Delia Derbyshire and Brian Hodgson – The Legend Of Hell House

This is a little bit of a tag on to the documentary Sisters With Transistors, the role that women have played in electronic music was so important. That’s one of the reasons I love being here in Brighton, some of our most amazing students, the ones that come through… we have some amazing female producers and soundtrack makers. That’s why it’s really good that women had that role in soundtracks because it doesn’t have the male focus that say, rock music, has. People like Daphne Oram, Suzanne Ciani, they’re really important in this story. So I think my including this is an acknowledgement of that role. Delia was a bit of a legend. Some of the stories about her life and who she was are almost very separate from her music. She had this quite crazy life — she drank, took snuff, smoked a lot of hash as well, I was led to believe. She was quite a character.

I read the line that said “there was no meaningful distinction drawn between music and sound effects in this movie”. Which is exactly what we were just talking about with the last film.

It’s from a time when all of a sudden, independent films and independent producers, are moving away from that idea of the studio system and film scores that were very orchestral, done with in-house musicians. It’s groundbreaking and has lead to how we hear soundtracks and watch films nowadays.