Delia Derbyshire & Anthony Newley – Moogies Bloogies – 7″

These rare and until now, unissued recordings started life way back in 1966. They were written by the multi-talented Anthony Newley, maybe for a pop release, but possibly – bearing in mind the kinky nature of the lyrics – for an experimental British TV show he was working on at the time. Unusually he wanted some electronic backgrounds for his words, and so called in the help of Delia Derbyshire, moonlighting a little from the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. By the time the tracks were completed Newley was on his way to the USA for further acting and songwriting commitments (Doctor Doolittle I believe), and the tracks have remained in his archive since. Both recordings are the Newley edits of the tracks.

According to Martin Guy at WikiDelia.com, Derbyshire’s “Moogies Bloogies” backing originates from simple sine tones, and “Delia spent 64½ hours working on this piece every day from the 2nd to the 11th of August 1966 including a single monster session of 16½ hours on the 9th and a “radical rethink” on the night of Wednesday 10th”. The music was also played out once (we assume without the lyrics and without Newley) at one of the Unit Delta Plus concert events.

According to legend Derbyshire was originally not too pleased with the musical results, but came to love “Moogies Bloogies” later in her life.

As for “I Decoded You” we realised when mastering the track that this was not all it seemed – it’s classic Newley vocals but certainly not classic Delia Derbyshire sound generation. We put our heads together and came to a most interesting sonic conclusion; this is Delia sampling. Yes, sampling in 1966. We believe the background sounds are made up of a number of samples from other sources, standard BBC Radiophonic tape loops for SFX or white noise generation, and a fascinating edit of “Evolutionen 5: Waltz” by Dutch electronic pioneer Henk Badings (all his work is available on the fine compilation “Dutch Electronics”). This music must surely add more weight and intrigue to the ever-growing Delia myths.

We can’t escape the fact that that these two unique “perv-pop” recordings are the result of a most extraordinary and wholly unexpected collaboration, a bizarre blip in the history of both these fascinating artists. And thanks to this first ever pressing they can begin a whole new trip into the minds of musical collectors everywhere.