On December 21, 1968, Apollo 8 launched out of Florida on a mission to send the first manned spacecraft out of planetary orbit. Frank Borman, James Lovell, and William Anders travelled for three days before reaching the moon, at which point they spent Christmas Eve orbiting. It was then that Lovell snapped a picture, and the terrestrial world was never the same.
The excitement, anxiety, and awe surrounding the mission was profound, and can be felt and heard through ground control transmissions sent out of Houston—transmissions that are sampled tastefully in “The Other Side,” a track from Public Service Broadcasting’s The Race for Space. The London duo behind the music—J. Willgoose, Esq. and Wrigglesworth—sound like they could have lived during the era from which the concept record draws, but the music itself is something of a more modern pastiche of textures and ideas.
To help visualize what form PSB take on planet Earth, the music video for “The Other Side” features footage of one of the group’s “live transmissions”—excitement, anxiety, and awe notwithstanding.
The Race for Space is out now on Test Card Recordings.
