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Unusual music for beautiful space images? No electronic space music, please?

  • Attention music lovers: I’m looking for music to accompany a gorgeous planetarium show about philosophy, cosmology, perception and the known universe. Know any good instrumental music that’d making an interesting and unusual choice to accompany images of distant space? Something Carnatic, Persian…beyond airy space music or Philip Glass? *** A colleague is doing a talk inside a sort of planetarium (a http://geodome.info/, actually) with a program that models the known, observable universe to its limit. Here’s some http://www.flickr.com/photos/jennifernc/sets/72157614166725046/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/jennifernc/sets/72157614199690817/ of the visuals accompanying the talk. He’s currently using airy electronic music which works fine. But I wonder if there isn’t another approach. I’ve heard that Sergei Eisenstein was inspired to juxtapose images in his movies by seeing Japanese ideograms. An ideogram showing a knife and a heart together, for instance, does not mean murder or violence, but sorrow. I would like to try to find music that creates a similar effect, and provides a richer context for my colleague’s ideas. I first thought of Carnatic music, with its ties to ancient Hindu religion, so much more in touch with cosmic timeframes than Western religions. But most of the instrumental Carnatic violin music I’ve found has changes in tempo that don’t make it a good choice for background music. Ideally, the music should be instrumental, relatively unobtrusive and not have jarring percussion/dissonance/changes in tempo/etc. that would distract listeners significantly away from the speaker. Also, ideally, it’d be downloadable and in the public domain or created by an artist willing to let it be used. Any ideas? Love to have them! Thanks!

  • Answer:

    http://www.last.fm/music/stars+of+the+lid are a) awesome and b) always make me think of spacey things. And Their Refinement Of The Decline in particular.

Jennifer S. at Ask.Metafilter.Com Visit the source

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Offhand, given my background, and purposely avoiding anything obviously space-themed, I can think of: Bach's Prelude from Cello Suite No. 1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LU_QR_FTt3E Barber's Concerto for Violin and Orchestra, 2nd movement http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQ9QVvOoThI Shostakovich's Symphony no. 5, 3rd movement (Largo) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xi3zcILtS1g http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hna6Sb4RtE8 Listen to the first few minutes of each of these, and see if they fit the bill. Let me know if they do.

Busoni

Yo La Tengo's http://www.yolatengo.com/audio/merch.html is excellent, and would make a good match for your purposes, in my opinion.The Sounds of the Sounds of Science features 78 minutes of instrumental music by Yo La Tengo. The CD contains the entire score written and performed by the band to accompany eight legendary but rarely-seen undersea documentary shorts by influential French avant-garde filmmaker Jean Painleve. Yo La Tengo's score, originally debuted on stage at the San Francisco Film Festival in April 2001 with the band providing live accompaniment to the films, echoes the films' haunting surrealist imagery, yet the music is equally evocative on its own, from the dreamy soundscapes of “Sea Urchins” and “How Some Jellyfish Are Born” to the harsher, more dissonant moods of “Liquid Crystals”and “The Love Life of The Octopus”. In September 2001, the group headed into a Nashville studio and laid down the complete score with longtime producer Roger Moutenot. The undersea feel of this album would translate well to space, I think. I see that you're looking for free stuff, so buying the album is out (though it's totally worth it), but on the page linked above they do have one of the tracks available for free download. It's 12 wonderful minutes long.

carsonb

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000003D0Q/metafilter-20/ref=nosim/ I have this CD and was recently listening to it, and I can't recommend it enough. No dissonance or vocals or jarring shifts; all slow, minimalistic, evocative, eerie.

Jaltcoh

Icelandic group Sigur Ros's albums 'Ágætis Byrjun' and 'Takk' might be good.

tokidoki

http://www.natoarts.com/icebreaker/ (aka Icebreaker International or Icebreaker & Manual--not the other Icebreaker), especially Into Forever.... (esp. 'Into Forever,' 'Inner Rings,' and 'A Turning') and also Distant Early Warning (esp. 'Melody for NATO,' 'Co-Prosperity Sphere' and 'Listening Station.') (links to boomkat for preview purposes: http://www.boomkat.com/item.cfm?id=27117 http://www.boomkat.com/item.cfm?id=55207&highlight=55216)

snuffleupagus

brownpau

Seconding the Pärt, "Fratres" suggestion. You might also try the first movement of Maurice Ravel's "Rapsodie espagnol" ("Prélude à la nuit"), or the second movement of Stravinsky's "Symphony of Psalms" (though it has Latin vocals, and there's a fortissimo in the middle that might be jarring.) And for what it's worth, Holst's "The Planets" has nothing to do with space and science per se; Holst's inspiration was the astrological meanings of the planets. The final movement, "Neptune, the Mystic", fits your requirements to a tee.

Johnny Assay

Ladies & Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space, by Spiritualized.

media_itoku

Seconding the Planets by Holst.

Ironmouth

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