daphne oram: oramics

ltd repress. Young Americans is a new label operating under the Modern Love umbrella, proud to present an extremely special vinyl pressing of some of the most important early electronic music ever made. Daphne Oram was the founder of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, a department she more or less single-handedly created in 1958, camping out at the BBC studios for nights on end splicing tapes and working with various modified machines to create her abstract soundscapes. Eventually the BBC bent under her pressure and in studio 13 created the soon-to-be-legendary Radiophonic Workshop, with Daphne Oram as its first director. Oram also invented her own "drawn-sound" technique, a process whereby strips of 35mm film would be manipulated before being fed into her home-made "Oramics" machine which would convert and "read" the film into sound. Despite her considerable and historic list of achievements, Oram's life and work remain largely unknown by the wider public. As this remarkable 44-track collection shows, however, her work ranks amongst the most varied and pioneering ever made, and it's quite incredible to think that this is the first time any of these precious recordings have been available on vinyl. 155 minutes/8 sides of vinyl cut by Lupo at D&M, housed in a heavyweight 300 gram gatefold sleeve, featuring rare archive photographs.

Daphne Oram - Four Aspects (1960) from the 2CD Oramics, (Paradigm Discs, PD 21)