The Race For Space

 "The Race For Space" by Public Service Broadcasting, it is an album which I highly recommend. I always find the album endlessly hopeful, something that is especially in shortage during this eventful year of 2020.

I first got the know about this musical band from a recommendation by Brady Haran during an episode of the podcast Hello Internet. The band would kinda fall into the category of hipster-ish, because I'm pretty sure that not many has ever heard about them. Although I qualify the band as hipster-ish, I think their musical style is very accessible. I would describe their songs as mostly instrumental, contain almost non-existent lyrics, and heavily on the electronic musics and drums.

"The Race For Space", the idea of the album is to capture one of the most exciting times of scientific progress in the human history - the space race. And dare I say, it succeeds in it. The excitement of that era is condensed into a 40min album. It brings the listeners back to that era surrounded by a sense of unity in humanity in face of the impossible. We may not live during that era. But through this album, we could re-live the Apollo program, Yuri Gagarin first venture into the outer space, the moon landing, etc.. Through this album, we could feel the joy from the success, as well as the angst from the countless failures.

The album is very complete, in the sense that from the start to the end, it is an experience. All the songs follow the chronological order of the actual events. So it only makes sense to listen to this album in that order and that order only. If I have to pick a favorite song, it got to be "The Other Side". Unlike the most famous song in this album - Go!, this one won't get you all pumped up and all motivated for a morning run. "The Other Side" is about taking a leap of faith, going into unknown, and hope for the best. The actual voice recording of the event mixed into the song, the anxiety of waiting in silence, the triumph in the end, and especially the connotation of the going into the other side and might not come back ever again, the thought of it just gives me goosebumps. It is a very atmospheric song, and I just love it.