
Daphne Oram: Portrait of an electronic music pioneer (2008) - flannery
http://www.theguardian.com/music/2008/aug/01/daphne.oram.remembered
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yourapostasy
For those who are interested in those early days of electronic music, the
roles Daphne Oram and Delia Derbyshire played in the BBC Radiophonic
Workshop's history, and their respective lasting contributions to electronic
music, are fascinating. This is a good starting point.

[https://www.soundonsound.com/sos/apr08/articles/radiophonic....](https://www.soundonsound.com/sos/apr08/articles/radiophonic.htm)

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Joeboy
> however hard you look into the history of electronic music, there is one
> name you'll struggle to find – that of Daphne Oram.

Maybe I live in some kind of Oramic-centric bubble, but I'm pretty sure she's
better known than most of the other non-rockstar names mentioned. Her name
gets 58,000 hits on google, and last time I went to the London Science Museum
there were bits of her kit displayed there. She's not a household name, but I
think the article's claims of her obscurity are exaggerated.

~~~
firstworldman
Raymond Scott is probably more well known, particularly because of having been
sampled by Dilla. Oram and certainly also Delia Derbyshire deserve all their
due... I can't imagine how exciting it must have been to be creating these
sounds that no one had heard before.

The BBC Radiophonic Workshop is more influential than they're ever given
credit for, even now that the story is somewhat well known. And they were at
the time too... If you're looking for 'pop' musicians who were influenced by
those experiments in early electronics, check An Electric Storm by White Noise
(band that featured Delia and Brian from BBC RWS), as well as United States of
America's self-titled 1968 record. Both radical and timeless.

~~~
Joeboy
I own and love both those records! Both radical, timeless and a bit saucy.

Not so pioneering, but Broadcast did some awesome stuff in a similar vein in
the '00s, eg.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Og7m71xuFbA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Og7m71xuFbA)

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flannery
“My father said that when I was 7 years old I was predicting that one day I
would have a marvelous machine that would make any sound I wanted”

[http://jumblequeen.tumblr.com/post/68644500028/daphne-
oram-a...](http://jumblequeen.tumblr.com/post/68644500028/daphne-oram-and-her-
oramics-machine-my-father)

[https://vimeo.com/21675394](https://vimeo.com/21675394)

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mattkevan
There's a good compilation of her work on Bandcamp:

[https://daphneoram.bandcamp.com/releases](https://daphneoram.bandcamp.com/releases)

~~~
billybofh
And on ubu :
[http://www.ubu.com/sound/oram.html](http://www.ubu.com/sound/oram.html) .
Also a lot of Delia Derbyshire's work :
[http://www.ubu.com/sound/derbyshire.html](http://www.ubu.com/sound/derbyshire.html)

