Dream Machines by Matthew Collin: book review – Louder Than War

Dream Machines: Electronic Music in Britain from Doctor Who to Acid House by Matthew Collin
Published by Omnibus Press
A trip back in time celebrating early pioneers, mavericks, and revolutions in sound with technology at its heart.
The cover of Matthew Collin’s latest book emanates acid house vibes. Step inside this bible of the genre and travel back to the genesis of electronic music in Britain.
Collin describes a post-war British resistance to sound experimentation and European counterparts who embraced music concrète and elektronische musik; the foundations of electronica. Meanwhile, homeland developments were strongly affiliated with the BBC’s Radiophonic Workshop. Its primary purpose was to create sound effects largely popularised through television programmes. Perhaps unknowingly, the BBC embedded a love for the genre that ’60s children would take with them into adulthood.
Dream Machines celebrates pioneers, mavericks, and undervalued female icons. Collin traces electronic music’s metamorphosis from underground beginnings to psychedelic discovery by The Beatles and Pink Floyd. ’70s adventures in prog rock, industrial music, post-punk, synth-pop, and art rock follow. Next come connections to reggae and dub and ’80s electronica. We reach hip-hop, noise experimentalists, and sample mania, peaking at the widely heralded rave scene with house, techno, and acid. Enthusiasts, pioneers, ex-military equipment, and the BBC (Auntie) all play a part. Furthermore, Collin celebrates a strong DIY ethos that resonates through the decades of electronica’s evolution.
Collin paints a landscape of ‘uncommon characters’, including eccentric film composer, futurist Desmond Leslie, and now iconic Delia Derbyshire. In defiance of the BBC’s refusal to develop her ideas, Celia Oram exploited its resources secretly creating nocturnal sound collages. As a child, the aptly named Janet Beat dropped cutlery into the piano to create jingle jangle effects when playing. She also broke the family gramophone trying to play records backwards. Janet faced harsh retribution from her father who destroyed her early work on tape, disparagement from her university lecturers as a music student, and then sabotage by colleagues at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama who tampered with her equipment. Beat persevered nonetheless and finally achieved acclaim at the age of 83 for her album: Pioneering Knob Twindler.
It is hard to conceive that only a few decades ago, the now superseded cassette recorder was a sought-after new invention that at best had been heard of but rarely seen. Furthermore, owning a reel-to-reel tape machine was aspirational; electronic sound pioneers trawled second-hand and junk shops to build their systems from repurposed ex-military technology. Sound editing, now familiarly a digital process was a manual labour of physical tape splicing and creating sound bank resources.
Through the decades Collin examines the art form’s relationship with and expression of the zeitgeist. Featuring iconic tracks, from the Dr. Who theme, to The Buggles, Video Killed The Radio Star, Depeche Mode (with no less than a whole chapter entitled Just Can’t Get Enough), New Order’s Blue Monday, Frankie Goes To Holywood’s Relax, Soul to Soul: Back to Life and on it goes.
He highlights the significance of access to grant-funded higher education. This facilitated influential working-class art school graduates (Bryan Ferry, Brian Eno) in evolving new formats, styles, and technologies. Further documentation includes the DJ as performer, and the popularity of the gay club scene as typified by London venue Heaven. Somewhat inevitably, ‘plunderphonic pop’ commercialisation of the form comes into play.
From Collin’s early consideration of differences between continental interests in the avant-garde and British stiff-upper-lip resistance, he comes full circle to electronic music democratising UK music-making as an evermore accessible means of creative expression.
You can buy the book here.
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Words by Bryony Hegarty. You can read more by Bryony at her Author Archive
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