Tuesday 15 August 2017

Martin Hannett - Homage to Delia Derbyshire



If you buy into the idea of Martin Hannett as a 'genius' producer then this is definitely the master at play rather than work. And why not? I hear there are tapes of Lee Perry's homage to Phil Spector knocking around, but perhaps that's just a silly rumour.

It's makes sense that Hannett would be into Delia Derbyshire and all things Radiophonic even if whilst he was crafting the atmospherics that make many Joy Division tunes so amazing most listeners would have been oblivious to both. Thankfully the wonders worked in the tape-splicing lab by BBC sound scientists of the 60s have been revealed to more of us in the last decade through compilations and file-sharing sites.

I'm more of a Daphne Oram fan but that doesn't prevent me from enjoying this compilation of spare time doodles by Hannett. It's actually a mixed bag regarding styles. On some tracks he blatantly mimics Radiophonic lite with melodic little outings whilst others have a more improvisational 'jamming' feel. The 'meat', however, come in the form of Track 9, a ten-minute salvo of deep drones, cuts, beats and speed variations. Elsewhere there's Easy Listening and library-music-goes-Rock.


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