Electrosonic.

Electrosonic, a recently unearthed collection of library music by Delia Derbyshire, has just been reissued on CD, nearly 18 months after its original LP issue. I was fortunate enough to get one of those LPs before they sold out, and it's a fantastic document. Fascinating and consistently engaging, this is great listening for anyone interested in electronic music. And shitloads better than the bland scoring that accompanies new Doctor Who.



Liquid Energy mp3

I'm a bit of a fiend for Radiophonic stuff. I also recommend The Tomorrow People soundtrack LP, released in '06 by Trunk and the '03 Radiophonic vinyl box-set on Rephlex, if you can get your hands on 'em.

Early memories of the seventh Doctor on the telly shortly before the series was axed, combined with VHS and re-runs on BBC2 as a child, inform my fondness for the Radiophonic Workshop. The fact I was raised on sci-fi and video games further explains my love of electronic music. When I started listening to pop music properly, getting into guitar bands like Blur, I largely ignored electronic music in an act of early-onset rock snobbery. Which was dumb, but I was small, not a properly formed person with correct opinions. It took a summer bingeing on Dig Your Own Hole (Chemical Brothers) and The Fat of the Land (Prodigy) to bring me round, and my time at college was largely spent listening to electronica.

It occurs to me that I'm indebted in part to Derbyshire, Hodgeson and the rest of the Radiophonic Workshop, for priming my musical outlook. In part, because while as a kid I enjoyed the Who music and sound effects, I loved the music composed by Masato Nakamura for Sonic The Hedgehog, and Koji Kondo's original Super Mario Bros music. I still do, for the nostalgic fuzz that candyflosses my brain and, yes, mists my eyes. But also for the greater appreciation I have now for the medium of electronica, especially for brilliant music realised to great effect using limited resources and technology, from the painstaking tape-splicing of the BBC elite to the four channels available in a NES sound chip.

I also have this idea that the Mario Bros theme music is a sort of great unifier, like Wyld Stallyns or the male subconcsious imaginary gunfight. But I'll leave that one for now.