has escaped from a mental hospital after murdering her doctor and ward attendant with a meat cleaver. The radio announcer advices the public to stay indoors and that the lunatic woman is armed and dangerous. Unfortunately, for David and Dorothy, they run out of petrol not far from the area where the crazy woman is likely to be hiding... Well, I probably shouldn't say more than that, you should listen to it yourselves instead...