The sound of Mars
Mars is of sublime and magnificent beauty.
(UPDATE: I’ve composed a new album “Areophany”. Link to music here. Link to back story here.)
Something continues to draw us to it. It’s in our culture now. The Mars generation. I’m all in. I’ll help in any way I can. Do what I must.
I’ve already proposed a series of apps for colonizers and, as hard as I tried, I never did get that call from Elon. Dissapointing, but not discouraging. Not giving up.
The album
This time I’m going further. I’ve composed the soundtrack for the exploration and colonization of Mars.
Here it is. Ares.
Available in Spotify and Apple Music and almost everywhere else.
Listen to if you want, while you read.
It’s starts strong and aggressive, and ends mellow and contemplative. There’s a progression, a journey. It takes 200 years.
I’ll explain what each track is about further below.
Keep reading!
But why?
I can’t really remember when this planetary affair began. It might have been with Carl Sagan and his “Blues for a Red Planet” episode in the timeless Cosmos series.
What a profound change he made in my life. Storytelling at its greatest. The world is not the same without him.
He taught us of Schiaparelli and the intricate network of criss-crossing “canali”. Such naive and comically inaccurate understanding of the surface conditions and geography, matched only in ingenuity with the characters of the fantasy series of Edgar Rice Burroughs. We were taken, millions of miles away, by stories of abysmal valleys, impossible mountains and storms that lasted months and covered the planet in dust.
But nothing could beat careening through the tributaries of Valles Marineris in Carl’s Ship of the Imagination, exploring this fascinating new world for the first time.
No ship could take us there. These were the times of the Viking lander, when nothing seemed to survive on the surface of other planets for very long. But soon new robots landed, and through their eyes we discovered a world rich with past, present and future.
2004 was the year the Spirit rover landed (bounced) somewhere close to Gusev Crater.
I became Mars-struck. I checked-in daily for updates on Spirit and it’s brother robot (brobot?) Opportunity for about 5 years, until Spirit no longer responded. Learning about their new adventures, hoping to find some answers via high-res collages and compositions.
Elon
Then came Elon, declaring humanity at risk of self-extermination. The need to become a space-faring civilization warranted all efforts to build a new, suitable transport system.
Spacex had a mission that seemed like my mission, and I was willing to be a part of it. Until the job application was declined. No jobs for non-US residents, I’m afraid. Military contracts and all that crap. Perhaps the right outcome, if I’d ever wanted to preserve a family life.
Shattered dreams of exploring, terraforming and making our home in Mars. A hurt in the soul.
The trilogy
But then it was Kim Stanley Robinson’s turn. Red Mars, Green Mars and Blue Mars. Comparable in ambition to The Rama series from Arthur C. Clarke, these three books were all it took to trigger an obsessive compulsion for all things Mars and to keep the dream alive.
Not just sci-fi, it’s the most probable rendition of the events that will unfold once humanity leaves Earth for the red planet. It’s a remarkable, multi-generational account of the greatest endeavour we’ll collectively face over the next 200 years. The shape of things to come.
With complex and unique character development, a masterful knowledge of the geology, geography and composition of Mars terrain, and a historically realistic account of the societal, economical and political events to unfold as humans traverse the void to establish colonies, exploit resources and crave power and land, this trilogy will make a believer out of you. And an expert on Mars natural formations, valleys, cannons, mountain ridges, peaks and ravines, plateaus and plains, regolith and rock.
Space elevators, orbital lens, the soletta, gerontological treatments, Sax cocktail and CO2 scrubbers. These are prophecies. A future of chaos and beauty.
More than anything, this vision is what compelled me to compose the sound of Mars exploration. Each track is then a step of a journey. While (if) you listen, read the blurb below which will take your mind and heart into the story.
The blurb
“We‘ve been here before. In tales and dreams. Through robot eyes. The Earth was so many things, but this is our home, where we build our cities and our future. We are connected, we are one under a new sky. A new world. A new beginning.”
1. Arrival
We’ve been ready all our lives. As we approach the red planet, our minds are captive and our hearts overwhelmed by undiscovered, timeless beauty. We aerobrake and descend through the burning atmosphere. Careening and cruising above the endless plains, we go south towards the frozen lowlands.
2. Promethei
Promethei Rupes is the edge of Mars. The first lands, the ancient lands, now covered in sublimating ice. The oceans we’ll sail lie frozen underground, beneath the regolith, containing the chaotic power of transformation. Further south, an ice dome that would be a refuge in times of sorrow.
3. Marineris
We move again. North. With caravans of rovers that landed before us, we traverse the troughs, mesas and the expanse of Valles Marineris, the greatest in the solar system. In a century, the highway system of Melus, Ophir and Candor will take us to the dark labyrinth ahead. But for now we ride.
4. Noctis Labyrinthus
An endless maze where the land has broken. The Tharsis bulge expanded from within and fractured the plains into vertical cliffs and razor sharp boulders. We’re breathless. Our resolve matches our fear, but we find our way towards the plains of Echus.
5. Echus
We make our home at Echus. Our colony and underground habitats, our labs and nuclear power plants. Here we’ll make real our shared dreams of areoformation. We’ll discover how to turn red to green to blue, and how to live forever.
6. Tharsis
The peaks at Tharsis eclipse the world. Pavonis, Ascraeus and Olympus are titans on the plains of Mars. At the summit, the horizon is still mountain, all air is gone and Mars becomes primordial again.
7. Elysium
Our journey takes us north to the plains of Elysium. We find freedom in the cold and inhospitable lands, where wind forges dunes in patterns artists cannot conceive.
8. Vastitas
Vastitas Borealis is a world devastated. The remains of an austral ocean, extinguished in catastrophic end. Now just beautiful terror. But seas will be reborn, life will return.
9. Hellas
The seas have emerged. The permafrost in Margaritifer has poured oceans into land. The Grand Canal now connects north with south through high terrain. We sail under a red sky into the deep blue Sea of Hellas. Destination Minus One Island.
10. Chasma & Chaos
Mars is chasma and chaos. Overwhelming beauty, untouched and eternal. A world of extremes. Brute nature tamed by engineering and civilization. Mars. Ares. It’s ours forever.
Update 1/9/20: a new album here, named Areophany. Listen and share!
