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They got the title of the song wrong in the video name, but still a beautiful track. Seems like I’m on a music posting kick tonight.

“Fiery the angels fell; deep thunder rolled around their shores; burning with the fires of Orc.”

- Roy Batty, Bladerunner

Lately I’ve found myself spending that last few hours of my Sundays listening to Hearts of Space on WKMS-FM, our local public radio station. If you’ve never heard of HoS, here is an excerpt from the Wikipedia entry:

Hearts of Space is a United States weekly syndicated public radio show featuring music of a contemplative nature drawn largely from the ambient, New Age and electronic genres, while also including classical, world, Celtic, experimental, and other music selections. For many years, the show’s producer and presenter, Stephen Hill, has applied the term “space music” to the music broadcast on the show, irrespective of genre. It is the longest-running radio program of its type in the world.

I vaguely remember hearing a few programs of HoS when I was in high school, before I had really discovered my affinity toward electronic music. I don’t remember why I stopped listening to it, but HoS eventually drifted from my awareness and was forgotten.

So, you can imagine my surprise when I was spending a late Sunday evening cleaning out my garage with the radio on and rediscovered it! Now I can’t seem to stop listening to it!

This marks the first radio program I have listened to on a consistent basis.

I think this also marks a subtle shift in my musical tastes. Where I used to favor powerful, driven electronic music when I was working, I’ve lately found myself settling more into slower ambient textures. Through Hearts of Space, I’ve discovered music that has been around for decades, right under my nose. It’s all been really exciting!

I’ll leave you with music from one of the recent programs, entitled “Cloud of Promise”:

Interestingly enough, I also found a totally unrelated but equally awesome song when searching for “forest for the trees”:

Anyone familiar with the rave scene can find humor in the following quote. It’s absurdity was what made it so effective in 1989, however today it comes off as just plain ironic.

Games don’t affect kids. If Pac-man had affected us, we’d all be sitting in darkened rooms munching pills and listening to repetitive electronic music.

– Kristian Wilson (Nintendo Inc., 1989)

The irony here is that clubs and raves, quite popular in urban scenes, are characterized by their dark dancefloors with laser and strobe light illumination. Techno music (also known as electronic music because it is produced entirely with drum machines, synthesizers, and other such sound-generating equipment, hence the “repetetive electronic music”) is played very loudly, and the aforementioned pills would be “Ecstacy,” the dangerous drug of choice for many clubgoers.

I dunno. Maybe this is one of those things where if you have to explain the joke, it’s no longer funny…