Radio Documentaries
John Harrison and the Music of Creepshow
A peek behind the curtain of a classic horror soundtrack!
From an original interview, hear how John grew up watching movies at the local cinema, toured with rhythm and blues legend Roy Buchanan, connected with George Romero in Pittsburgh – and almost completely by accident – came to score one of the most exciting soundtracks in horror film history.
Originally broadcast as part of the Halloween Listening Party 2019. BACKSTORY HERE
No Such Thing as a Coincidence: An interview with filmmaker Robert Alcock
In 1978, a young pilot from Melbourne, Frederick Valentich, disappeared while flying over the Bass Strait — a stretch of water that separates the island state of Tasmania from the Australian mainland. Just before disappearing, he reported seeing lights around his plane, and despite a lengthy search over the following days, neither he or the plane were ever recovered.
Because of the sensational nature of this story it went all around the world, attracting media speculation about whether his plane had been whisked away by UFOs. This was late in 1978 — the film Close Encounters of the Third Kind had been released in Australia earlier that year and was still fresh in everyone’s minds.
My friend Robert Alcock, who was about eighteen at this time, developed an ongoing interest in this story. BACKSTORY HERE
That Dr Who Sound! Descendants of the Radiophonic Workshop
That Dr Who Sound was a radio documentary I made in 2013 to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the world’s longest running science-fiction series. It was co-produced with ABC Radio National’s Into the Music program.
Interestingly, I had started this project before even realising the anniversary was coming up: I had initially thought of writing an article about how, over the years, I had noticed many electronic musicians who had been influenced by the sound of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, the unit within the BBC that made not only music for Doctor Who, but also most of their radio jingles, sound effects, theme songs, and full soundtrack like that for The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.
Thinking about it as a long blog post, I suddenly realised that this would make a perfect radio documentary; I would be talking about something where I could then play examples of what I was talking about. This would be way better than just an article with youtube embeds! BACKSTORY HERE
The Sinister Low Note of John Carpenter and Alan Howarth
Filmmaker John Carpenter has become famous also for his music scores. He has influenced an entire scene of music makers. But he never worked in isolation. This interview is with his most important musical collaborator, Alan Howarth. BACKSTORY HERE and as an ARTICLE ON MEDIUM
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