With Record Store Day 2024 on April 20th news of releases are trickling through and three from Silva Screen Records look like the must have purchases for any fan of cult tv and radio.
UFO - 7" Limited Numbered Edition of 750, Pressed on Transparent Violet Vinyl. After a decade of creating pioneering puppet series made for children, Gerry & Sylvia Anderson took their first steps into live action, with the 1969 feature film Doppelgänger (re-titled outside Britain as Journey To The Far Side Of The Sun). This science-fiction film approached its outer space subject matter with a gritty realism and would set the tone for what was to be their first live-action television series: UFO. This new series took as a starting point the pioneering work of Dr Christiaan N. Barnard, the surgeon who performed the world’s first heart transplant operation. In UFO a dying race of aliens travel across vast distances of space to harvest organs from human beings to help ensure their own survival. To combat this threat the United Nations created SHADO, a top-secret organisation utilising the latest technology available to defend the Earth. To complement the series, the Andersons frequent musical collaborator Barry Gray created a multifaceted score that gave the programme its own musical identity. Elegantly crafted and a firm favourite with Barry Gray fans, the sound of UFO is a joy.
Stingray - 7" Limited Numbered Edition of 750, Pressed on Transparent Green Vinyl. The atmospheric aquatic adventures of the World Aquanaut Security Patrol (WASPs) provided the perfect grounds for the evolution of Barry Gray’s own musical odyssey. After navigating otherworldly vistas with experimental minimalism in Fireball XL5, Gray anchored Stingray’s underwater exploits with a canon of earth-bound incidentals. Employing flutes and gentle woodwind sounds to set the scene, Gray’s music drew attention to the wonder of the series premise, employing lush heavenly strings for the series’ closing theme, ‘Aqua Marina’ (a croon brought to life by in-demand vocalist Gary Miller). The year 1965 saw the release on 7” of the Stingray Main Titles and Aqua Marina (Tower Records). This new EP has been put together from the original audio for Record Store Day 2024.
Inventions For Radio– 6 CD Boxset First Ever Official Release on CD Original Broadcasts by Barry Bermange, Delia Derbyshire, and the BBC Radiophonic Workshop plus bonus material. The BBC’s Third Programme aired four radio broadcasts between January 1964 and September 1965, collectively known as Inventions for Radio. They were ground-breaking in both form and content, conceived by playwright Barry Bermange and consisting of the voices of the general public answering questions on four themes, one for each programme: dreams, the existence of God, life after death and ageing. At a time when it was unheard of to give a media platform to anyone perceived as being of low socio-economic status, the broadcasts generated many complaints for the “rough” voices of its participants.
Delia Derbyshire was assigned by the Radiophonic Workshop to edit and add electronic music/ effects. The collaborative result is dreamlike and mesmerising, an audial window to another era. For many years Derbyshire was not credited for her contribution, nor were the broadcasts available commercially, although they still managed to acquire something of a cult following. This boxset duplicates the recent vinyl release on CD, with one disc for each broadcast and two further CDs of additional material. The booklet includes notes by producer Mark Ayres on these extraordinary pieces which have been the most elusive of Twentieth Century classics until now.
