“It was the first acid house record really, wasn’t it?”
Mark E Smith, circa 1989.

Well, possibly not, though it’s a good quote. Hardly obscure, it might seem an odd choice at first, but famous & well-loved as it is, as a piece of influential rock’n’roll (yeh, really) surely unsung. There’s the KLF & Orbital covers of course, & Sonic Boom’s recent work with Derbyshire herself, but as a performance piece its larger legacy is endless Music for Pleasure type cheesy-listening muzak covers. But its claim as a piece of rock’n’roll is that, five years before Revolution 9, it’s a point of first contact between popular culture & concrete sound.

(BTW apologies to non-UK heads if it seems a somewhat parochial choice. I suppose an apt comparitive example would be Marius Constant’s equally famous Twilight Zone theme — actually a splice of snippets from two pieces which the composer himself never even knew about until a friend heard it on tv — also a visitor from the avant-garde that acheived blanket subliminal influence.)

For my part, the first time I heard Kraftwerk or Eno or the early Cabs (even Moroder’s relentless bass pulse to I Feel Love), I realised there was something in them I’d felt before, & that was the shadowy, indistinct, glinting-like-a-mobile quality of this theme. Over time, it got tarnished, ever more moribund, each “modernising” of the piece seeming to render it less & less magical (less J Cage, more T Dolby), but the original version, which lasted from 1963–1980 with only minor updates, still retains its enigma & insistence.

Grainer’s melody is a charmingly simple thing, more conventionally musical in the modulated middle-eights (which often went ignored in the more propulsive seventies upgrades of the theme), but mainly just a sort of sine-wave signal, hovering, keening & somehow unresolved. It’s the “realisation” by Delia Derbyshire, created over a fortnight in 1963 in a converted icerink by laborious hand-splicing, found-sounding & tone-generating, that gives the theme its unshakeable spectral lustre, the unearthly frost of the backdrop a lasting canvas.

The whole artifice seems to take place in the middle-distance & through a mist. Remastered CD releases tend to over-clarify the sound picture & remove some of the illusion, but heard through a trebly teatime seventies telly or on a muddy 7‑inch, there seemed to be no centre at all, just a sinister wash of sound. The bassline is pure Peter Hook, the melodyline bleeds & escapes as if it were recorded at a whisper & then over-amplified, but the single most striking effect is the constant slithering in the background, the sort of inner-ear loop the mind conjures up when distracted or between stations. (When I was a kid, I always thought it’d be great to have a huge long version of the theme; when I first heard Trans-Europe Express, I realised I’d found something very similar.) 

So unsung? Yes, because it persists & because it’s a communal memory; you’ve all heard it before, but maybe you’ve never actually listened to it. & rock’n’roll? Well, it’s stretching the envelope a bit, but I’d say yes, because it’s vivid & it thrills, it’s not some dry academic experiment. First few times I heard it, it scared the shit out of me, & even though I’m a jaded grown-up now, it still gives me a certain shivery buzz.

In a word-assocation test, 9 out of 10 would probably use the word “eerie” about it, & of course it is, but when I hear it these days I’m increasingly struck by its poise & beauty. Next time you happen upon it, just give it that extra wee bit of your time & heart.

* * *

Amongst the inappropriate &-or downright cackhanded covers of the theme down the years is a Jon Pertwee version, Who Is the Doctor? from 1972, on Purple Records & with lyrics (!). Can never decide if it’s gloriously stoopid or just a misguided novelty, but go to

if you fancy a listen. Also of interest

http://​www​.deliaderbyshire​.com/​r​e​c​o​r​d​i​n​g​s​.php3

for some snippets of Delia Derbyshire’s other Radiophonic Workshop work.