White Noise were American David Vorhaus, Delia Derbyshire (creator of Dr Who’s electronic theme music) and Brian Hodgson. Pioneering synthesisers and studio techniques in 1968, their only album together became the Holy Grail of electronica, along with the United States Of America’s debut.
It took the trio a year to craft six complex tracks using intricate tape surgery. The tripped-out Love Without Sound and My Game Of Loving are Brian Wilson’s psychedelic symphonies hijacked by acid dominatrixes and pushed to their wildest limits, Annie Bird intoning like a hotted-up Nico. Here Come The Fleas is Spike Jones loose in the Radiophonic Workshop, while Firebird and ethereal Your Hidden Dreams are wrapped in an unsettling, hallucinogenic shiver. The 11- minute The Visitation is the death disc taken to its furthest emotional levels as, amid spectral electronic heartbeats and climactic swirls, a girl sobs uncontrollably as her lover dies in a bike smash, before whispering from beyond the grave.
Studio time running out, the possessed boffins hastily concocted the terrifying Black Mass – An Electric Storm In Hell by putting a drum solo through the effects wringer as what sounds like damned souls screamed. Pure hell, the track became notorious for sparking bad trips.
A monumental reissue which still sounds like nothing else.
