The Seasons: Radiophonic Music & Poetry LP (Plus CDR)

£ 47

$ 63

£ 47 Sold For

Jan 12, 2011 Sold Date

Jan 2, 2011 Start Date

£ 10 Start price

5 Number Of Bids

Great Britain Country Of Seller

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Description

The Seasons: Radiophonic Music & Poetry from BBC Schools Series Drama Workshop

This is the ultra rare vinyl LP: BBC Records Catalogue Number RESR 7 (1969).

The album features 12 Poems for the months of the year by Ronald Duncan and 4 poems for the seasons by Derek Bowskill. Plus a superb score of "Radiophonic Music", (of the concrete/electronic, pre-synthesiser era, composed and recorded at the BBC Radiophonic Workshop by David Cain. Presentation is by Derek Bowskill.

It's a BBC Study Record intended for use in Primary Schools, and features material from the BBC Schools Radio Series: Drama Workshop (first broadcast in the Autumn of 1968).

This unintentionally dark, folky electronic album plays with a pagan flavour, close to "The Wicker Man" and Arthur Machen's English stories of the occult. The contempory Music label Ghost Box references it as a noteworthy influence on the hauntology genre.

Throughout, nature is powerfully evoked through sounds that are far removed from the natural. The largely conventional, if often vivid poems: (“Like severed hands the wet leaves lie”, writes Duncan in ‘October’), are steeped in the ancient imagery of fertility, death and resurrection, and set to a sonically inventive palette of clicks, bleeps, rustles, whooshes and rhythmic patterns that will be familiar from the BBC Radiophonic Workshop’s other early productions.

Tracklist:

A1        January
A2        February
A3        March
A4        April
A5        May
A6        June
A7        July
A8        August

B1        September
B2        October
B3        November
B4        December
B5        Spring
B6        Summer
B7        Autumn
B8        Winter
B9        The Year

Drama Workshop was an immediate success and thousands of teachers and children all over the British Isles became familiar with the warm voice of Derek Bowskill and the excitingly imaginative Radiophonic Music composed by Cain.

Designed to stimulate dramatic dance, movement, mime and speech; and the improvisation of character and situation. Teachers often taped the broadcasts and then replayed them afterwards to their classes. With the aid of the record, some of the most stimulating material from the series was made available in a permanent, easy to use form.

The music here is really something special. In each case the radiophonic theme is heard first, then the poem itself spoken over variations on the theme and finally the variations on their own.

The final part of the record has firstly: 4 sections for the seasons, then a representation of the whole year with all the 12 themes for the months.

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The vinyl is in lovely condition, but playback has some clicks and surface noise in places. I have had the record for ten years, but have honestly only played it once to make a digital copy.

Included in the sale with the record is an audio CD-R of the complete album, with all the tracks cleaned up on computer, and also another CD-R data disk of all the material in MP3 form with scans of the sleeve.

The sleeve is in a nice sturdy, clean and undamaged condition.