Latency
In November 2020, Paddy Kingsland and Bob Earland encouraged the band to put together an online concert during the pandemic lockdown.
We were unable to play live, and so it seemed like a great idea. They suggested basing the concert around the idea of using the inherent latency in the internet to create a circular delay loop which would gradually build up sound created by each of us in our own studios scattered across the country. It worked wonderfully well. You’ll find the original material and our rehearsals on The Radiophonic Workshop YouTube channel, as well as a video interpretation of early experiments by James GM.
The concert also featured various numbers that we had previously played live, remade for the internet by layering all our performances.
Here’s an excerpt from ‘Wasted Plain’.
Music © 2020 Peter Howell, Kieron Pepper, Bob Earland, Paddy Kingsland, Roger Limb
Escaping the Timeline
For literally all of our careers we have been locked to a timeline. Whether it’s the progress of a broadcast programme or simply the layout of a song, there has always been a linear sequence laid out in time. At long last, and long overdue, I escaped from it when working with Marcus Lyall at the Bluedot festival. We were working on his Megastructure project (a forthcoming blog will be all about it). Since then I have been delving into the idea of sound installations using software called Nodal.
This enables you to set a sound machine going that randomly plays itself for as long as it’s switched on. I know many people have been doing this sort of thing for ages, but better late than never. The idea of mounting a sound installation on the Radiophonic Workshop Youtube page was inspired by our online concert.
It was Nigel Pargetter’s idea. Not the one who was last heard in the Archers in 2011, but #nigelpargetter who commented on our live Latency Online Concert in 2020. He said that it sounded like ‘Music for running down corridors in black and white’. His description seemed to capture the very essence of those early Doctor Who adventures and we started to run with the idea of making it the title of a new piece. But what is emerging is not a piece of music but a sound installation using all the sounds from Delia Derbyshire’s original title music.
We’ll keep you posted as it progresses…
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