Selection of Pieces

"Wave Grid is built around a primal and stripped back approach to the synth-heavy sci-fi and horror soundtracks of 1980s. It takes influence from classic scores of the era by Vangelis, John Carpenter, Giorgio Moroder, Tangerine Dream and Ennio Morricone paying homage to the unique electronic soundworlds they conjured. Wave Grid takes the listener on a sonic tour with 10 instrumental pieces that aim to find a balance by approaching epic electronics with a natural and direct style."

Wave Peak

In 2017 while looking for Planet 9 (yes! a hypothesised 9th planet that is believed to exist but has not yet been seen), scientists stumbled across Valetudo. Valetudo is a tiny moon of Jupiter 1km across orbiting alongside Jupiter's retrograde moons.

As of 2018 Jupiter has 79 moons and the 33 outermost moons all orbit Jupiter in the opposite direction of its spin. Not Valetudo though. Valetudeo orbits in prograde, following Jupiter's spin on a course that takes it right through the orbits of Jupiter's outermost moons.

This is weird, and it has been dubbed the “Odball” moon as a result. But I like to think of Valetudo as quirky rather than odd and brave rather than dumb. That being said, Valetudo will probably smash headlong into another moon sooner or later, but until then we should celebrate this maverick! To Valetudo! The Wandering Moon!

The Wandering Moon

Jupiter is a love letter to everybody's favorite Gas Giant and its place in Science Fiction. The album is heavy and dark, with tense guitar-driven atmospheres punctuated, from time to time, by moments of release that land like strange lullabies. Each track draws inspiration from versions of Jupiter in Arthur C. Clarke's Odyssey series, Twin Peaks, The Europa Report, and Voltaire's Micromégas. Observations made by the Juno and Cassini missions to Jovian System have provided further inspiration for the pieces.

The album begins with an imagined Stellar Ignition of Jupiter, drops in on the Galilean moon of Io to take in the daily atmospheric collapse, and then returns to Earth to witness the Great Conjunction of Jupiter with Saturn. While the project began with pure escapism in mind, I kept finding parallels between Jupiter and our current situation with the COVID-19 pandemic that tended to pull the music back down to Earth.

As a result, the pieces range stylistically from Blackgaze and Industrial flavoured Darksynth to ethereal Dream-pop with some generative music thrown in for good measure.

The beautiful cover art was designed and created by Mary Parkinson. All Hail!

Search Party

Stellification is the process by which a Jovian-class planet (a gas giant or brown dwarf ) becomes a star. It's not possible to ignite Jupiter and turn it into a star, it just doesn't have the mass needed. Regardless that's exactly what happened in Arthur C. Clarke's 2010: Odyssey Two, the sequel to 2001: A Space Odyssey. There a monolith around Jupiter self-replicated rapidly around the planet increasing its mass and triggering stelification turning Jupiter into a new star named Lucifer (although he's traditionally associated with Venus, the morning star... but ok Arthur). Something similar happened in the Netflix adaption of Liu Cixin’s Wandering Earth.

This piece tries to imagine what it might be like to experience the Stellification of Jupiter from inside the windswept stormscapes of The gas giant’s tumultuous atmosphere.

Selection of Pieces

Stephen Roddy (Line-In)