Behind the Sofa - The Collaborative Doctor Who Blog

Super Strings

Torchwood: Original Television Soundtrack

SILCD1267
CD released 22nd September 2008
MP3 downloads currently available from Silva Screen

I've been rather ambivalent about both series of Torchwood to date and I still feel the series hasn't yet found its feet. The proposed Children Of Earth 5 episode epic promised for Spring 2009 will I hope be the specific shakedown that the format still requires. However, one thing that I'm impressed with on the series is the music composed by Murray Gold and Ben Foster. And they've kept us waiting for a CD release but with this forthcoming album I can say the wait's been worth it. The album boasts 32 cues with a total of 78 minutes of music so you certainly get your money's worth. Murray's music is actually limited here to work he did for Series 1 and he composed the theme, the incidentals for the first and fourth episodes of Series 1 and then handed duties over to Ben Foster. Ben, an alumnus of the Guildhall School of Music and Drama  has been orchestrator and conductor for Doctor Who, and has collaborated with Murray on many other film projects whilst Ben has also orchestrated scores for The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and The League Of Gentlemen. You will also have spotted Ben brilliantly conducting the BBC National Orchestra of Wales in Doctor Who: A Celebration which was held at the Wales Millennium Centre in November 2006 as well as similar duties conducting the BBC Philharmonic at this year's Doctor Who Prom.

...a surprising and welcome expansion beyond the original work

So, here we get some of Murray's cues from the very first episode of Torchwood and the main theme. The theme is the same opening titles music you'd recognise - all shifting strings, treated vocals and urgent rhythms - but it then segues into a selection of the incidentals for the show and adds a driving piano motif. It's a surprising and welcome expansion beyond the original work. There are also some creepy electronic tonalities in the incidentals for the very first episode of the series, Everything Changes, that bear the Murray Gold 'experimental' trade mark.

The rest is a well deserved showcase of Ben Foster's work on both series to date. Foster's approach is to put a singular emphasis on the lush use of the string section of the orchestra whereas Gold often goes for more brass and woodwind. Both composers also have a pop sensibility and will throw in electronic washes and beats as well as electric and acoustic guitars.  And Doctor Who is a very different beast when it comes to scoring, where Gold is not only trying to provide a consistency overall but is also putting together soundscapes for 13 episodes that have a different setting and flavour week in, week out. What's clear here is that Foster has created a rich, consistent mood for Torchwood that's much darker, more melancholic than the more schizophrenic qualities of Doctor Who. His aim is to get under the skin of the characters in the series, give them definite themes and motifs as well as musically framing the series darker, more contemporary settings. Series 2 is given greater representation here and I think justly so, no matter what you think of the quality of the individual episodes themselves, because the trajectory of Series 2 was the loss of two main characters, Owen and Toshiko and the tragedy of Jack's past catching up with him in the form of his brother Gray with the music definitely reflecting this.

...that builds and builds into a smashing piece of epic music and is as good as anything Gold has provided for Doctor Who

The tragic nature of the Gray story arc is brilliantly evoked in Memories Of Gray and Gray's Theme (from Adam and Exit Wounds) where the vocal talents of Annalise Whittlesea, combined with fabulous strings, create an elegaic mood for the character's downfall. The themes for Owen Harper and Toshiko Sato are also given plenty of room here with the utterly wonderful Owen's Theme; a subtly shifting piano and guitar motif with bold colouration from strings and those recognisable Torchwood electronic tonalities that builds and builds into a smashing piece of epic music and is as good as anything Gold has provided for Doctor Who,Death Of Doctor Owen Harper; a lovely orchestral piece with choir and a repeat of the piano motif. This is again used on Owen Fights Death to even greater effect when the piano motif is given a full blown orchestration and develops into a huge, epic piece that gradually gathers speed. Toshiko gets a melancholic theme played on woodwind in Toshiko Sato - Betrayal And Redemption, combined with urgently driving percussion and strings with a final coda on what sounds like an oboe which is often reminiscent of Gold's score for Blink.

Captain Jack is represented by a thrilling theme of chugging strings, brass flourishes, pulsing electronics, guitars and crashing percussion, iterations of which are heard throughout the series, and it is certainly a highlight of the album. In contrast you also have Jack's Love Theme that again showcases Foster's use of strings and piano and is a much slower, more contemplative piece. I also love the Jack Joins Torchwood theme too, using that little Torchwood musical signature with woodwind and strings to slowly build up to a variation on Jack's theme proper.

Pearl And The Ghostmaker shows that Foster can deliver something slightly different in its use of a slowed down carnival motif

Welcome to Planet Earth is supremely poignant and has a feel of Michael Tippett with those high strings. The Chase is a theme from the episode Sleepers and watching at the time of transmission I thought then that the music was exceptional and had improved from Series 1. It drives along energetically and is a very rousing action theme. Pearl And The Ghostmaker shows that Foster can deliver something slightly different in its use of a slowed down carnival motif and that signature passage of piano that's almost vaudeville like in feel combined with the harps.  Definitely the music is a stand out element from what was a very risible episode. There are some other equally good moments: I Believe In Him - a sensitive piece of orchestration and piano, Goodbyes - the moving and sad coda to Exit Wounds that encompasses motifs of the Owen and Tosh themes, Death Of Toshiko - stunningly beautiful and highly reminiscent of the Philip Glass music from The Hours. Special mention to for the achingly sad music from Adrift - both A Boy Called Jonah and Flat Holm Island are gorgeous chamber pieces that helped give the episode much of its emotional power. The album closes with The End is Where We Start From. Appropriate that we leave Torchwood at that point as the music signals a triumphant moment of hope that the remaining members will carry on. The Mahler like sweeping strings are joined by rising percussive beats and an uplifting coda.

This is an exceptional album with hardly a duff track but perhaps it's a little too melancholic for those used to the more ebullient and triumphal music that's become much loved in Doctor Who. It might not get the big concert adulation that Gold's music has had but Foster is as equally gifted a composer. Torchwood is darker than the mother show and the music reflects this with its concentration on themes for each of the characters and their respective story arcs. Judging by the splendid compositions here, I for one would be interested to see what Ben Foster could do with the music for Doctor Who itself.

Vote Result: Doctor Who's Greatest Musical Maestro

The batons have been rested, the orchestra dismissed and the matchbox full of split peas emptied. The results are in for poll to find Doctor Who's Greatest Musical Maestro:

• 54%: Murray Gold
• 46%: Dudley Simpson

So it's hip hip hurray for Murray, and hip replacement for Dudley. Join us again after Silence in the Library for the next poll.

Ladies and Gentleman, Miss Elaine Page...

Doctor Who: Musical Interlude #6

Their are vast swathes of fandom who disagree with one another on the precise point at which the death knell sounded for Doctor Who. For some it was the first time Colin Baker was cast. For others, the decision to put it up against Coronation Street was the start of the downturn. Some point at the second time Colin Baker was cast. And there are those who thought that leaving the whole junk yard scene was a really bad idea in the first place. But for me, for today at least, it was this...

Blind Jackson Stiff and his Quadriplegic Flügelhorners.

The moment, in the messy mash-up that is Silver Nemesis, the camera pulled away from a gaping void of blackness to reveal... a jazz trumpeter. Not just any jazz trumpeter, no. Courtney Pine. Now in no way is this a reflection on Mr Pine's jazz stylings. But just what on Telos possessed the production team to think that, "Hey! Courtney Pine. He'll appeal to our target demographic." Even if the Doctor does start to exhibit a hitherto unknown love of jazz, why chose that particular act to see? He could have gone for Blind Jackson Stiff and his Quadriplegic Flügelhorners. Or The Fats Bacharach Continuum, with Cletus Windpipe Snr III on Venezuelan Jerk Stick. Or even the apocalyptic '57 performance of the Johnson Sage All-Stars with Limpet on skins. Nice.

The Fats Bacharach Continuum, with Cletus Windpipe Snr III on Venezuelan Jerk Stick.

I suppose, to be charitable, there could be a deleted scene in which the Doctor attempted to get them to see Bix Beiderbecke or Louis Armstrong live on stage but I doubt it. So, just who did they think they were aiming this at? Who did they think was in the audience...

Little posh boys who's parents had Mantovani piped into the womb using some nanoscale Bang and Olufsen in vitro surround sound system. That's who. As a teenager in the 80's I no more had a desire to listen to jazz than a turkey has of approaching the festive season with gay abandon. This was the sort of thing my dad would listen too. Does that mean that the Doctor now isn't this mischievous mystical being who, deep down, is really just a big kid but is now a 40-year-old with a mortgage who hangs around diy stores and trims rampant nose hair? Will that mean that future adventures with the Doctor will have all the fun and appeal of going to Jewson's for some rawlplugs? If so you can count me out.

Johnson Sage All-Stars with Limpet on skins.

The only rational explanation for this inexplicable inclusion was the production team had caught wind of what The Young Ones did in the early '80s to increase their meagre budget. By including a musical guest the comedy show was considered a variety programme by the BBC and so was awarded a larger production budget. Unfortunately, in Doctor Who's case, there were those at the BBC who had already considered it an entirely different type of programme...

Music from and inspired by the hit BBC television series

Doctor Who: Musical Interlude #5

As someone who despairs every time he sees The Bends or Revolver topping yet another of those pointless All Time Best Album lists, I’m disappointed to say my choice of favourite Who music is so crushingly populist you can probably get it at Asda. I mean, you only have to look at the title – The Doctor’s Theme – to see I could hardly have been more obvious if I'd chosen what I believe professional musicologists refer to as "the Woo Woo section” of the title music.

But anyway, The Doctor’s Theme it is. Performed by mezzo soprano Melanie Pappenheim, this beautifully ethereal siren song is like a soft sigh disturbing the dust of ages; a slowly unfurling curl of musical smoke caught and then scattered on the unforgiving winds of the time vortex…

Sorry, seem to have strayed into “sonic cathedral” territory for a moment there. It’s just it’s such a relief finally to have something to rhapsodise about after all those years of discordant clatter from the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, whose scores tended to sound like a cross between a dial-up modem and Stephen Hawking falling down some concrete steps.

People can bellyache all they want about the music “telling us what to feel”, but you might as well complain about a scene being edited to make it look exciting – it’s the composer’s job to punch our emotional buttons just as much as the scriptwriter’s.

As our hero’s personal musical leitmotif, The Doctor’s Theme has inevitably been employed to underscore some of the series’ most emotionally resonant moments – particularly to emphasise the Doctor’s “lonely angel” status as a solitary traveller weighed down by the burden of those he’s left behind. Of these, my favourite is probably the sequence in The Satan Pit in which the Doctor contemplates what might be his parting words to Rose. It’s a fine scene whichever way you slice it, but it’s the music that really helps lift it from a standard ‘Doctor in peril’ scenario to a moment of transcendental beauty that wouldn’t disgrace the final moments before a regeneration. (And people can bellyache all they want about the music “telling us what to feel”, but you might as well complain about a scene being edited to make it look exciting – it’s the composer’s job to punch our emotional buttons just as much as the scriptwriter’s. So let’s have no more of that silly talk.)

Several weeks later, this haunting refrain was treated to the Who equivalent of the 12” remix to become the pulsing, throbbing heartbeat of raw emotion that soundtracked the Doctor and Rose’s story reaching it’s shattering conclusion. At which point, I’ll admit, I may have started to lose perspective.

Cos here’s the thing: A few years ago, a friend and I had knocked out a demo of some songs we’d been working on - unremarkable bedsit angst stuff, for the most part, plus a token political protest number that was so timidly afraid of sloganeering it was actually impossible to tell what it was supposed to be protesting about (and, as far as I’m aware, has thus far failed to lead to the downfall of any governments.)

Anyhow, the point is I’d written most of these songs as a poor, pathetic wretch reeling from a particularly bruising failed relationship. But by the time we got round to talking about doing some more songs, I was happily – some may even say smugly - married and looking forward to growing fat and old with my beautiful wife. Which is great for the soul, but not particularly conducive to heartfelt emotional outpourings.

In fact, preposterous as it sounds, the closest my lip had come to wobbling recently was while watching those final, throbbing moments of Doomsday, which had been simultaneously so heartbreaking and triumphant (I believe the Spanish word, which has no English equivalent, is duende - “exquisite sadness”) I couldn’t get it out of my head for days. And then there was that phrase the Doctor had used: “I’m burning up a sun, just to say goodbye” – a typically OTT piece of Russell T Davies nonsense, but a punch to the guts nonetheless – which sounded not unlike the title of a lost Muse album.

And so it was that, in the struggle for inspiration, I took the Doctor and Miss Tyler for my own muse and wrote a song about them. That’s right, a song – a bloody ballad - about Doctor Who.

This, I realised even at the time, was not cool. In fact, it couldn’t have been less cool if I’d been cooking chips on the sun in a 100% polyester gorilla suit. What’s more, I couldn’t help thinking of that old Smith and Jones sketch about the composer who keeps writing inappropriate music hall songs for Hollywood epics (“Where’s your Apocalypse Now, boys, where’s your Apocalypse Now?” etc) – not to mention the wailing ghosts of previous Who-inspired musical travesties from the likes of Frazer Hines, Roberta Tovey, Blood Donor and, lest we forget, Jon Pertwee.

So it was probably a lucky escape for everyone that that second demo never got made. But if a mawkish musical tribute to Doctor Who with just five chords and a defiantly unadventurous AAAA rhyming structure is what you feel your life has thus far been lacking, do feel free to play along - or at least wave your lighter - at home…

I’m burning up a sun, just to say goodbye

C                      Am     C          D         
I’ve been living out among the stars

C                   Am                   Em         
Seen death on Venus, life on Mars

C                   Am        C           D         
Fought with monsters, fought in bars

C      Am                G
I got bruises, battlescars
                           
Thought that I was so alone
’Til you showed me a place called home
Spirits healed and hearts re-grown
Now I’m back here on my own

D                                   C   
Took you out beyond the sky

      Am                          G
To distant stars and satellites

D                                                   C 
And though I can’t stand to see you cry

                         Am                          G
I’m burning up a sun, just to say goodbye

I touched the face of God and Jesus
Found that they were worked by levers
Pulled by liars and deceivers
Broke the hearts of true believers

But I have faith in all your people
Planet like a blue cathedral
When I thought I was destroyed by evil
You wrote my story such a sequel

Took you out beyond the sky
We watched the Earth break up and die
And though I can’t stand to see you cry
I’m burning up a sun, just to say goodbye

Boe Selector

Doctor Who: Musical Interlude #4

I love soundtrack albums. The very first album I ever bought was John Williams' OST to Empire, the second was his soundtrack for Jaws. While my friends were pestering their parents for the new single by Madness, Ian Dury or Abba I was lusting after a gatefold sleeve featuring Darth Vader. It's a bug that has never gone away and today some of my all-time favourite albums are soundtracks: Thunderball, OHMSS, Magnolia, A Beautiful Mind (a terrible movie but you can't have everything), Blade Runner, The Hulk, Firestarter, to name just a few.

But when it comes to Doctor Who, apart from paradoxically sporting the best title music in any TV show, ever, its original soundtracks are, on the whole, pants.

Sure, there are some great, isolated moments of genius - Delia's 'Blue Veils and Golden Sands' that features prominently in Inferno is sublime - but aside from Dudley in Paris, Malcolm Clarke's clanging kazoos and Keff McCulloch's incessant hand-clapping, most of Doctor Who's music is totally forgettable. Some of it is completely atonal. Sometimes it's both. The really good stuff has been lifted wholesale from the music library (cf. Inferno) and the reign of Dudley is a rich, brown sludge of farting organs. Say what you will about the 1996 TV movie but at least you can tap your feet to it.

Which brings me to my choice for the best use of music in Doctor Who:

Murray Gold: Original Music from Season 3: Track 6: Boe

Hit play now...

Now I can't even remember where in the episode this music is played, and I can't be bothered to find out (I assume it's somewhere in Gridlock but I'm sure it features in the finale too). But who cares? All I know is that I simply adore this piece of music. Maybe I'm completely missing the point, and I should be waxing lyrical about how the music enhances the story or the visuals of a particular episode, but for me this track manages to transcend anything it was initially designed to support. Plus, I'm a sucker for aching strings and 3 minutes and 19 seconds in, Murray actually makes my heart sing.

I'm sorry, I'm no music critic (some would say I'm no TV critic either) and this is difficult for me to put into words, but what it really boils down to is this: when I'm walking the dog with my trusty iPod shuffle in my pocket and this track comes along, I've suddenly got a spring in my step and a smile on my face.

Sometimes Murray gets lost in the mix; sometimes he's too loud; sometimes he's fighting against the nonsensical plot and pseudo-religious imagery, but when he's freed from the pictures and listened to in isolation, he shines. And how can you not admire the way in which he manages to compose 13 original scores in the same amount of time it takes John Williams to rehash his back catalogue for the new Indiana Jones movie. Now show me a kid pining for that album...

I can't believe that Murray is getting his arse kicked by Deadly Dudley on the poll right now. Dudley, while certainly iconic, was bone idle too. While his generic droning might evoke pleasantly nostalgic feelings in the pit of your stomach, he can't complete with Murray for sheer inventiveness, talent and melody. Try humming the theme to The Horror of Fang Rock. See! I rest my case. Now do yourself a favour and bung on some Gold, preferably out of context, whilst walking a pet of your choice, as the sun sets behind a small hillock.

And sing.

Take it to the Bridge

Doctor Who: Musical Interlude #3

Doctor Who and music seem to have a weird, semi-abusive relationship at times.

It’s a show with incidental music ranging from odd radiophonic dustbin clanking to someone farting through a kazoo, and from deranged woodwind ensembles to the worst excesses of 1980s Bontempi molestation.

It’s a show that during it’s classic era seemed to pick real-life musical tracks from the bottom of the Radio 2 playlist and hope nobody noticed. 

Hell, that even extended out into the other formats.  Timewyrm: Revelation shoehorns in Aztec Camera, while the less said about Tony Blackburn throwing shapes on The Rapture the better.

And the new series isn’t much better.  Britney, Rick Astley... but by far the worst offender is the appearance of Tight Fit, not only for the sheer weirdness of the situation, but for the fact it’s being played in a parallel universe.

Whatever next - a bunch of robots in deep space all hearing Bob Dylan songs in their head?

Hearing it in that context... well, it’s just ridiculous.  Why would music evolve in the same way in different timelines, after all?  I mean, whatever next - a bunch of robots in deep space all hearing Bob Dylan songs in their head?

And like many people, I make jokes about Murray Gold.  Sorry, can’t hear me?  I’ll speak up.  I SAID, I MAKE JOKES ABOUT MURRAY GO...ah, that’s better.  At times his music can be intrusive and overblown, dubbed on at levels which can knock the fillings from your teeth at 30 yards.

But he’s also responsible for doing something very special.  A song that will forever be a part of Doctor Who, of the show’s rebirth.  A song I can still hear and get a shiver running down my spine. 

And it’s not the one you’re thinking of.

On the first soundtrack album, it’s called Westminster Bridge.  But it’ll forever be THAT music as the new series opens.  You know the one.  It became the running theme through series 1 - literally, since whenever someone was running during scenes on contemporary Earth, it seemed to be playing in the background.

So why do I love Westminster Bridge?  Because it set the tone for the new series.  That sweeping orchestration at the start, into the frenetic fusion of orchestration and electronica, linking classic and contemporary together.  If anything, it became an anthem for the series, barreling along with energy and passion and just a feeling of fun.

If anything, it’s as much a theme for series one of the new Doctor Who as the real theme is, with all due respect to Delia and Ron, god rest their souls.  Yes, there’s better music on the soundtrack - Donna’s theme, for instance, which is so fun and likeably good it even cropped up in The Apprentice last week.  Or Song for Ten, a beautiful song no matter who’s singing it, which Stuart rightly lauds elsewhere on this esteemed organ.

But there’s something special about Westminster Bridge as a piece of music.  Music’s about moving you.  And there can be few who watched Rose - be it on BBC One, on SciFi, on a laptop three weeks early - that didn’t watch that swoop down to the Earth, watch Billie and Noel larking about in Trafalgar Square, watch the Doctor and Rose holding hands as they ran across the bridge itself, and not allowed themselves a little grin of satisfaction.

So, Murray, thank you for the music.

'I Feel The Earth Move...'

Doctor Who: Musical Interlude #2

Now then, now then. Settle down, guys and gals. In this brief sojourn into the world of Doctor Who music there is, without a doubt, in my mind,  no need to look any further than the first principles of sound design and music as laid down by those unsung genii Delia Derbyshire and Brian Hodgson.

Both Delia and Brian represent the pinnacle of the Radiophonic Workshop's achievements, not just because of their work on Doctor Who but also from the collaborations that grew out of it, particularly their work in the late 1960s with David Vorhaus and Don Harper on the White Noise and Electrosonic albums, respectively. They both clearly understood how sounds worked subliminally in conjunction with vision and were empathetic to certain sounds that created specific psychological effects in the viewer. Theirs is sound and music that has a function and a purpose not only as incidental music but it is also about feeding into mental states such as anxiety and suspense. Sustained notes and rhythms created through unorthodox methods of production ensure that the earliest use of music and sound on Doctor Who earmark it as one of the most unusual sounding television programmes ever made in the 1960s and 1970s.

They were highly experimental composers, with no access to synthesisers, using a very creative Heath Robinson approach to composition and scoring with physical manipulation of tape loops, cut up recordings and oscillators as well as traditional instrumentation. Their organic methodology was so successful that the differences between their sound effects and their incidental music become blurred and indistinct. On many occasions, and in Doctor Who particularly, it is hard to tell where the music begins and the sound effects end and they are often interchangeable.  The, by now, familiar creation of the TARDIS' dematerialisation sound using a key and piano string is, of course, part and parcel of the origins of the programme but, musically, it was also conventionally scored even if its final treatment and manipulation is far from the orthodox way in which music is put together.

...to organically bring the truly experimental and the popular together and present it in the context of family viewing at Saturday tea times

In 1963, these applications were so technically advanced for their time that Delia was able to construct the legendary Doctor Who theme through filtered oscillation, cutting, speeding up, and assemblage note- by-note, in a two week period. Again, no synthesisers were used. The heightened, unearthly sound of Doctor Who was born. Delia was able to take the forms of musique concrète, originally developed by by Pierre Schaeffer, with the use of microphones and magnetic tape recorders, and organically bring the truly experimental and the popular together and present it in the context of family viewing at Saturday tea times. Schaeffer certainly began the playful exploration of mixing traditional instruments with found sounds and his work and, later the work of Delia and Brian, could be said to be a precursor to today's ubiquitous use of samplers.

Before I cite my own personal favourite Doctor Who story as a demonstration of the effectiveness of Delia and Brian's work, let's have a look at the Standard Music Library album ESL 104. Standard Music Library was established in 1969 as suppliers of specialist production music for film, television, radio and commercials. The styles range from orchestral, jazz, dance and a variety of world music, to avant-garde composers such as Brian Eno. ESL 104 was one of their first releases, and the original record was used to provide incidental music to the 1970 Doctor Who story, Inferno. Delia and Brian recorded the majority of the tracks on ESL 104 under their Nikki St George and Li De La Russe composing hats, with David Vorhaus, an avant garde American composer who formed Camden Town's Kaleidophon studio with Derbyshire and Hodgson, composing the remaining tracks. Delia and Brian later went on to produce Electrosonic with Don Harper and An Electric Storm, as White Noise, with Vorhaus in the late 1960s and early 1970s. All three albums are significant as they all feature very familiar sounds, effects and music to Doctor Who fans and they are also amongst some of the most pioneering British electronic music ever made and had a profound influence on many musicians over the following decades.

...effectively conjure up those odd moments in the programme when armchairs would swallow people or troll dolls would go on the rampage   

Electrosonic is a series of very short mood pieces from Delia, Brian and Harper composed for the KPM library and probably used in countless television programmes of the era. 'Frontier Of Knowledge', the fourth track, sounds like it could fit in with Spearhead From Space or Terror Of The Autons and this and a later track 'Nightwalker' effectively conjure up those odd moments in the programme when armchairs would swallow people or troll dolls would go on the rampage. 'Depression' is just like the theme for the Master but extended and given even more sinister undertones. This album also recalls the pioneering work on the radio adaptations of War Of The Worlds or the special sound for plays such as The Stone Tape.

The 1969 album from White Noise, An Electric Storm, was brought to life by David Vorhaus and is surely one of the great British sound experiments of all time. An avant-garde whirlwind of sounds, effects, songs and oscillators, it's as mad as a box of frogs. 'Here Come The Fleas' is bouncy electronics, cartoon sound effects and skiffle and a bit of avant-garde poetry. The track's kazoo sounding electronic break is shattered by more dogs, bits of shouting and sirens. It's the equivalent of letting Spike Milligan loose in a room full of synthesisers and sampling machines. 'Firebird' moves into English pastoral psychedelia with treated drums, what sounds like a harpsichord and some distant female crooning laced with electronic stabs straight out of Forbidden Planet.

The final half of the album moves into darker territory with what sounds like the Weed creatures from Fury From The Deep dueting with Juliet Greco. The 11 minute plus of 'The Visitations' is all Doctor Who sound effects, free form sound collages, synthetic screeching and swirling, pulsing heart beats which sounds like Quatermass And The Pit meets Brian Eno via The Kinks. The finale, 'The Black Mass' is off the wall, vari-speed incantations, organs and frenetic percussion, electronic buzzes and pulses and screams. There's even a sound effect in there that I recognise from Timeslip and The Tomorrow People. Which brings us conveniently back to ESL 104.

...it is a perfect mesh of strong performances, story and direction but above all else it is the sound of Doctor Who in its most elevated state

ESL 104 probably contains some of the most influential and fondly remembered compositions from Delia and Brian. Recorded in the late 1960s, many of the compositions on this album are the quintessential sound of Inferno. Inferno is one of the most intense stories produced for the series and remains highly regarded by fans. For me, it is a perfect mesh of strong performances, story and direction but above all else it is the sound of Doctor Who in its most elevated state. Director Douglas Camfield eschewed the normal route of asking Dudley Simpson to compose the incidental music and instead selected a number of stock library tracks. The majority of the tracks originate from ESL 104 and two other tracks, the legendary 'Delian Mode' and 'Blue Veils And Golden Sands' originated from the BBC Radiophonic Music album that had been released in 1968. 'Blue Veils' was originally composed for a World About Us documentary about the Tuareg tribes of the Sahara. This Delia composition was composed and constructed using filtered electronic oscillators to give the "shimmering heat haze" atmosphere to accompany the footage. It also uses manipulations of Delia's voice and the ringing of a now infamous green lamp shade.  It seems quite fitting that Camfield should use such an atmospheric piece to underscore the fiery destruction of the world in Inferno and her 'Blue Veils and Golden Sands' emphasises Stahlman's complete obsession and madness. Her 'Lure Of the Space Goddess', a kind of swirling electronic woodwind effect, also surfaces from ESL 104 to provide further mood and an uneasy underscore to the environs of Project inferno.

Brian Hodgson also makes significant contributions, beyond his brilliant mixing and montaging, with 'Souls In Space' , all ethereal wind noises, originally composed for The Wheel in Space, but dropped in tone and highlighting the freakish nature of the Primords. Other Hodgson library tracks used on Inferno include 'Attack of the Alien Minds', a shrill, vibrating, tropical bird like whistling, 'Homeric Theme', a pulsing, deep, throbbing vibration. But Hodgson's major contribution to Inferno has to be 'Battle Theme' which gradually intensifies over the course of the story with its constant looping of crashing metallic noise signifying an unseen riot of industrial chaos and disaster just beyond the doors of Project Inferno. Combined with the histrionic performances of the actors in the story, it really does provide a palpably disturbing atmosphere. David Vorhaus contributes 'Build Up To' which is a low key, warbling and dithering sound that again provides an appropriate unearthliness to the Doctor slipping sideways into time. Many ESL 104 tracks would later end up also underscoring episodes of Timeslip and The Tomorrow People.

The uncanny sound of Inferno derives from the intensity of these sounds and the way they are looped, repeated and mixed together by Hodgson. I can't recall a quiet moment in Inferno, which in itself is very unusual and radical for a television soundtrack in the 1970s, and it is this amalgamation of relentless 'noise' that gives the story an overwhelming power. When the Doctor yells, 'Listen to that! It's the sound of the planet screaming out its rage!', then I have to counter and say 'No Doctor, that's the definitive sound of Doctor Who.'

"Well, I woke up today..."

Doctor Who: Musical Interlude #1

The first really exciting non-score musical moment in the new series of Doctor Who was when the Britney Spears track Toxic played over the certain doom of the Earth in The End of the World.  Popular music’s always been a feature of the show, right back to when The Beatles appeared on tape singing Ticket To Ride during The Chase, but for much of the time its tastes have been decidedly MOJO magazine with appearances on the soundtrack for Fleetwood Mac, The Seekers and King Crimson, as this page at the Wikipedia of the non-composed music shows.  There’s been plenty of classical music and easy listening too, but largely the music was from men with beards selected by men with pipes.

There was something rather shocking about seeing something as fashionable as Britney in the second episode of the new series of our favourite franchise, a franchise which by the end of its opening salvo was quite happy to invite Courtney Pine along for a blow and be excited about that.  Some fans hated it, and it’ll certainly date the show in the future, but it was a wonderful indication that the series was attempting to speak to as broad a church as possible and wanting to talk to kids in their own language rather than talking down to them with a burst of Bela Bartok. 

True, it also suggested that the work of the ‘troubled pop star’ (© every tabloid) would still be knocking around in five billion years time but that would later become part of an overall view of the far future as being culturally intruded upon by our contemporary zeitgeist, the explanation for which might make a good story at some point.  But it began litany of popular music within the latest few series which would also encompass Rick Astley, Scissor Sisters, The Streets, Ian Dury and Gary Glitter (nice).  The apogee has probably been ELO’s Mr. Blue Sky in Love & Monsters, which was almost an extra character, accentuating the melancholy of what some us still think is Russell T Davies’s finest story. 

But surprisingly the most complex emotions have resonated from a pop mantra created especially for the programme itself.  After Tennant’s best ever twenty minutes – in the final third of The Christmas Invasion -- it would have been quite easy to have tacked on some kind of derisory closing scene, with the Doctor simply appearing at the Tyler’s door and Rose disappearing off with him.  But Murray and Russell understood that the audience still needed a moment to really fall for this new incarnation of the Doctor and perhaps more importantly for us to spend some time alone with him.  What better way to underscore all that than with a song, and why not a Song For Ten?

The lyrics of the song (“Well I woke up today / And the world was a restless place / It could have been that way for me”) and are an excellent evocation of this renewal of the character putting to side the survivor guilt which had made him so impotent in action in the first series.  Playing over the wardrobe scene in which the Doctor selects a new image to go with his new chin, we’re literally seeing a change in outlook which continues into his appearance at the door of the Tyler house.  His grin and cracker pulling are a total contrast with the dower Eccleston, demonstrating that this version does do domestic – after all he could have been off in the Tardis, back into the universe but instead he wanted her and their company on the holiest of holies. 

Some thought it unfair that the tv version with Tim Philips’s vocal didn’t later appear on the soundtrack album, superseded by the tones of The Divine Comedy’s Neil Hannon.  Sacrilegiously that’s the version I prefer, not only because of the passion with which Hannon attacks the words (to the point that in the right mood I’ll actually blub) and impressive big band sound but also because cleverly the second half of Murray’s lyrics, perhaps written later, extends the resonance of the song beyond The Christmas Invasion into the last episode of that season.  It’s almost, in fact, saying everything the Doctor couldn’t to Rose on that beach in Doomsday:  “ 'Cause I followed my star / And that's what you are / I've had a merry time with you […] So have a good life / Do it for me / Make me so proud / Like you want me to be / Where ever you are / I'm thinking of you / oceans apart / I want you to know.”

But my admiration for the song’s sky-rocketed recently after hearing the final verse and realising that it could well have been an oh-so subtle hint that Rose was not gone for good:  “Well I woke up today and you're on the other side / Our time will never come again / But if you can still dream / Close your eyes it will seem / That you can see me now and then.”  If Rose is to be the subject of this year’s Doctor-less episode, then I wonder if it’ll tell the story of the fourth series from her point of view, showing her attempts to communicate with the Doctor across the void, seeing him (and Donna) now and then.  Whatever happens,   I can’t think of a better song about finding and losing love, about saying goodbye but never forgetting.  Who needs The Beatles, when you've got Murray Gold?

Musical Interlude

To fill the week long gap before Silence in the Library we've decided to turn the BTS amp up to 11 and take a look at what you consider to be the best or worst use of music in Doctor Who (either classic or new Who). And we're opening this up to all readers.

So, if your bag is Courtney Pine blowing his jazz tubes in the general direction of Cyber respiratory systems, or Grace's use of musical numbers during open hearts surgery or the first Doctor's improvised scatting we want to hear about it.

All you need to do is mail in your comments (around 250 words) to musicalwho@behindthesofa.org.uk by end of Thursday and we'll edit them down to a single post which shall be published on Friday.