Modern Love imprint Young Americans has launched a vinyl repress of the expansive Daphne Oram set originally released in 2010, Oramics. The collection runs 155 minutes and is an exact reproduction of the last pressing in 2013. It comes housed in a heavyweight, 300gm gatefold sleeve that features rare archival photographs and extensive information behind the content. 

Throughout her life, Oram was a wildly original musician, inventor, and theorist. She was the founder of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop and is cited as the first woman to build an electronic musical instrument, one that worked around the “drawn-sound” technique whereby strips of 35mm film would be manipulated before being fed into her home-made “Oramics” machine, which would convert and “read” the film into sound. Oram’s work remained largely unknown to the wider public until Clive Graham compiled this set for a CD release in 2007. 

Spanning 44 tracks, it demonstrates Oram’s work as some of the most varied and groundbreaking electronic music ever made. Grab a copy here and listen to “Rotolock” below.

Tracklisting

01. Introduction

02. Power Tools

03. Bird Of Parallax

04. In A Jazz Style

05. Purring Interlude

06. Contrasts Essconic

07. Lego Builds It

08. Pompie Ballet (Excerpt)

09. Intertel

10. Adwick High School No. 1

11. Look At Oramics

12. Rotolock

13. Purple Dust

14. High Speed Flight

15. Studio Experiment No.1

16. Four Aspects

17. Kia Ora

18. Dr. Faustus Suite

19. Adwick High School No.2

20 Tumblewash

21. Studio Experiment No.2

22. Snow

23. Rockets In Ursa Major (Excerpt 1)

24. Food Preservation

25. Studio Experiment No.3

26. Bala

27. Episode Metallic

28. Studio Experiment No.4

29. Adwick High School No.3

30. Fanfare Of Graphs

31. Studio Experiment No.5

32. Brocilliande

33. Mary Had A Little Lamb

34. Incidental Music For Invasion (Excerpts)

35. Costain Suite

36. Rockets In Ursa Major (Excerpt 2)

37. Passacaglia

38. Missile Away

39. Pulse Persephone4

40. Adwick High School No.4

41. Nestea

42. Rockets In Ursa Major (Excerpt 3)

43. Conclusion

44. Studio Jinks