The show follows an alternative history of the Space Race where minor changes to the timeline of space travel, as we know it, creates radical change. I came to The Race for Space after recently watching Apple TV’s brilliant show For All Mankind. Perhaps naturally then, there also seems to be a keen interest in looking back into the past of space travel as an indication of where to look to the future - NASA’s new crewed mission to the moon being named after Apollo’s sister (and moon goddess) Artemis from Greek mythology being but one of many examples of clear references to their past endeavours. With games like Surviving Mars, shows like the literally-titled Mars, and films like The Martian, among but a few media looking towards the future of human exploration to the Red Planet. This has been reflected in the media being produced. The ever-approaching reality of a crewed Mars mission, especially with NASA’s plan to revisit the moon with the Artemis Programme, plus a growing awareness of the planet’s manufactured ecological deterioration, has contributed to a growing sense of humankind looking hopefully towards the stars for our future. I’d argue, six years later, that this is no longer the case. The era when every boy wanted to be an astronaut is ancient history.” “The 1960s media's wild excitement about the space race is now almost forgotten. Writing about this album for in 2015, Thomas H Green writes that one of the achievements of The Race for Space is igniting a sense of the wild excitement, and specifically media hype, around the Space Race. In The Race for Space, PSB hit on some of the major historical points of the Space Race, from the launch of Sputnik, Yuri Gagarin becoming the first man in space, to the Apollo landing and final Apollo mission. The music becomes like a soundtrack for the narrative being told by the recorded speech, but the recordings themselves are actively a part of the performance. Likewise, they edit the audio from the broadcasts to fit better with the direction of the music. The recordings are mixed into the song, using some of the natural rhythms that occur within the speech as major parts of the musical motifs. Their signature musical conceit uses recordings of public service broadcasts as a central part of their music. PSB are an English indie-rock group from London. It captures the excitement, wonder, fear, and unifying sense of humanity that defines much of the public perception of the Space Race. The Race for Space, Public Service Broadcasting’s second studio album, is one of the most effective products of this production philosophy. Some albums, such as In the Aeroplane Over the Sea by Neutral Milk Hotel, are famously interpreted less by their individual tracks but by the larger narrative those tracks construct. The indie music community especially adopts the idea of a through-narrative communicated over an album. They often are arranged in such a way to take the listener on an emotional journey that the producer is attempting to guide them along. They can be stand-alone pieces or be part of an overarching narrative that the album communicates. Tracks on an album can serve many purposes.
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