One Media® presents "Lightyear Wireless" by Nowhere Near (electro-acoustic Space Music video)

"Lightyear Wireless"

An electro-acoustic Space Music video featuring analog synthesizers, violin, digital art and images of Radio Astronomy Telescope Dish arrays used in the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence.

One Media® humbly submits its Steemit Music League #beatbattle season two, round four (S2:R4) entry befitting a 'Nostalgia' theme...

Here, the composer looked inside to find nostalgia in a moment in his life, back multiple decades ago, what was the 'Golden Age of Wireless' to him personally in his first listening to his favorite radio program. Although the term, 'Golden Age of Wireless' most commonly means the time before television invaded our collective living rooms, when families would sit together listening to radio programs such as, The Shadow, The Lone Ranger, and Little Orphan Annie, etc. here the composer expands that era to his personal experience starting from the late 1970's to early 1980's when he lived around Philadelphia ... Along with the nostaglia for first hearing Space Music on the radio, he found great inspiration in the analog synthesizers used at the time to create it, hence the title and ultimate form this present work takes...

The title of this tune refers to its composer first listening to a Space Music radio show that now has been on the air continuously for forty years ... If one considers the 'distance' of time, it seems he's traveled light-years away since he first heard this enlightening program ...

In this present recording, use of analog instruments was emphasized, particularly the PAiA Gnome analog synthesizer. Besides electronics, one may consider a centuries old acoustic instrument, the violin, as an 'analog' instrument, for the fact that it is fretless, thus effectively does not avail a discrete, as in digital, form of pitch control. Here the composer takes full advantage of the continuous pitch control capabilities of the violin by sliding into pitch as if to mimic the turning of frequency knobs of Voltage Controlled Oscillators typical of analog synthesizers, likewise also heard in this recording.

A number of influences should be obvious to avid Space Music fans, one source perhaps less obvious but undoubtedly inspiring.

One may readily recall, Carl Sagan's Cosmos: A Personal Voyage. Thus, the primary contributor to that soundtrack, Vangelis, would appear an obvious inspiration. Also, the composer has appreciated Jean Michel Jarre's Oxygène and Équinoxe. However, this present recording more closely resembles works by early Tangerine Dream, such Phaedra, or if one considers similar use of acoustic percussion compared to the aforementioned, most closely resembles Klaus Schulz's Moondawn.

But perhaps of most constant and immediate influence though perhaps of least renown amongst these cohorts would be Chuck van Zyl, who had already begun hosting the radio show Star's End on University of Pennsylvania's WXPN FM heard throughout the Philadelphia area, then and still now on late Saturday evening through early Sunday mornings.

The composer was mostly inspired to revisit the 'Golden Age of Wireless', for himself personally, those days of listening to Star's End on the radio, with headphones on.

Happy listening!
Zig