Delia Derbyshire

Delia Derbyshire ( born May 5, 1937 in Coventry, † July 3, 2001 in Northampton ) was a British composer, musician and producer in the field of electronic music, for their music for the broadcast network BBC, as well as for experimental works by affecting the development of anticipated electronic dance and pop music (the latter especially with her band White Noise with David Vorhaus ), was known.

Their most famous work is composed by Ron Grainer and of their electronic interpreted theme music for the British television series Doctor Who.

Life and career

Derbyshire studied music and mathematics in a college in Cambridge. After a rejection for a job at Decca Records, which was based on the fact that no women were hired in the recording studio at this time, she first took a job at the United Nations in Geneva, but returned shortly afterwards to London.

In the 1960s she worked for the BBC in the so-called BBC Radiophonic Workshop and wrote there particular pieces for the third radio program ( Third Programme, which later BBC Radio 3 ), but also for other radio and television programs. Among them are many of their best known works today.

The music for Dr. Who was 1963. The notes were composed by Ron Grainer, Derbyshire continued the forward lean into practice. They used individual oscillators, which were tape-recorded and then looped manually and alienated through simple techniques such as reverse playback. Due to a policy of the BBC to keep the staff of the workshop in anonymity, their a mention has been denied as a co- composer, although had endeavored result from enthusiastic Grainer.

Together with Brian Hodgson and Peter Zinnovieff she founded in 1966 the project Unit Delta Plus, which had set itself the goal of making electronic music known to contemporary music festivals. In 1967, the group was dissolved.

In 1968 she founded together with David Vorhaus, the band White Noise, whose debut album An Electric Storm in 1969 appeared. It is generally regarded as an influential album that later artists such as Stereolab influenced. However, they left the band shortly afterwards, later White Noise publications are largely solo albums from the vestibule.

In 1973, she left the BBC and ended after a brief work in a recording studio in which she collaborated, among others, the soundtrack of The Legend of Hell House, her career to first work for the time being as a composer as a radio presenter and later changing positions. She had often to fight at this time with depression and alcoholism. It was not until the mid-1990s she began to write new songs when she was animated by the musician Peter Kember it. She worked until her death on a new album. On July 3, 2001, she died from kidney failure after she survived a breast cancer.

Posthumously published in 2002 a part of their work at the BBC in the 1960s on the album BBC Radiophonic Music.

2008 attracted a restored in long working fund of 267 until her death in a closet of her house discovered tapes with previously published material by the artist stir that had been produced in the second half of the 1960s. Among them is next to the raw material for television productions also an experimental dance piece, which is very similar to today's techno. The English newspaper The Times described it then as Godmother of Electronic Dance Music.

In the 2009 released movie Enter the Void music from Derbyshire was used.