Delia Derbyshire composed nearly 200 works in her 11 years at the BBC’s Radiophonic Workshop. For those of us growing up in the UK in the 1960s and early ’70s, her sounds heard on TV and radio were a part of our lives. Psychedelian Streams looks back to those early days of musique concrète both in its choice of materials and the way I shape them. I chose sounds reminiscent of the era and my childhood (a tumbling Slinky, a wooden ruler rattling on a table edge, wind chimes) and I explore them using old, analog studio techniques: looping, speed-change, editing, reversing and reverberation. The title hints at the surreal imagery conjured up by these interweaving, transformed sounds and to Derbyshire’s own work, Delia’s Psychedelian Waltz.

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Psychedelian Streams was realized in 2004 in the studios of the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama (RSAMD) and premiered on October 7, 2004 as part of the theatrical production Standing Wave at the Tron Theatre in Glasgow (Scotland, UK). The piece was commissioned by the Reeling & Writhing Theatre Company (Glasgow, Scotland, UK).

Premiere

• October 7, 2004, Standing Wave, Tron Theatre, Glasgow (Scotland, UK)