Monday 14 June 2010

‘Spaceship UK’ Online


Earlier this year Sound and Music commissioned me to write an extended essay offering a personal view on the history of British electronic music for a stand-alone publication to be made available at this year’s Sonar festival. You can preview an edited, much shorter version of the piece – ‘Spaceship UK: The British Space Programme as Musical Exploration – The Untold Story’ – in this month’s edition of INTO, Sound and Music’s online magazine. The print version, which is over twice the length, comes in a limited edition package with a cover design by Julian House and a 7” vinyl disc featuring music by Daphne Oram and Belbury Poly one side and a fabulous piece of etching on the other, all in a transparent cover. For copyright reasons, it won’t be available for sale in the UK – however, an online version of the complete essay will be posted, together with a personally-selected playlist, just as soon as Sonar is safely over.

In the meantime, I am in the process of putting together a special music-only edition of ‘Hollingsville’ which will be broadcast on July 1 while the Resonance studios are closed for repairs and maintenance, and then repeated on July 6. It will be based on my ‘Spaceship UK’ essay and will feature contributions from Delia Derbyshire, Tristram Cary and Desmond Leslie, with additional material from the likes of Hawkwind, the Focus Group and The Orb. This episode, which constitutes an extra addition to the scheduled Hollingsville series, will not be made available as a podcast so the July 1 and 6 broadcasts are the only chances to hear it. Anyone anxious to know why I seldom do DJ sets is urged to tune in.

Pictured above: the Skylon at night from RIBA’s architecture.com site.

3 comments:

OutaSpaceMan said...

I'm surprised you haven't mentioned Tonto's Expanding Head Band which you must be featuring in the show.

Surly?

O.S.M. B:52

OutaSpaceMan said...

Ah,
just realised their American.

Damn.

O.S.M. B:52

Ken Hollings said...

Hi OSM: as you rightly point out, this special music-only edition of 'Hollingsville' show is dedicated to British pioneers and practioners in the field of electronic music, so a lot of people whose work I admire aren't featured - even so, I am sure there are lots of names missing from the show and that some listeners will consequently be disappointed - but it is only a personal selection, after all.