A Little History of Surreal Music

When André Breton came to write the Surrealist Manifesto in 1924 urging a pure psychic automatism that would bring with it a worldwide revolution in consciousness, he failed to make mention of music. In fact, for the most part he hated music and thought it had no part to play within the Surrealist project. Ian McMillan isn’t discouraged… he’s confident that the same tenets that underpin Surreal writing, including collage, automatic writing and objets trouvés, can and have been applied to music by a whole range of artists and composers from John Cage to Captain Beefheart, Poulenc to The Beatles. He sets off to discover how he might recognise Surrealist music and what qualities it might offer the modern listener - but is waylaid when he gets a call on his lobster phone with sad news about his Uncle Frank. Fortunately, the likes of cultural historian Andrew Hussey, poet and musician Anthony Joseph, composer and harpist Anne Le Baron, music lecturer James Donaldson and Ira ‘Oompah’ Lightman are on hand to offer illumination and keep him on the wayward path to Surreal enlightenment.

Produced by Geoff Bird