Delia Derbyshire: The Myths and Legendary Tapes review: Fascinating insight into the godmother of electronic music

A new documentary explores the electronic music pioneer's eccentric life
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Audrey Owusu20 October 2020

Take a moment to play the Doctor Who theme tune in your head. Can you hear it? Its booming baselines and swooshes? Well, the person you can thank for this is the trailblazer Delia Derbyshire.

Director and actress Caroline Catz’s debut film, Delia Derbyshire: The Myths and Legendary Tapes, explores the eccentric life of Delia Derbyshire, doyenne of the BBC’s Radiophonic Workshop (which created that unmistakable theme), now known as the godmother of electronic music. Despite this, her major contribution to the genre as we know it today remains little known outside the industry.

Born in Coventry in 1937, Derbyshire discovered a passion for electronic music in a period where it was still a niche interest. After studying maths then music at Cambridge University, she would go on to revolutionise the industry. Without her, we may not have had artists such as Aphex Twin and The Chemical Brothers, both of whom cite her as an inspiration.

Catz’s film, which began as a short in 2018, is an eclectic mix of archive footage - including clips of Derbyshire - interviews with her associates and colleagues, and dramatic reconstructions. Catz stars as Derbyshire in the latter, portraying a version of her based on years of research and interviews and managing to avoid the cringeworthiness that so often dogs the dramatic reconstruction.

Handout

The documentary follows Derbyshire as she navigates the sexist music industry (Handout)

Derbyshire comes across here as defiant and ground-breaking as she navigates the sexist music industry during the Sixties and Seventies. She was constantly fighting for recognition of her works and ideas but rarely achieved it. Even after death, her colleague Pete Chambers faced a lengthy campaign to get a small piece of the recognition she deserved, with the renaming after her of a street in her hometown of Coventry.

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One interesting theme that comes up in the documentary is the terrified reaction to electronic music from the public. The high-pitched whining that emanated from machines was thought to drive people mad after prolonged exposure. It was viewed as suspicious and even blamed for the deaths of two men, resulting, bizarrely, in the eviction of Derbyshire’s colleague David Vorhaus from their private workshops. Catz makes it clear that (though it’s no longer thought to be literally dangerous) there is still mistrust, and reluctance to accept it as 'real' music, despite the musicality that goes into creating it.

The director’s layering in of Derbyshire’s recently discovered Attic Tapes provides such a hypnotising richness, it could induce synesthesia, and enlisting the musician and performance artist Cosey Fanni Tutti to create the soundtrack using samples from them was a stroke of brilliance. Where Catz’s project falls down is in glossing over the more complicated aspects of Derbyshire’s personal life, such as her alcoholism. She chooses to focus on the music, instead of creating a fully rounded portrait of the person. Still, this is a fascinating insight into the life and works of a genius.

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