This four-track EP has – it must be said – rather creepy origins. Released as a limited edition available only from the Lost Dog Recordings website (and a few selected UK record stores), the Soyuz EP works as a testament to Russia’s space missions. The Soyuz launch vehicle was created in the 1960s and was originally designed as an intercontinental ballistic missile, but went on to evolve into the backbone of Russia’s unmanned and manned space fleet.
Here Soyuz (the group) attempts to celebrate and recreate the sense of emotion which drove these missions. The first track is a sweeping ethereal tune featuring strings and a heavenly sounding choir: with echoes of Mono in places, but tempered by spacier sounds, it manages to sound both epic and melancholy, setting us up for the uneasy listening that follows.
This uneasiness is articulated by Re-entry, which samples a female voicebox issuing instructions or potentially acknowledging problems aboard a spacecraft. This is then interwoven with actual samples taken from the last moments of a doomed Russian space mission, creating an unsettling but moving paean to the successes and the excesses of space travel.
Here Soyuz (the group) attempts to celebrate and recreate the sense of emotion which drove these missions. The first track is a sweeping ethereal tune featuring strings and a heavenly sounding choir: with echoes of Mono in places, but tempered by spacier sounds, it manages to sound both epic and melancholy, setting us up for the uneasy listening that follows.
This uneasiness is articulated by Re-entry, which samples a female voicebox issuing instructions or potentially acknowledging problems aboard a spacecraft. This is then interwoven with actual samples taken from the last moments of a doomed Russian space mission, creating an unsettling but moving paean to the successes and the excesses of space travel.
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