Absolutely brilliant documentary on the Radiophonic Workshop last weekend, which I missed (well, it was on Radio 3) and have therefore just listened to on the iplayer, Wee Also Have Sound Houses. Focusing on Daphne Oram, one of the founders of the Workshop there’s lot of interesting tales of the early days mixed with appreciation for these pioneers from Mira Calix and a few others. Her primary interest, from as far back as the ’30s, was in converting images to sound, something she achieved using her Oramics machine.

You’ll have to hurry to listen to it, though, because our beloved BBC takes it off the iplayer at 10:32pm on Sunday 10th August exactly. Is a week really long enough to keep this stuff up for a public service broadcaster I wonder… anyway, do hurry and listen. In the longer term, the BBC Programmes page should list any future broadcasts, shame you can’t sign up for an e-mail alert for future broadcasts… or even request.

Now to order a copy of her album, though I’m not sure why HMV makes a lewd suggestion when I search for it there (though amazon is similarly clueless)…

…so it appears to be only really availabile online via Boomkat in mp3 or CD.

There is a bit of Oram on Late Junction from Wednesday as well, skip to 57:40 or so – youve got longer to listen to this, until 1:02am on Thursday 14th August. And if you want to read up even more on her work there’s a lengthy article from Hugh Davies on sonic arts network in the internet archive.