New Musical Delights on BBC4

By Paul Dakeyne

October 5, 2009 | Posted in Music Technology

It has come to my attention… No, that’s not right.. Dudes, a heads up on some cool music s**t on BBC4! …More rock ‘ n roll huh? Anyway, what a great Autumn/Winter season we have coming to wash away the ‘create a popstar’, ridiculous decision making in X-Factor. Sure, we’ve all seen the usual muso-docs on every band/genre going, but a scan over the Channel’s upcoming schedule press pack indicates fresh musical meat to be chewed.

Guitarist’s and Rock God’s can salivate over ‘Metal Brittania’, which traces the evolution of the UK specific Heavy Metal genre through the 60′s into the 70′s. Usually working class lads picking up guitars and forging their own vision of paranoia and darkness, the genre fed it’s own long-haired, head banging audience creating a sub-culture, only slightly dented by the emergence of Punk in the late 70′s. Metal’s new generation continued to fly the flag from thereon into the 80′s and all this is catalogued in what promises to be an entertaining, interesting, if ‘loud’ documentary.

Keeping on the UK bias (hooray!), another new production focuses on the early 80′s very, British Synth-Pop genre. ‘Synth-Brittania’ rewinds to the sons of Kraftwerk, kicking off with late 70′s pioneer, Gary Numan, checking in with analogue twiddler’s, O.M.D., Human League, soft Cell and Depeche Mode etc. Appealing to an ‘alienated youth’ seeking another sound and a fantasy world of new romanticism, synth-pop, 80′s electronica (call it what you will) still has a massive influence on today’s [techno, electro] dance music DJ’s.

Other upcoming musical delights are:

Latin Music: Charting Latin music’s influence on America’s cultural and social landscape

Royal Opera House: Winter operatic highlights

Leeds International Pianoforte competition: A showcase for some of the best young piano talent

Sacred Music: An exploration of Western ‘Sacred Music’ composers and their work

Synth Brittania appears due for transmission, Friday 16th October @ 9pm. For this and all other shows above, be sure to keep an eye on TV listings

About Paul Dakeyne

Paul Dakeyne has written 589 post in this blog.

Paul Dakeyne is a DJ/Producer who has dedicated the past two decades of his life to dance music production and DJ'ing. For six years, he toured globally for the world famous Ministry of Sound and has played DJ sets for the likes of U2 and for the legendary, Kraftwerk, Although remixing around 250 records in his career, as an artist in his own right, Paul landed one of dance music's seminal crossover moments with his "18 Strings' monster hit by Tinman - scoring a UK top ten in 1994. He also co-wrote and produced the music for BBC's Watchdog and Crimewatch when they were both revamped in 2001 and '06 respectively. His other career highlights have included an A&R stint for Mercury Records, lecturing in 'DJ culture and music technology' and creating mash-up mixes for Radio 1's, Chris Moyles. Paul joined the DV group in 2003 leading to his role as blog and feature author here at the DV Mag.

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Tags: BBC4, electro-pop, Guitar, metal, Rock, synths

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