11. White NoiseAn Electric Storm
I came across this at a record fair in Plymouth years ago. The back of the album has this great statement: "Many sounds have never been heard by humans. Some sound waves you don’t hear, but they reach you." My friend Tim bought it and I remember going back to his place to listen to it, and going, "What the fuck is this?" The next time I saw it, I bought a copy and just fell in love.
As with all of these records, it was just this otherworldly psychedelia. It was like nothing else. I didn’t know anything about Delia Derbyshire or David Vorhaus, it just seemed like this funny world. I don’t really know how to describe it. I’ve read extensively about how it was recorded, how it was done on two four-tracks, how they had to switch the power on at the same time to get them in sync. But it doesn’t matter. I don’t really want to know more about it. This thing just seemed to emerge out of nowhere, it just had this wonderful atmosphere throughout.
I don’t know what their relationship with pharmaceuticals was, but they weren’t guys in granny-takes-a-trip clothes and groovy rock star haircuts like the other psychedelic bands. They might just have been a group of scientists tinkering away in a basement. But regardless, it’s one of the great psychedelic albums. It doesn’t sound at all bogus to me.
