Here at the North West HUB of the British Library’s Unlocking Our Sound Heritage project, we’re so into our analogue audio formats that it’s our mission to preserve, digitise, catalogue and share them. We’re set up to digitise 1/4 inch open reel tape, audio cassette, mini and micro cassette and transfer DAT, CD and MiniDisc.

Now sit back, relax and look as cool as Bauhaus front man Pete Murphy whilst the flying ducks are blown off the wall. Here’s a list of 5 films to watch that feature analogue audio as an integral part of each character’s journey.

Trick or Treat (1986)

With a title like Trick or Treat you might expect a slasher film of the video nasty era. Instead we find a funny high school yarn spun from the discovery of a hidden message recorded backwards in a recently deceased heavy metal star’s final record. The high school student who discovers the message then receives instruction direct from his hero when playing the record to take revenge on his classmates who have bullied him for his love of metal fandom. This escalates when an electrical surge to the record player brings his beloved metal icon back to life, in time to play one more Halloween show.

The film plays heavily upon the contemporary distrust (particularly from the American Christian right) of heavy metal music influencing children of the 1980s and the media fascination of hidden ‘backmasked’ messages. To have such a satire buried with a vhs box title and cover that would perpetuate the fear of such groups is itself part of the joke (see also with Ozzy Osbourne taking a small part as a TV preacher).

Baby Driver (2017)

A divisive film in my household, this is as close as you can get to a bank heist musical. With the constant infectious rhythms of an iPod playlist to distract the lead character Baby’s tinnitus, he drums, dances and high speed races his way through all sorts of criminal shenanigans. Yes, it may be the MP3 of the digital world signified by his white Apple headphones but the analogue cassette is at the heart of the film’s narrative.

A suitcase full of childhood mixtapes is the first clue to his attachment to analogue audio as medium for revisiting his childhood memories. Flashbacks triggered by audio tape show his professional musician mother singing to him, unsubtly signifying the loss of both his hearing and family. Indeed retrieving this audio cassette goes on to be a crucial motivation to the final third of the film.

The Lives of Others (2006)

In this film secret audio recording is shown to be the key tool in the East Germany secret police’s surreptitious mass surveillance of its citizens. With a Stasi officer bugging and blackmailing the partner of a prominent playwright, a dilemma unfolds with devastating consequences. The main actor Ulrich Mühe (who sadly died just after the film won Best Foregn Language Film at the 2007 Oscars) didn’t need to look far to gain inspiration for the part. He himself was under surveillance from his ex-wife and fellow actors with the East Berlin theatre.

See also the excellent TV series Deutschland 83 / Deutschland 86 ( available on 4oD in the UK). The second series includes a story line where secret messages are recorded, hidden within popular music cassettes and passed to loved ones across the wall.

Berberian Sound Studio (2012)

Toby Young’s character, Gilderoy, starts a job as a Sound Engineer on a 1970s Italian horror film using various analogue recording techniques to create foley sound, such as witches’ hair being pulled out and demonic vocal effects. In the sound studio we see all manner of cabbages, marrows and chains used for the foley effects but we rarely see the film they are syncing the sounds to. This leaves the worst to our imaginations as we watch the first shocked reactions on the face of the sound engineer become increasingly desensitised. A creepy and clever film with experimental flourishes that play with the very formats themselves.

Notes on Blindness (2016)

My favourite film from this list is an astonishing creative documentary with all audio from the recorded diaries and precious family memories of the late academic John M. Hull. Actors recreate the filmmakers’ interpretation of scenes via lipsync to the original audio. This real life story follows the writer and theologian as he becomes blind after years of deteriorating vision and the impact on his professional and family life. The audio diaries form a rich legacy and affecting record of their intimate lives.

The film also sparked an award winning VR project based on John’s sensory and psychological experience of blindness.

This list included no cinematic car tape deck scenes so here’s a YouTube compilation of them. What scenes/films would you add? (comments below)

You can find out more about the national Unlocking Our Sound Heritage project at the British Library’s website. Unlocking Our Sound Heritage is supported by The National Lottery Heritage Fund.

Oral histories are interviews with people talking about their memories of things that have happened in their life. They can be about particular events or about what daily life and places were like during their childhood. This can give us valuable insights into the past and help us to see history from a personal perspective.

Through the Unlocking Our Sound Heritage project, a collection of oral history from the Greater Manchester area is being digitised. One of these interviews is with Benny Rothman (1911-2002), an activist who was one of the organisers of the Kinder Scout Mass Trespass in 1932. In the interview he talks about the events leading up to the mass trespass, what happened on the day itself, and the aftermath including his prison sentence.

The Kinder Scout Mass Trespass took place on the 24th April 1932. At that time, it was illegal to go walking on privately owned land and there weren’t public rights of way like there are today. After having encountered aggressive gamekeepers while out rambling, a young group of walkers decided that something should be done. Kinder Scout is the highest peak in the Peak District so it was a prime location to take a stand, and in the end around 400 people took part in the trespass. In this clip, Benny Rothman talks about the decision to have the trespass.

As one of the leaders of the trespass, Benny Rothman provides a behind-the-scenes look at what happened on the day. He describes the scene of the large crowd of trespassers in animating detail and reveals that a third of the Derbyshire police force were there to deal with them! The trespassers made it up to the top despite running into some gamekeepers and held a meeting, which Benny Rothman spoke at.

However, on the way down they were met by the police who arrested some of the walkers. These clips talk about the group setting off for the walk up Kinder Scout and the encounter with the police.

Benny Rothman was one of the six people arrested on the day. He defended himself in court but was eventually found guilty of riot and sent to prison for four months. He was only 20 years old at the time and had trouble getting a job when he came out of prison but he continued to be an activist for the rest of his life. Here, he tells a story from his prison days.

The Kinder Scout Mass Trespass kicked off a movement pushing for better access to the British countryside and contributed to a change in the law and establishing public rights of way for walkers. In 1949, the Access to the Countryside Act was passed which meant that public access to Kinder Scout was finally granted soon afterwards so today anyone can go and walk in the footsteps of the original trespassers!

This blog post was written by Naomi Hall, an MA Library and Information Management student at Manchester Metropolitan University, who is currently on a work placement with Unlocking Our Sound Heritage.

If you would like to listen to the full interview (reference MANOH/20-21), it is accessible in the search room at Manchester Central Library. Benny Rothman’s papers are held at the Working Class Movement Library in Salford.

You can find out more about the national Unlocking Our Sound Heritage project at the British Library’s website. Unlocking Our Sound Heritage is supported by The National Lottery Heritage Fund.