White Noise was a special group formed by Delia Derbyshire (famous for arranging the original version of the Doctor Who theme) and Paul Lytton of the
BBC Radiophonic Workshop and David Vorhaus. They released the album White Noise in 1969.
There are so many reasons to like this album. For one thing, it was so painstakingly recorded - at the time, there were really no synthesizers (I believe a primitive one appears on th erecording) -- all sequencing was done by hand, by splicing together the individual notes that were recorded on small pieces oftape (this is how Delia recorded the Doctor Who theme).
It's also got some really nice pop tunes - this album is a great example of how a catchy pop tune plus really interesting arranging can give forth some really good music. Overall, it's incredibly experimental, without losing a frame of reference for the listener to understand the experimentation that's going on. Strong comparisons to Deerhoof would not be unwarranted.
Firebird http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vMWg92GGI-g
Here Come The Fleas http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFRacpYt5F0
0:00 Notice the strange percussive sounds already
0:13 The time signature of the beginning of the verses is still a mystery to me.
0:19 It seems to go into 3/4 here.
0:21 Now it's in 4/4 - I suggest tapping out the rhythm for this part, in your head or physically, and keeping the rhythm through the next section of noise.
0:25 Notice how the rhythm you've been tapping out from 4 seconds ago re-enforces these seemingly random sound effects into the context of the song. In other words, this is a drum fill using sound effects.
0:42 The bridge of the song - a fairly normal melody, sung in an abnormal (intentionally flirting with the notion of being on key) fashion, with quite abnormal instrumentation.
0:50 Note the bouncing sound effects used as percussion.
0:59 I think this is an actual synthesizer solo.
1:17 ... with sound effects.
1:33 Notice how by this verse, the music for each verse is arranged differently - especially the rhythms. The reference point for this song is the verse's melody, sung just off key.
1:45 Random speeding up of songs/parts like is done here is something I haven't seen much of until the recent proliferation of Youtube Poops.
1:51 Another drum fill with sound effects.
1:59 I like this abrupt ending.
Delia showing some recording techniques http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NDX_CS3NsTk
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