Songs in the Key of S

Whenever I watch Look Around You, I’m almost more amazed by the music than anything else.

Don’t get me wrong. The idea that I could write anything like Look Around You is thoroughly ridiculous. But I at least feel I understand it, and a little of how it works. Gelg’s musical talent is magical and mysterious to me. My brain can’t even begin to comprehend it.

Sadly, despite the odd suggestion from Serafinowicz over the years, there has never been a Look Around You album released. (You’d think Warp would have been an obvious home.) But that doesn’t mean that – scattered across the internet – there aren’t ways of hearing lovely, clean, extended versions of some of Gelg’s finest.

So in lieu of that album – which I still hope will happen at some point – let’s see what we can scrape together.

Series 1

On the end credits of each episode of Series 1 of Look Around You is a URL: www.bbc.co.uk/lookaroundyou. Sadly, these days it brings you to a 404 page.¹ Luckily, the website is still online at a different address, and a bit of judicious clicking can bring you to this: a page with some music from Series 1. Not ripped directly from the programme: the actual clean music files.

Out of the eight links, three of them bring you to a 404 page again. So with some help from the Wayback Machine, I’ve rescued the missing files. As these seem somewhat precariously hosted now – old BBC sites are especially susceptible to linkrot, in my experience – I’ve hosted them all here for your listening pleasure.

The original files were – slightly bizarrely – uploaded with no descriptions, so I’ve also taken the liberty of identifying each track. The first three tracks had no name attached; the last five have their titles taken from the filename.

Piece One (1:31)
This is first heard during Experiment One of Sulphur. Sulphur is not attracted to magnets. Write that down.

Piece Two (1:34)
Probably my favourite of these pieces – the music used for introducing The Haunted Laboratory in Ghosts.

Piece Three (1:07)
First heard in the pilot Calcium, this is the music for the opening narration in each episode.

Piece Four, “Reggae” (0:50)
Unsurprisingly, this is the piece of music used at the end of Ghosts to point the next episode.

Piece Five, “Imhotep” (0:58)
Used for Problem One in Maths. “If Jean stands exactly 1 nautical mile away from Lord Scotland, how tall is Imhotep?”

Piece Six, “Sulphagne” (3:01)
Used during Experiment Two in Sulphur. This version is fully three times the length of the version used in the actual show.

Piece Seven, “Eight Ladies” (0:42)
Used for Problem Two in Maths, a lovely little Regency piece.

Piece Eight, “Haunted Laboratory” (1:38)
Used for Experiment Two in Ghosts. Don’t shit yourself.

All these pieces are lovely to have, but it’s worth noting yet again that this is just a tiny fraction of the music used in the show, and there really is tremendous scope for a proper album showcasing it all.² (Have I left enough hints yet? Have I? There’s going to be at least one more, you know.)

Anyway, we can’t leave our talk about Series 1 without something fun about “Little Mouse”, the song that slides neatly next to Hitchhikers “Share and Enjoy” and Father Ted‘s “Lovely Horse” as a comedy show suddenly springing an original song on the audience completely unexpectedly.³

Oddly, although “Little Mouse” was made available for download on the BBC Look Around You site, it’s in a pointless truncated version that seems designed purely to promote the DVD. Never mind; elsewhere online is something even more interesting: the original demo recording of the song. Set to some beautiful behind-the-scenes photos of Series 1 which I don’t think have been seen anywhere else.

The lyrics are damn close to the final version; the biggest difference is an unused version of the chorus at 1:35:

“Hey now, Little Mouse
It’s nice to get to know one another⁴
Hey now, Little Mouse
Show me what to do
Hey now, Little Mouse
Look to the north and we’ll find our Xanadu
Hey now, Little Mouse
Show me what to do…”

Though for my money, my favourite bit of the demo recording is right at the very end.

Series 2

Here’s the bad news: Series 2 of Look Around You unfortunately has nowhere near the amount of loveliness as Series 1 does online, which is a huge shame, as there’s some beautiful pieces of music in it. The single working link on original Series 2 site – of Toni Baxter’s song “Sexual Interface” – is just a rip from the episode audio.⁵ Boring! (Though to be honest, I probably couldn’t cope with more than 30 seconds of Sarah Alexander groaning.)

However, if we look further afield, there are a few gems. Firstly, on Robert Popper’s Soundcloud, there’s the full version of “Reggae Man” which closed the first episode, with loads of extra noodling at the end:

Peter Serafinowicz’s Soundcloud has a little more. Firstly, we have “Medibop”, as used on the Series 2 DVD extras:

But we’ve all heard that. More importantly, there’s an extended, clean version of “Sleep Laboratory”, used in the National Sleep Research Centre sketch in Health:

But best of all, we have: the full version of the music used in the BBC2 programme menus which start Food and Computers. All hail St. Frankenstein’s Day.

Isn’t that “06” in the title tantalising? Sadly, that’s your lot for Series 2, a series that has huge swathes of beautiful music just begging for a proper album release. And not even any narration-free version on the DVD. Maybe one day.

And Finally…

Still, for now, maybe we can console ourselves with this. Back in 2013, Peter Serafinowicz made the following mix for the Solid Steel radio show, to coincide with the release of the fourth Boards of Canada album Tomorrow’s Harvest. It’s an eclectic example of the kind of electronic music that clearly keeps him up at night. So if a mix which starts with the theme from a Canadian kids TV series from 1979 sounds like a good thing to you, then you’re in luck.

Oh, and there’s a bunch of Gelg tracks in there too, for good measure.

Thanks, Gelg. Thelg.⁶

1. You should probably check out Dirty Feed’s 404 page at some point, you know. Make sure you click on the Play button. ↩

2. While the DVD has a brilliant ‘Narration Free’ soundtrack option, you still get the sound effects interrupting the music, and you’re not going to get any unheard, extended goodness. ↩

3. I guess I should put Red Dwarf‘s “Tongue Tied” here, but to be honest, I’ve never been that keen on it. I once opined this at a Red Dwarf convention. It did not go down well. ↩

4. Later on at 2:27, this line changes to “Now we must take care of each other”, another unused line. ↩

5. No, the Wayback Machine offers us nothing more interesting this time – the rest of the media file links remain broken, and it doesn’t look like there was anything much of interest there anyway. ↩

6. Apologies. ↩

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