If Delia Derbyshire hadn’t existed, someone would have had to invent her, and indeed if someone had to invent a hypothetical masterwork for her fictional alter ego, they couldn’t do much better than this long lost soundtrack, which was originally created to accompany a 1972 short film based around the work of experimental photographer Pamela Bone.

Conjured up out of the ether and pressed to vinyl this year by Trunk Records, this is indeed such a mightily potent relic of mid-century British esoterica that I’d have my doubts as to its authenticity were the sounds contained herein not so singularly bracing that no 21st century cartel of bakelite-fixated retromancers could possibly have willed them into existence.

After a brief spoken introduction from Bone and an unidentified announcer (both perfect RP, of course), proceedings get underway with a perfect marriage between Derbyshire’s carefully wrought take on early DIY electronica and a selection of exquisite tape-crackling field recordings – island winds and crashing waves creating a gentle wind tunnel ambience, as delicately treated ‘natural’ sounds blur into the ‘artificial’ realms of Delia’s faintly malevolent lampshade-scraping drones. Elsewhere, passing seagulls are reverbed until they become alien sonar pulses, whistling past like fireflies. Distant dog barks echo across the water; grasshoppers and flapping moth wings rise to the foreground sounding as close as yr own heartbeat.

Initially an aural equivalent of encountering an inexplicable alien presence whilst walking alone after midnight on a rocky south coast beach under a full moon, the atmosphere is gradually transformed beyond all recognition, until eventually we are faced with visions of unknown, multi-coloured birds calling across a pulsing extraterrestrial swamp – unknown beings squelching and swarming like something out of Brian Aldiss’s ‘Hothouse’. An utterly unearthly sound that proves impossible to pick apart, but that still can’t help but radiate fragments of that unmistakable ‘black & white telly’ radiophonic aesthetic.

Or, alternatively: forget all that, and just imagine sitting down to spot-check a large collection of reel-to-reel nature recordings, shortly after swallowing a powerful hallucinogen.

Like so much of Delia Derbyshire’s work, this stuff is fiercely experimental, incredibly atmospheric, but also singularly lacking in pretension, utilising what we would now probably think of as “ambient” techniques to create an experience that, far from sinking into the background, remains distracting, enthralling and intermittently alarming throughout.

Anyone who has spent quality time lurking in the contours of Delia’s ‘Blue Veils & Golden Sands’ will probably want to jump on this one straight away and sink deep into it’s wordless expanses of unexplored sonic landscape… and well they might. Just watch out for those bloody owl hoots halfway through Side A though - they’ll put the wind up you and no mistake.

Buy from Trunk here.

Labels: best of 2016, comps & reissues, Delia Derbyshire, soundtracks