56 years young: the legendary Radiophonic Workshop

You need to know more about the Radiophonic Workshop. Don't let anyone tell you that the use of synthesisers started with Kraftwerk, Vince Clarke or whoever - simply reply with "but what about the BBC Radiophonic Workshop?" and then tell them they're wrong.

It would be folly to say that anyone was the first person/group to be using synths to make music - it's a pointlessly improvable claim - but what simply isn't in doubt, is that electronic music was being knocked out in BBC-funded labs from the 1950s onwards, and even better still, some of the early members of said labs are currently touring the 2014 festival circuit.

The most famous tune the Radiophonic Workshop was responsible for is the Doctor Who theme tune (hear Orbital's modern-day remix of it below).

Furthermore if you consider that last year was the 50th anniversary of Doctor Who, what a brilliant turn up for the books it is that after all these years, some of the scientists behind it are at last getting some serious recognition for it. And not only that, they're appearing up on stage, some of them aged over 80 years old.

Other noteworthy productions included the futuristic soundtracks for Blake's 7 and the early-80s TV adaptation of The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, but it wasn't just about epic electronic soundscapes; in the beginning it was more about jingles for various radio shows, with Spike Milligan's legendary Goon Show being one of the first.

It would be great to think that this publicly funded laboratory paved the way for the likes of Brian Eno and Gary Numan to take the country by storm with synthesisers - that all this leg work down in a basement moved the science of sound forward, and Roxy Music, Numan, The Human League and others simply picked up the baton and gave the British public their first taste of electronic music in the charts.

But it wasn't quite as simple as that. For one, the BBC stipulated that no outside musicians were allowed to use the equipment; however journals of their findings were made public, which meant the workshop was revered enough to be visited by experimental musicians of the day. It is said that Pink Floyd deployed many techniques that were pioneered in the workshop, inspired by a visit there in 1967.

What is certainly true, is that the very idea of it - the idea of manically intellectual brains working together to develop sound through science and technology - was a genuine inspiration to artists that we herald today as being synth pioneers. The founder of the Human League, Martyn Ware, once said:

"When we started out with our two basic keyboards bought on hire purchase, the Radiophonic Workshop represented a kind of dreamland, this magical place where any sound could be made. If someone had said back then 'you could give up everything you've achieved and become part of the Radiophonic Workshop, just click your fingers', I think we'd have done it. That's how in awe of all that stuff we were."

Even in more recent times, the mystique of the place was such that Hot Chip's Al Doyle even went as far as writing a letter of protest to the BBC when the workshop finally closed in 1998, as it became harder and harder to justify the cost of a department making jingles and sounds that could be made by outside production companies with equipment that was becoming increasingly affordable.

But there is something brilliantly imperial and British about this whole thing… that complete and utter belief that there had to be innovation - that the people needed it - that the taxpayer was going to jolly well pay for it - that nobody would get any credit for it - and that it took until 1998 for commercial reality to prevail over intellectual ambition.

And then of course we look at the present day, how the British public is reveling in something that's, well, old, and a bit eccentric. We saw the last Doctor Who, Matt Smith, appearing on stage with Orbital at Glastonbury with a techno version of the Doctor Who theme tune in the background, and there's a fair chance that some of the crowd will have also seen the originators of that tune on one of their many tour dates this year.

What's more, The Radiophonic Workshop has actually been revived recently, by a group fronted by Matthew Herbert (hear his amazing rework of Louie Austen's 'Hoping' below). This is separate from the Radiophonic Workshop described in this article - Matthew Herbert does not perform with them (although just for good measure, former Prodigy drummer Kieran Pepper does perform with them) - but it is based on a similar scientific concept.

We had the privilege to witness the most high brow of seminars at Sonar last year, where Herbert made the case for the development of electronic instruments that were deliberately arcane and cryptic - that would have no kind of display or even instruction - in order to encourage the user's creative mind to flourish.

This is in opposition to what he deems is the technological overload of the present day, where he cites the huge availability of different software synthesisers and sound libraries as a reason for a lack of creativity - that producers are becoming slaves to the gismos on offer as opposed to thinking more laterally to create something original themselves.

It is this kind of creative dilemma that the current workshop will be tackling, and while they will not be producing sounds for the modern-day Doctor Who, their very existence says it all about just how immense the whole project was in the first place, and how relevant it still is today.

Or maybe it doesn't quite say it all. The sight of a bunch of OAPs on stage at Festival No6 on September 5th, spooling tape machines and operating equipment that looks like it could have been used to launch a missile at the Soviet Union during the cold war… that basically says it all about the absurd genius of the Radiophonic Workshop: an absolute must for anyone who is interested in electronic music.

Radiophonic Workshop will perform at Festival Number 6 this year. Follow the box below to get your Festival Number Six tickets.

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