Seti-X album pleases and intrigues critics

If you're a space fan or like interesting music, you should know about Seti-X's album. It sounds like eerie experimental pop, but it could be aliens... Either way, I think it's one of the best efforts in the universe. ~M

How do aliens sound? Critics weigh in on extraterrestrial remixes of 1977 Voyager Interstellar Record.

Reps of exiled offshoot of Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI-X) to appear in Cambridge March 14th.

Learn more about the Voyager Golden Record launched in 1977 via Wikipedia.

These historical documents represent a sampling of tracks from the SETI-X project:
Scrambles of Earth: The Voyager Interstellar Record, Remixed by Extraterrestrials.

[MP3]: “Uranium Nations/Hello Children”

[MP3]: “Pulsar Plus”

[MP3]: “Visit To The Observatory”

[MP3]: “Psychlo Killer/Total Transmission”

[MP3]: “I Am Getting Married In A Spaceship”


About SETI-X (The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence in Exile):
Scrambles of Earth: The Voyager Interstellar Record, Remixed by Extraterrestrials.

“It’s official: we’ve made contact.” proclaimed the Yale Daily News upon hearing the Scrambles of Earth recordings decoded by SETI-X, an exiled offshoot of the Search For Extraterrestrial Intelligence. The SETI-X project presents remixes of the material from the Voyager Interstellar Record launched into space by NASA in 1977. In that year, NASA launched the Voyager 1 & 2 spacecraft, fastening to each a phonograph album containing sounds and music of Earth. Now, SETI-X has received transmissions believed to be extraterrestrial remixes of these records. The Scrambles of Earth CD contains the 70 minutes — in some 24 sound segments — that SETI-X has so far been able to reconstruct.

On March 14th, 2011, a special session of Beat Research at the Enormous Room in Cambridge, Massachusetts (567 Massachusetts Ave.) will take place devoted to the cosmic sounds of Scrambles of Earth. Because the members of SETI-X wish to remain anonymous, Dr. Stefan Helmreich, a representative of SETI-X appointed by the organization’s label Seeland Records, will be in attendance to present a documentary about the decoding of the signals that became the Scrambles of Earth record. The film features MIT researchers describing the algorithms the aliens may have used in their mash-up of these famous recordings from 1977’s original Voyager Interstellar Record.

In addition to Dr. Helmreich, other high-profile scholars who have agreed to comment on Scrambles of Earth include: Dr. Richard Doyle (Rhetorician of Alien Communication, English, Penn State), Dr. Chris Kelty (Scholar of Extraterrestrial Copyright Law, Information Sciences, UCLA), Dr. Sarah Kember (Alien Mediation and Performativity, Media and Communications, Goldsmiths College, London), Dr. Cristopher Moore (Theorist of Information and Noise, Computer Science, University of New Mexico), Peter Whincop (Sonic Deconvolution Expert , Department of Music, MIT/Harvard).

Many are asking, “How do aliens sound?” The Wire calls the Scrambles of Earth CD and booklet “a kind of novella, in which audio, text and images combine to create a coherent [and] jape-ridden… work of fiction.” San Francisco’s Aquarius Records suggests that this “dizzying assemblage of collaged sound” is “a really great listen, flowing like some twisted sonic travelogue, as if this is how the aliens see us, based on how we represented ourselves.”

Other various auditors say that Scrambles of Earth contains sounds that are “decidedly freakish… beautiful… and meteoritic” (Yale Daily News), “truly interplanetary sounding squiggles” (Popshifter), “abrasive [and] difficult” (Pandora) and “obviously off-the-wall” (BabySue). Essentially, Scrambles of Earth is “a mind blowing trip [or trek] into the vast reaches of your music knowledge” (Dancing About Architecture) and “an anti-ambient, anti-National Geographic non-found analog orgy” (Zap Town) of “eerie experimental pop” (Daily News, Los Angeles).

SETI-X (The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence in Exile)
Scrambles of Earth: The Voyager Interstellar Record, Remixed by Extraterrestrials.
(Seeland Records, Out Now)
Track Listing:

01. Uranium Nations/Hello Children
02. Pulsar Plus
03. Thin Dark Night
04. Ill-Tempered Wedding
05. Visit to the Observatory
06. Rushing Streams
07. Men’s House Stutter
08. Shakuhachi Mariachi
09. Just Cranes
10. Back in the CCCP
11. Countdown
12. Scrambles of Earth/What Earthlings Are Made of
13. Renaissance Faire Eject/Gasping in Twelve Languages
14. Queen’s Queens
15. Fifth World
16. My Life as a Field of Sheep
17. Total Transmission
18. Psychlo Killer/Total Transmission
19. Fifth Dysphony
20. The Rites of Mars
21. I Am Getting Married in a Spaceship
22. Way Down
23. Interleave
24. Elegy for Pluto/Secretary General