Having spent so much of 2022 in a fairly deep depressive state, that kept me from doing virtually anything other than teaching my classes, it likely would have made a lot of sense to focus on “Depression” as a mood for May, given that the month IS mental health awareness month. At some point I’ll do a show like that (though I’ll balance it with another emotion that relates to what it feels like when you come out of a depressive episode…maybe in 2023), this month wasn’t the month. And so, I was thankful for a bit of inspiration one day while I was in bed doomscrolling, and that inspiration came from outer space, specifically from NASA. Turns out that the first Friday of each May is International Space Day, and this year NASA celebrated by presenting the latest of its “sonifications,” where they make sounds connected to specific aspects of space. This year was special, because for the first time (at least that appeared to be the case) it wasn’t just NASA creating sounds, but actually using sound waves created in space to create sounds that we could hear. Of the two they shared, it was the second one that really provided the spark for this show. NASA’s Chandra X-Ray Observatory put together this sonification by melding together data from Chandra, the Hubble Space Telescope and the Atacama Large Milimeter Array in Chile. What you hear is the actual sound produced when some type of material fell into the Black hole in the Messier 87 Galaxy and produced a massive jet (known as a “Galactic Jet”).
While the image and the sound are beautiful, they are also incredibly terrifying when you think of them. Some thing passed through that black hole to produce that jet and that sound wave (people often think that Space is a vacuum, but in fact where there are pockets of Space gas, that gas will carry sound, which is how the radio waves from Messier87 made it to Earth), so it’s almost like we’re hearing some kind of cosmic swan song. And what’s really wild is we’re not supposed to actually hear it! The sound produced in that moment is one that human ears cannot hear. NASA had to scale the sounds up 57-58 octaves for us to hear it, or, another way of thinking of it, the sounds are 144-288 quadrillion times higher than they were originally!!! That shit is just fucking nuts. But the result is 30 seconds of ethereal, cosmic, spacey sound, something that would have been perfectly placed on the legendary “Music From The Hearts Of Space” radio program, that I used to listen to as a kid and had a hand in shaping how I hear music of this like.
And then, to top it all off, we got word that space synth pioneer Vangelis passed away on May 17th, and that just sealed the deal that this month’s mood would be “Spacey.” As I mention on the show, I’ve been buying a lot of spacey, synthy records over the last couple years, often playing them in my home with the echo effect on and just vibing. With all of those things coming together, it just made perfect sense to spend the hour on some spacey synthy sounds and that’s what I did. It also felt right to just do the whole show as a single mix, instead of breaking it up into separate sets. I dug the vibe, and hope you do too. We’ll see where we go with things for June. As much as this world appears to be on fire, in multiple ways, Space sounds like a really good place to be…but for Pride month, perhaps I’ll focus on queer love and the possibilities for something better existing down here on the ground…Until then, enjoy the show.
Moods In Free Time: 029 – Spacey
Playlist – Moods In Free Time 029: Spacey
{opening theme} The Visitors – The Juggler – In My Youth (Muse)
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NASA – Sounds From The Black Hole At The Center Of The Messier 87 Galaxy
– Single (Self-released)
Vangelis – Theme From Cosmos – The Music Of Cosmos (RCA)
Nightcrawlers – Tanzwut – Nightcrawlers (Synkronos)
Gert Thrue – Sound Paint Pictures Of Cosmic Love – Sound Paint Pictures Of Cosmic Love (Stuk)
Automatic Man – I.T.D. (Interstellar Tracking Devices) – Automatic Man (Island)
Orange Power – Stargates – Sound Giants (Sonoton)
Renato Mendes – A Noite Do Meu Bem – Electronicus (RGE)
Space Art – Odyssey – Trip In The Center Head (If Records)
Vicente Rojas y Orquesta Egrem – Hermanados En La Hazana – Intercosmos: Vuelo Espacial Conjunto (Egrem)
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{closing theme} Tony Williams – Wild Life – Believe It (Columbia)