Here is the News.

I'm suspending what seems to have been a constant uninterupted stream of shoegaze to talk about music that I don't actually have on my ipod, but a sub-genre of music which I have listened to all my life simply because it was way past my bedtime.

I know that Bill Bailey has already done this in a standup so I shall take a different angle by not being funny.



It is difficult to actually understand what music actually means if it is so deeply embedded into your psyche, but what a fucking CHOOOOON!! (okay so maybe choooon isn't the right word for a piece of music like this, but...) news theme tunes were serious pieces of avant garde time shifting scene setting soundscapes. it sets the tone for what is going to be a harrowing half hour. ecconomic problems, social problems and social problems, the absolute worst of all three as well, nothing you can do about it.



British news theme tunes are by there very definition the sound of the coming apocalypse, a key factor in the writing of these pieces of music would have been when they were written: Slap bang in the middle of the cold war. Of course they are going to sound apocalyptic, they were written during the brink of the apocalypse.

Before the wall came down BBC towed the line with post apocalyptic thing. Several rebrands during the late 80s and early 90s varied the BBC news theme, none of which remotely competed with either Panorama or ITN


Of course after the cold war ended and acid house and ecstacy infiltrated the BBC offices, we got the BBC news theme tune we know and love today.



In terms of dance music, this could easily have been released on Bedrock or Kompakt records, I have heard similar tracks at Fabric, Turnmills and the End.

There are a very specific set of rules which govern the themes of music shows, they all have to have shifting time signatures, it is helpful if they are performed with a horn section, not in a dixieland jazz way, but in an urgent and threatening manner. This may not be the sort of stuff I listen to on the tube on the way in to work, but it is a powerful and attention grabbing tool to get the grown ups watching.