The sound of Mars (Trilogy)
Ah Mars. How near the dream.
(Circumvent the blah blah, get to the music now!)
I’ve been a fan of Mars for as long as I can remember. It began with Carl Sagan and his Blues for a Red Planet. The affair grew in proportion with the beloved Mars Rovers. Then came some movies. Now the fire burns with Elon’s vision and Kim Stanley Robinson’s futuristic dream. These days Mars is just about everywhere I look.
I’ve done my share. I’ve proposed apps for martians. Elon never called back. I’ve composed the soundtrack for Mars colonisation. Elon ignored.
Now, I’m back with… more music!
My new album is called “Areophany”, streaming on all music platforms.
If you like it, please follow me, add me to your playlist, and tell your friends!
A mix of electronic, ambient, new age, chiptune some have ventured, synthwave and a few orchestral arrangements. Influenced by the likes or Orbital, Massive Attack, Jean-Michel Jarre, Vangelis, Deep Forest, Tycho, and countless others.
A tribute to Mars.
A tribute to Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars Trilogy. (keep reading…)
But why?
This is all Carl Sagan’s fault.
What a profound impact Cosmos made in my life. Storytelling at its best, a fire lighter for the young and curious mind. The world is not the same without you, Carl.
In “Blues for a Red Planet”, he taught us of Schiaparelli and the intricate network “canali”, a naive and comically inaccurate interpretation of Mars surface conditions and geography, perhaps no less ambitious than the tales of Sir Edgar Rice Burroughs. We were struck in awe by abysmal valleys, impossible mountains and storms that lasted months and covered the planet in red dust.
Nothing would match the excitement of careening through the tributaries of Valles Marineris in Carl’s Ship of the Imagination, exploring this fascinating new world for the first time.
It was the mid 80s. Only recently had the Viking landers shared a first glimpse of the surface, where nothing seemed inviting, yet of magnificent beauty. More robots followed, and through their eyes we discovered a world rich with past, present and future.
In 2004, the brother rovers Spirit and Opportunity landed in Gusev Crater and Acidalia Planitia.
That was it. I became Mars-struck.
I would check-in daily for updates on both rovers, until 5 years later Spirit no longer responded, learning about their new adventures, hoping to find some answers via high-res collages and compositions.
Later Curiosity. Soon Perseverance.
Then came Elon Musk, 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. 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.
Enter Kim Stanley Robinson and his Mars Trilogy.
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.
A monumental story of such depth and intricacy that it becomes hard to imagine a different future. A chronicle gifted to us by a time-travelling philanthropist. A self-fulfilling prophecy imprinted onto the children of today, the engineers and artists of tomorrow. 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
Here’s a short description of each track.
We change Mars. Mars changes us.
1. Ares
“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.”
Here and now. A tingle in the spine. The story begins.
2. Areophany
“We change Mars. The power to forever transform worlds. A dream of ages to start again, turned into opportunity through art, science, engineering and ingenuity.”
The cult behind the deeds. The system of belief that this new world can be tailored to our needs. Yet a world to be worshipped.
3. Shikata Ga Nai
“All begins as nothing and from nothing becomes everything. We rise now. We succeed or die in this world with what we have. It cannot be helped.”
A time of craft and perseverance. Send out all legions of robots, while we create our body of science, economics, politics et al to sustain the generations to come. Get going.
4. Festival at Olympus
“Brothers and sisters of creation, let us rise and celebrate. A festival at the slopes of Olympus, together from all corners of this world, dancing until purple sunset.”
A primal beat, entrancing. A chant for us. A ceremony of emancipation and liberation of a new race in a new world with a new order. All voices are one.
5. Ecopoesis
“The timeless poetry of science with a resolute purpose of life. A spell that reverses death, creates to destroy, and destroys to live again.”
Red turns dark brown, purple, then green. Our scientists concoct gassy cocktails and scatter algae at the lower basins, our engineers drill magma vents of planetary scale.
6. Red War
“Unrest builds in crescent rumble, detonates in violent terror unto a destructive end. Precious life lost to arrogance and ignorance. A silence of scattered dreams.”
What cynics might consider a necessary evil, others will live to lament for generations. Greed and hubris are a formidable opponent to fragile settlements that are unable to counter unstoppable forces of destruction. The only hope is that the resulting chaos serves as a compressed historical lesson and moral foundation to the new order that will rise.
7. Undying
“Red plains of sublime beauty. There is no life, but a promise buried deep in permafrost, longing to break free. Forever desert and longing hope.”
8. Elevator and Soletta
“Engineering spawns civilisations. With glass and steel we curve sunlight and bridge the gravity well. Mars is open.”
9. Feral
“We’re the new order that roams this planet unchecked. Far from cities and a system of control. One with the land.”
10. Viriditas
“The divine power of nature to create life, evolving into patterns of complexity. The green force of life expands into the Universe.”
But why? It’s the ultimate question. Karl Friston believes, and perhaps only he understands, the single underlying principle that explains it: free energy. Maybe it’s the supreme power (God?) that Clarke postulated passes its time generating universes with varying sets of initial parameters. Boot up a universe, let it run, evaluate results. Large cylindrical ships will gather sample data and report back.
11. Areoformation
“We change Mars. Mars changes us. We are released from Earth’s history and cycle of power. Humanity is free, reborn, never the same again. We are spacefaring and set for the stars.”
