The Race For Space

Captures the time period that I was growing up, small boy overtaken by the prospect of a future reaching into outer space.

Sampled sound clips from public service broadcasts ain't new but I felt lucky enough recently to catch a live session of the duo on youtube Soundcheck of the moon landing of Apollo 11 powering to its descent with each retro rocket being fired in a command-response sequence by flight controllers at mission control exclaiming "Go!". Such that this Can inspired krautrock 'jauntingly' grabs the pioneering spirit of the journey so skilfully is testament to the talents of Messrs Willgoose Esq. and Wrigglesworth (Percussion). The music halters to strident guitar tones as the celestial body comes closer to touching down then reaching its climax with all the deft touches of a Sigur Ros ( ) passage - rather impressive stuff. After "we've had shut-down" and the lunar module has landed the Flight Commander tells the room to "keep the (excited) chatter down" - a sound bite that has a wry sensibility some 40 odd years after the event is spliced into its less significant new moment of musical history.However, if Go! is a wonderfully inspired object lesson in sound poem juxtapositional treatment then the stand out track for me is 'The Other Side' which is nothing short of an epic piece of atmospheric musical teleportation describing the events of the first live transmission loops that travel over the back side of the moon. The men aboard Apollo 8 are accompanied by an arpegiated synthesiser to a light melodic guitar refrain and syncopated percussion reminding me of the jazz infused band 'I'm Not a Gun'. But as they go over to the other side synth pads envelope out to a heart beat rhythm to such spell binding effect that the brief but tense wait of a renewed signal with Houston captures the poignancy of successfully reaching out to their compatriots back home. Even technical data read outs from the steadying ship of the Flight Director lend the passage an air of human destiny, so much so I began to wonder that if ever technical facts were needed as an excuse to inspire classroom activity and beyond then.. PSB might surely serve as an unofficial arm of the BBC - the very epitome of inform, educate and entertain!I was slightly less enthused by some of the remaining tracks constructed around samples that are are a bit pastiche like for my taste and not so story invoking reminding me me of Lemon Jelly or Paul Hardcastle's ner ner ner 19 for example. However they are easy listening and great sources of infotainment provocation that can lead to a spate of google searches!In summary, an album with a rather clever take on the history lesson artfully composed to well constructed niche electronic music that is particularly accomplished in its sound scoring and instrumentation that I would expect film and possibly TV exploitation to be next on the band's hit list.

Public Service Broadcasting's excellent debut album posed one important question. Was this a gimmick and if not how could you repeat the trick on a follow up. The Race For Space answers that question easily and is the equal of its predecessor. A concept album it uses the public service broadcasting around the space race, the NASA audio and Smoke Faries (for reasons to follow) to great effect. This is not a chronological sequence. The album starts with the Rice address by JFK, accompanied by a choir. Reaching a climax around the infamous 'we choose to do these things not because they are easy, but because the are hard.' Its rousing stuff, just like the speech. Other tracks follow familiar paths to the previous album with Go being a glorious guitar riff amongst the descending sequence of Apollo 11. Gagarin is a funk work out which is memorable. Fire in the Cockpit is a haunting number that looks at the death of three astronauts. Valentina is the departure here as it uses The Smoke Fairies vocals instead of PSB. The reason for this, made clear in the excellent liner notes, is that there were no female voices in PSB at the time. So to give this number, which celebrates the first female cosmonaut its proper due Smoke Fairies are the vocals. It works well.PSB are no one trick ponies and this is a follow up which rouses the soul as it trips through a memorable period in recent history. I would recommend buying the actual CD on this occasion for two reasons. The first being the liner notes which make a great read. The second being the dual cover, one depicting Apollo 11 and the other Sputnik. I am no space geek but loved this.

I absolutely love this album. I heard Go! on the radio a few months ago and was hooked from that very minute. For me it's a fresh sound, mixing sound bites and samples from the archives of the British Film Institute. I hadn't heard anything like this before and loved the whole idea. It's a concept album following, as you can guess from the title, the Race for Space, starting with "The Race for Space" sampling JFK's famous speech - we choose to go to the moon. The next few tracks cover famous events from Sputnik and Gagarin, the first satellite and human in space respectively through to the first spacewalk (E.V.A) and landing on the moon (Go!). The finale is a track titled "Tomorrow" which brings a close to the Apollo missions.The album has excellent pacing and a mixture of sounds; there are more upbeat tracks such as Gagarin and Go!, and more haunting sounds like Fire in the Cockpit. Throughout the album you get such a sense of history, it's inspiring and it's exciting but it's also sad and emotional. I find it a great album to have on in the background while working, but I also have to admit I really enjoy listening to Go! when driving.I'm not sure everyone will like/appreciate this album, which is fair enough, but I would urge anyone who might be interested to give it a chance. Personally, I was very impressed and thought it was an innovative approach to music. I look forward to hearing more from Public Service Broadcasting, wondering what topic they will cover next!