Delia Derbyshire & Barry Bermange - Inventions For Radio: Dreams (1964)
>radio play, dark ambientAn experimental radio play by Delia Derbyshire (of White Noise fame) and poet Barry Bermange. "This programme of sounds and voices is an attempt to re-create in five movements some sensations of dreaming - running away, falling, landscape, underwater and colour. All the voices were recorded from life (by Barry Bermange) and arranged in a setting of pure electronic sounds."
The dreamers seem to have been selected because they have especially mellow, dream-like voices and go into vivid details - describing the visual scenery and associated sensations. In fact there are several speakers and their words are chopped up and looped to achieve an uncanny effect. That alone would be worth hearing, but even better, it's set to a background of sparse, droning ambient electronic music. The music really is ambient, and unlike other early electronic experiments that sound clumsy and outdated now, this recording is surely as eerie and surreal today as it must have sounded in 1964.
Despite limited technology and (I would assume) people's unfamiliarity with pure electronic and tape music at the time, it perfectly complements the dream sceneries: the panic of being pursued by unseen foes, the feeling of endlessly falling, the familiar and unfamiliar blended together, of being lost, disoriented, confused, and quite often of death. There are five overlapping themes: running, falling, land, sea, and colour. Some clips are only played briefly for a second or two, others last a minute or more and are repeated throughout. Again, it's not just what they have to say that creates the overall experience, but the sound of their voices and how the clips are arranged and layered with the music. There's genius behind this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_zsqO3oLkMhttp://www6.zippyshare.com/v/89797608/file.html 
