As one half of electronic glam-folk-pop duo Goldfrapp and the driving force behind the Moog Ensemble, you might assume that Will Gregory fell in love with synth music’s aurally astounding sound the moment he first heard it. But the truth is, it freaked him out as a five-year-old lad growing up in Bristol, England.
“My mum used to listen to Radio Three, which played all sorts of art music, and I remember hearing [German electronic music composer Karlheinz] Stockhausen when I was quite young and being terrified that there was this kind of inhuman landscape,” he recalls. “I remember running upstairs to get away from it.”
Thankfully this freak-out gave way to a lifelong fascination, helped along the way by the whooping wail of hit sci-fi show Doctor Who’s theme music. Written by Australian composer Ron Grainer, he shared it with the BBC’s Radiophonic Workshop, where pioneering experimental music wizard Delia Derbyshire worked her otherworldly magic on it.
The joy of it is that... this is us creating the music old school, but with new instruments.
But it was the release of American composer and trailblazing trans woman Wendy Carlos’ 1968 album Switched-On Bach that really, err, switched Gregory on to the power of electronic music. She re-imagined Bach’s classics on a Moog synthesiser. “I was already a Bach nut,” Gregory says. “But that album showed the freedom you could take with Bach and still retain the authenticity and intention of it. That was very exciting. And you kind of knew that Bach would have been on-side with it, because he loved to fiddle around with his organs, as it were.”
You can luxuriate in Gregory and the Moog Ensemble, including Florence and the Machine keyboardist Hazel Mills, fiddling with classic film and television scores when they join forces with Richard Tognetti and the Australian Chamber Orchestra (ACO) to perform A Clockwork Orange and Beyond at venues including the Sydney Opera House and the Melbourne Recital Centre this May. The live show honours the unforgettable contribution of Carlos, Derbyshire and more.
The Moog Ensemble was lucky enough to catch an ACO show in London. “We were knocked out by them, so we feel like we’re junior partners. We’ve been rehearsing quite hard.”
Gregory’s looking forward to nerding out with Tognetti and co over dinner when the ensemble makes it to Sydney for the first dates on the ACO tour, whichalso takes in Wollongong Town Hall and Llewellyn Hall in Canberra. “I’m hoping we’ll get into the minutiae of [multiple James Bond theme composer] John Barry’s use of three alto flutes, what’s the optimum number of double basses, and what kind of organ did [Mission: Impossible composer] Lalo Schifrin use?”
Photograph: Supplied | Will Gregory
Sharing Tognetti’s love of film scores and classical influences on new wave sounds, Gregory is excited that he and his ensemble will get to tackle Carlos’ work, including her game-changing collaborations with Stanley Kubrick. She played around with Ludwig van Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony in Kubrick’s viscerally shocking adaptation of Anthony Burgess’s dystopian novel A Clockwork Orange, and chilled spines in his big screen take on Stephen King’s horror novel The Shining. You might also know her work on the digitally rendered future of sci-fi classic Tron.
A Clockwork Orange and Beyond will also see Gregory, Tognetti and co tackle Soviet composer Eduard Artemyev’s electric spin on Bach in the original Solaris movie, directed by Andrei Tarkovsky, and Vangelis’ haunting synth score for Ridley Scott’s sci-fi epic Blade Runner. “I’m a big fan of Vangelis, and Blade Runner is one of the standout scores, really,” Gregory says. “I remember turning up at the cinema and just being completely wowed. It was one of those experiences, a bit like [Kubrick’s] 2001: A Space Odyssey, where you’re kind of steamrollered.”
This fusion of classical and futuristic music has been an enduring love for Gregory. He recalls being swept away by synths doubling as percussion in ‘The Garden’, a track by West Berlin experimental band Einstürzende Neubauten, and hung up on an electronic cello baseline in John Barry’s theme to TV adventure comedy show The Persuaders, starring a not-yet-Bond Roger Moore and Tony Curtis. “I remember thinking, ‘What is that? Why is that? What is it evoking? Why does that sound special? What is this new language we are speaking here?’”
There’s something you get between the electronic-ness and the acoustic-ness, together, which is hopefully more than the sum of the parts.
He began amassing quite the collection of Moogs and more, deploying them in studio recordings and on tour with Alison Goldfrapp, then with the Moog Ensemble. “The concept was that if you could get a sound on an album, then that synth justified itself, and you could then justify buying lots of them.”
Gregory’s no stranger to film music himself. He played piano in Peter Greenaway’s erotic gourmet feast of a thriller The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover, starring Dame Helen Mirren, and scored My Summer of Love and Nowhere Boy. He also put music to the largely dialogue-free montage film Arcadia, alongside Portishead’s Adrian Utley. “I love working on silent films where you get to be the whole soundtrack,” Gregory says. “You get to be the dialogue, narration, sound effects, music, everything. You do become the megalomaniac that you probably want to be, but luckily, you’re not allowed to do it that often.”
It’s best to play with others. “They come with a load of references that you don’t know, and you learn something from their aesthetic about how pictures and sound go together.”
That’s why he loves playing live with the Moog Ensemble. “The joy of it is that everyone’s responding, listening and feeding into each other,” Gregory says. “This is us creating the music old school, but with new instruments.”
It’s why he can’t wait to team up with Tognetti and the ACO. “There’s something you get between the electronic-ness and the acoustic-ness, together, which is hopefully more than the sum of the parts.”
A Clockwork Orange and Beyond is premiering in Sydney before arriving to Melbourne's Recital Centre (May 20 and 22) and the Hamer Hall (May 21). Find out more and book your tickets here.
Find out more about the ACO's 2023 season over here.