Those of us who live in Commonwealth countries, or travel a lot to them, often inform ourselves via the BBC News World Service, televised BBC News updates, etc. The musical intros/outros as of late have been some fairly good dance music. (I’ve been known to dance to some of them myself, alone in my hotel room.)
I took it on myself to research them today. They’re all composed by David Lowe, formerly known as Dreamcatcher. Turns out it’s incredibly difficult to get your hands on most of them. Aside from one 4-track album (BBC World: The Music, online at last.fm), the only place you can find them is by watching TV or listening to the World Service.
That’s why I’ve put cleaned up 256Kbps mp3s of them online – as a public service for people who like dancing to “apocalyptic rave” music in their underpants in hotel rooms. If the BBC wants me to take them down, I will – but they need to provide for an alternate means to obtain them. These tracks are not on the BBC World: The Music album. These were sourced by off-the-air recordings, cleaned up in Audacity and tagged by yours truly in Winamp 5.54. (You can argue with me over the Genre tagging in the comments if you want. Is it Soundtrack? Or is it Techno? Does it matter?)
If this is your first visit, you probably want this track: BBC News Countdown 2008 Extended Version (3 MB). If you liked that, you’ll probably want the zip file of all 10 tracks (18.7 MB). Contents:
- BBC News Countdown 2008 – Extended Version
- BBC News Countdown 2008 – Special Mix
- BBC News Countdown 2008 – Remix (author unknown)
- BBC News English Regions Opening 2008
- BBC News English Regions Closing 2008
- BBC News Network Titles 2008
- BBC News Newsline 2008
- BBC News Wales Today 2008
- BBC News Reporting Scotland 2008
- BBC Breakfast News 2008
Oh, and the “apocalyptic rave” reference? Bill Bailey:
Many NPR stations in the US play BBC world news, you know…
Just saying, even us heathens have access and might (or in my case) do know this melody/beat.
Thanks wohali!
Of course the BBC News is on in the US, I didn’t mean to imply it’s not. I just think the BBC is more popular in Commonwealth nations than it is in the US…where for some reason it’s incorrectly seen as a leftist news organization (probably due to affiliation with NPR…)
But that’s neither here nor there.
Brings back memories of eating breakfast at my hotel in Tokyo, where they always had BBC playing on the TV. :)
Thank you so much for posting this! I’ve been looking for the last few days for this very theme!
The BBC is accused of being leftist when the Tories are in power, and of being neo-fascist when Labour are in 10 Downing Street, so that means they’re pretty darn neutral.
Joan –
Thanks so much for finding these and putting them up! It’s great stuff, and so difficult to find. This is a real public service….You are the best!
I love the BBC Countdowns, thanks so much for putting this up!
Great compilation… I have been searching for these tracks since I first heard them on BBC (India)… I finally found them here…Great work! Many thanks wohali!! Cheers!!!
thank you so much,
i was looking for these, they are really hard to find on internet.
i suggest see these sites too:
http://www.tvhome.co.uk/bbcnews24/sounds.phtml