Isolated music suites from each episode of the second season of Blake's 7.

Time codes for each episode suite are as follows:

1. Redemption - 0:09
2. Shadow - 5:47
3. Weapon - 10:32
4. Horizon - 13:56
5. Pressure Point - 17:20
6. Trial - 19:09
7. Killer - 24:14
8. Hostage - 26:17
9. Countdown - 29:48
10. Voice From The Past - 32:57
11. Gambit - 38:01
12. The Keeper - 40:07
13. Star One - 45:29

The BBC science fiction series Blake's 7 ran for four seasons and fifty-two episodes from 1978-1981, teleporting from bleak dystopia to romantic space opera and back again with visits to various other sub-genres along the way.

Music was a crucial element of Blake's 7, often compensating for the impact of a low-budget on the show's visuals (full of invention but not always receiving the financial resources to do justice to the vision of the designers and visual effects team).

There's no better example of that than the glorious cues for the show's principal spacecraft - the Liberator - a symbol of hope against the corrupt and oppressive Terran Federation. That hope was conveyed musically by Dudley Simpson, who composed the music for fifty of the show's fifty-two episodes as well as its memorable title music.

Sadly, it's been impossible to hear the vast majority of the isolated music composed for Blake's 7 as the tapes of Simpson's scores are presumed to no longer exist.

This video is the second of four in which I have arranged suites of the music featured in each episode from the four seasons of Blake's 7.

I've focused on cues where there was no audible dialogue and have tried wherever possible to remove clicks, pops, footsteps and so on in order to enable the music to take prominence in the absence of any official isolated scores being available.

To do that, I've used Pro Tools and Audacity to get as much of the episodes' cues into the suites as possible (Paulstretch was a huge help! You will be able to tell when some cues or phrases have been extended using Paulstretch to mask moments where there would be speech or sub-linguistic sounds and noises in the broadcast episodes' soundtracks - I hope those moments aren't too jarring and enable the suites to be more inclusive of the music featured in each episode).

The project is intended as an educational one to highlight the music of Blake's 7 and that inevitably means showcasing the work of Dudley Simpson (1922-2017).

Simpson was born in Australia and was one of the major figures in British television music throughout the 1960s-1980s.

He studied in Melbourne and was the Principal Conductor at the Royal Opera House from 1960-1963 but it's Simpson's work for Doctor Who that he is probably most famous for - scoring his first story in the William Hartnell era ('Planet of Giants' [1964]) before becoming the show's most prolific composer in the Jon Pertwee and Tom Baker years.

For more on Simpson's splendid and enduring music for Doctor Who, I would wholeheartedly recommend exploring (and subscribing to!) Jess Jurkovic's magnificent 'Dudley Simpson IS Doctor Who' project, which features beautiful piano transcriptions and performances of Simpson's work for Doctor Who:

   • The Dudley Simpson IS Doctor Who Proj...  

Where Blake's 7 was concerned, Simpson composed the music for all but one of the thirteen episodes in the show's second season - Series B - broadcast on BBC1 from January 1979 onwards.

Blake's 7 was a showcase for Simpson's wonderfully distinctive approach to instrumental colour, especially his love of bass clarinet, French horn, flute and percussion and glistening electronic keyboards for the majestic Liberator cues (especially in 'The Keeper' and 'Star One'), making striking use of the Yamaha EX-42.

Tim Dickinson's superb Watching Blake's 7 blog has a terrific essay on the music of Dudley Simpson:

https://watchingblakes7.wordpress.com...

The lone exception in Series B was the eleventh episode, 'Gambit', which featured an electronic score by Elizabeth Parker, who by now was providing the special sound for the show and would do so for the rest of its run.

Blake's 7 featured outstanding 'special sound' by the BBC Radiophonic Workshop with Richard Yeoman-Clark providing the sound design for Series A and much of Series B until Elizabeth Parker took over from 'Hostage' onwards. Simpson's scores often work in tandem with the special sound of Yeoman-Clark and Parker and you can hear the former's brilliant sounds for the teleport process at several points in this video. Parker has referred to her approach as being more 'feminine' and 'organic' and she makes evocative use of her own voice and breathing as the basis for much of her special sound - you can hear an early example of this in 'The Keeper'.

I hope you enjoy this chance to experience the music of Blake's 7 in an extended isolated form - Series C and D to follow soon!