Subcultural engagement for the 21st Century...
Barbelith is a new kind of community (find out more)...
You can login or register.

Underground > Radio & Music >

the Dr.Who theme

11:21 / 03.12.01

semi-Ironic geekiness and bad Orbital remixes aside, let us worship at altar of the Dr. Who theme.

A piece of wholly electronic pop music, made in 1963, that's freaky enough to give Aphex Twin nightmares.

Respect.

11:33 / 03.12.01

quote:Originally posted by Rizla Year Zero:
bad Orbital remixes aside

How dare you?

11:39 / 03.12.01

Nothing against Orbital as such, but the way they start off by just playing the theme in the traditional creepy manner, and you think "ah, this is great" and then a stupid, unnecessary break-beat thing starts going on underneath it in an attempt to make it dancable and you shout "ORBITAL! FUCK OFF!"

11:44 / 03.12.01

But that's what they do, Riz. If they just played it straight then they'd be the BBC Radiophonic Workshop.

Jack The Bodiless

11:46 / 03.12.01

And then they'd be better.

I'm sorry. Don't let me interrupt.

11:50 / 03.12.01

quote:Originally posted by Sax:
But that's what they do, Riz. If they just played it straight then they'd be the BBC Radiophonic Workshop.

very true. but it still annoyed me.

ruined the creepyness.

12:48 / 03.12.01

I think you'll find that at one point (baker years I think) the theme was performed by a rather famous Prog. Rock band. I forget who, but I'm sure someone with more knowledge will fill us in with the details.

Will you are talking shite again, dammit.

Probably the KLF version that is poluting the mind.

found a cool link for all beardy folk out there: http://www.matt-dale.co.uk/tme/audio/other/theme.html

I'm crap with HTML, so its in long form.

I'm off to teach children the theme from The Red Hand Gang.

[ 03-12-2001: Message edited by: William Wright ]

13:02 / 03.12.01

Ha Ha I've found it. The band is WHITE NOISE, absolute mad stuff. I was introduced to them by some right acid heads, whilst in innerspace.

here's some details:
The White Noise: An Electric Storm

White Noise, the brainchild of Delia Derbyshire and David Vorhaus, was one of the first all-electronic groups ever, and contempories of the equally legendary Silver Apples. Their first and only true LP was one of the emerging Island Records early album releases and, along with Traffic, one of their first alternative signings (a distinct change from their blue beat fair). Whatever Island honcho Chris Blackwell saw in the demos of the sublime Firebird and symphonically psychedelic Love Without Sound (both used on the record) we shall never know, but he stumped up the cash for the pair to go back to their Kaleidophon Studio, situated opposite London psychedelic centre The RoundHouse.
Derbyshire had set the ante for purely electronic pop with her seminal recording of the original Doctor Who theme. But White Noise, and their strange blend of the Medieval and Futuristic music was to become one of Island's early best sellers and a student favourite for decades

heres a site: http://www.ampmusic.demon.co.uk/whitenoise.html

16:18 / 03.12.01

I once four-tracked a cover of this, but it was kinda bad.

I absolutely loved the bridge the first time I heard it... they almost never used to play the whole thing on US public TV.

16:30 / 03.12.01

I was going to do a thread on this just after I joined up in the Summer, when Delia Derbyshire died.

But I didn't - first night nerves or something like that.

It has to be said that Delia was an inspiration. She was told that she, as a woman, couldn't make music - but she went ahead and did it anyway.

And did it better than anyone else, and before anyone else.

She defined my childhood - and the Doctor Who theme slips into Coldcut's Journeys By DJ perfectly.

"In the last few years she was beginning once more to take an interest in electronic music, encouraged by a younger generation to whom she had become a cult figure. The technology she had left behind was finally catching up with her vision. "

From the Guardian obituary on her...

Warrington Minge

20:48 / 03.12.01

Theres a really nice cd called Doctor Who 1963-69 which is all that radiophonic workshop stuff ie: the really creepy electronic bleeps and bloops stuff. the great thing about it is the incidental music not the main theme. It all sounds so current. forget the current electronica bands this is the real McCoy.

By way of interest I recently brought a Patrick Troughton Dr Who video called INVAISON. Its a cyberman one. i realised about half way through that Stereolab have taken a big sample from it and used it as the intro to the first song on their new album Sound dust.