3-2-1-Liftoff! As a kid I couldn’t imagine more exciting words. The “space era” was in full swing, and interplanetary dreams were all around, in science fiction as well as on the news. Space-y rock like Pink Floyd’s Interstellar Overdrive and Dark Side of the Moon merged the ideas about outer and inner exploration (“…is in my head.”). NASA sent a golden record to outer space and tried to communicate with aliens about how they could decode the signals by correctly interpreting the cryptic symbols etched on the surface of that disc. But how would our greetings and musical excerpts and field recordings of nature sounds actually be experienced by another species? Maybe like the strangest music they’ve ever heard. And perhaps they’re broadcasting their radio signals our way, but it’s not in the right frequency or tempo for us to even experience it as music.

The nostalgia for a simpler experience of the excitement of the potential of space travel is bound up with my childhood and teen years. Rodrigo Fresán’s novel The Bottom of the Sky reactivated many of these thoughts and feeling for me, as well as memories of letting my thoughts drift while listening to Pink Floyd. I named this piece after the novel because as I worked on this alien soundscape, I realized that perhaps this strange shape is simply another way of doing things, one we’re not used to, but that we might grow to appreciate. The mysterious swirling and reversing of time is an acknowledgement that our experience of time isn’t universal, as explored in Arrival. And in honor of the Voyager’s golden disc, I have even encoded a snippet of a Beethoven piece using the time-rearranging tool called granular synthesis. The piece began as a synth improv, with two voices articulating the same melody in different ways. I then muted parts from my recording until a structure began to emerge. I added drums and other layers until it seemed like a fitting greeting for a visitor.

The second piece is an excerpt from a live improv by Emilio Terranova and myself. He played acoustic bass and I processed that in real time on my modular synth and added some other sounds. Many thanks to ET for his fearlessness in joining me in this experiment. It’s also appropriate that a search for new musical territory should be undertaken by someone whose name means “new land or territory” and whose initials are shared by a famous film Extra-Terrestrial.

The second track has a video that I put together using analog video synthesis and blending it with some other footage: youtu.be/KLv2dgfQDg0


The third and final piece presented here also started as a modular synth exploration. I suddenly found it trying to make a very rhythmic piece. Ironic that when the machines rise and become sentient, they just want to make dance tracks. I added drums and called it squelchy techno. I named it after Guillermo Saccomanno’s Gesell Dome. The title is another name for an observation chamber. The novel’s protagonist Dante shows us around the disco. But who’s watching? And from where? Should we be worried, or should we just throw our hands in the air like we just don’t care?


This album was created in the Spring of 2022. It combines real and imaginary spaces, but mostly imaginary, even utopian. I hope you enjoy having a look around.
Some of the tools involved in its creation are: acoustic bass (Emilio Terranova), Ableton Live 11, Pro Tools, modular synth, Korg SQ-1, contact mics, repurposed recordings, etc.

Many thanks to Emilio Terranova, Dr Timothy Fischer and the rest of the MTM program at CCU, especially Dean Dr Claudia Bornholdt. Thanks to Rodrigo Fresán and Guillermo Saccomanno, as well as their translators Will Vanderhyden and Andrea G. Labinger and publisher Open Letter. Thanks to Brian Eno, David Bowie, Robert Fripp, Markus Reuter, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Ludwig van Beethoven, André Ruschkowsky, Paul Morley, Alex Ross, and countless others, infinite like the stars.