6. Wendy CarlosA Clockwork Orange: Wendy Carlos’s Complete Original Score
I nearly put Vangelis’ soundtrack to Blade Runner in this spot, it was a close call, but this week I prefer Oranges over Blades. I do love a good soundtrack album and when it’s the soundtrack to one of your favourite films too… well it’s double plus good. This is Wendy at her peak, she’d just released the Sonic Seasonings double album, an ambient masterpiece, before ambient was even called ambient. Then she came up with this triumph of synthesiser virtuosity. While Sonic Seasonings was chokablock full of nature field recordings mixed with delicate synths, A Clockwork Orange is 100% full on electronics at its best. It’s basically a showcase for all her compositional, production and Moog programming skills, it’s fuckin’ amazing.
When I left school at 17 my first day job was as an assistant sound recordist and Clockwork Orange was one of the first films I worked on, assisting the sound engineer on location at the Chelsea Drugstore in the King’s Road (for the record shop scenes). I remember when we were doing our Throbbing Gristle three-day Desertshore Installation at the ICA in 2007 and Sleazy wanted to do an audience quiz. Also being a fan of Wendy he compiled a few really short stabs of Moog sounds from A Clockwork Orange and asked the audience if they could identify them, and they did, mostly.
