BIG SOUNDS 36

Top 10 Albums Every Self-Respecting Science Fiction Fan Should Own

By Cyriaque Lamar and Charlie Jane Anders

Science fiction changed music. And music saved science fiction. Most of our favorite flights of fancy and epic adventures are bound up in our minds with amazing musical scores, or epic theme songs. But some of the greatest pieces of music ever created were also inspired by science fiction and fantasy.

Over the past week, we've counted down the 100 albums that every science fiction and fantasy fan should listen to. And now, here it is: the top 10 albums that genre lovers should already adore.

Click to view10. Daft Punk - Discovery (2001)
You know an album's audio magic when basically every damn song could carry its own single. With this shiny, spacey hour of disco nouveau, the DJ duo of Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo cemented their personas as night-clubbing robots. This music is so addictive it will close out every Sweet 16 for the next billion or so years, until the Sun's rising temperature turns our planet into a desiccated hellhole. Hopefully humanity will be jamming across the stars by then, not unlike the aliens from Leiji Matsumoto's anime adaptation of Discovery, Interstella 5555. (And for more Daftness, their Alive 2007 live album also slices and dices the best parts of their robo-inclined 2005 LP Human After All.) - Cyriaque Lamar

Click to view9. Vangelis - Albedo 0.39 (1976)
We adore electronic pioneer Evangelos Odysseas Papathanassiou's work on 1975's Heaven and Hell(which gave us the theme to Cosmos) and the Blade Runner soundtrack, but this cosmic concept album makes our minds to turn to Carl Sagan, on the sheer force of "Pulstar" and "Alpha" alone. The title track is also a suitable proxy for a piece of disembodied alien AI floating by, shouting factoids in our planet's general direction. - CL

Click to view8. Radiohead - OK Computer (1997)
Even before they name-dropped The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and gave Bob Dylan an extraterrestrial veneer, Radiohead had already written history's greatest dystopian prom song. But when OK Computercame out, its (now-iconic) brand of pre-millennial malaise was a shocker — nobody expected this sort of album from that one-hit-wonder band who sang "Creep." Steeped in themes of technology-driven alienation and consumerism gone amok, OK Computer is the wail of a civilization that has yet to evolve the psychic organs to keep up with its own progress. Waiting for the Singularity sucks, but at least this album will commiserate with you in the meantime. - CL

Click to view7. Pink Floyd - Dark Side of the Moon (1973)
The record that launched a thousand laser planetarium shows, it's way easier to sync up Dark Sidewith the stellar flickers of the countryside night sky than The Wizard of Oz. After all, this loopy prog rock classic was written to organically represent the passage of life, from the inexorable march of time to the vicissitudes of the economy to the, hey, is that the International Space Station? Nope, just my flashlight. Whoa. Where was I? Oh right, The Wall. It's. Far. Out. - CL

Click to view6. Kraftwerk - The Man-Machine (1978)
The truth is, we could populate half of this final ten with Kraftwerk albums — thanks to immortal tracks about radioactivity, synthetic romance, living mannequins, and the technological marvel that is the German highway system — but we're going with this particular cyborg-and-futureplex-tinged masterpiece due to our self-imposed rules. This Düsseldorf troupe has put an indelible robotic mark on the past four decades of music history, laying the groundwork for everything from synthpop to techno to hip-hop. If you require proof, here's six hours' worth. - CL

Click to view5. Parliament - Mothership Connection (1975)
This album defined a whole generation of science fiction funkateers, along with its sequel The Clones of Dr. Funkenstein. This is like the greatest jazz party album about flying up to a giant mothership in space you'll ever hear, featuring insane Fred Wesley horn charts, Bernie Worrell synthesizers and the tightest band on Earth in full swing. Two years before every other R&B band started doing Star Wars/Close Encountersspoofs, Parliament was pouring its heart and soul into begging the Mothership to swing down and let us all ride. They even built an actual working Mothership, to land on stage during concerts. (See video.) This is one of those albums where you still hear freaky, fascinating new stuff on your thousandth listen, but be warned — you'll find yourself quoting the album's many catch phrases to your bewildered friends and coworkers. — Charlie Jane Anders

Click to view4. Jeff Wayne's Musical Version of the War of the Worlds (1978)
Next to Orson Welles' famous radio broadcast, no other audio phenomenon has done so much to dramatize H.G. Wells' famous novel for mass audiences. Wayne's exciting, bouncy version is still being performed as a stage show today. The incredibly intense voiceover by Richard Burton perfectly complements the fuzzed-out guitar and driving rhythms, especially when the Martians actually show up and start slaughtering everybody with their heat rays. And then the synthesizers blare into eerie life. It could all be unbelievably goofy, if it wasn't so horrifying and spellbinding. Sealing the deal, the whole thing is gorgeously illustrated by some of the coolest science fiction artists of the time, including Roger Dean. - CJA

Click to view3. Rush — 2112 (1976)
Rush is one of those 1970s bands whose proggy sound and fantasy/scifi lyrics appealed to Tolkien fans andStar Wars lovers alike. One side of this album is devoted to the tale of a dystopian future ruled by "the Priests of the Temples of Syrinx," whose "great computers fill the hallowed halls." The priests' symbol is the glowing red star on the album cover (which became a famous piece of Rush iconography). Basically this is one of the original scifi prog rock concept album moments, and to enjoy it you'll need to take out your irony earbuds and put on your earnest puffy headphones. — Annalee Newitz

Click to view2. Janelle Monae - the ArchAndroid (2010)
Janelle Monae is one of the freshest musical voices to come along in years. In an era when everybody from Kanye West to Lady Gaga is invoking science-fictional themes, Monae still has a unique vantage point, a focus on the rights and subjectivity of posthumans, whom others seek to turn into objects. This album, with its themes of android liberation, manages to cover a ton of musical styles, from classical to classic R&B, while defying all of our preconceptions about gender and race. It's joyful and amazing and the music you'll dance to when the Singularity happens. Read our interview with Monae here. — CJA

Click to view1. David Bowie — The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars (1972)
There was never really much debate about who would get the top spot — more about which album. Space Oddity? The Man Who Sold The World? But really, Ziggy Stardust is the album where Bowie creates his most complete science fictional, mind-expanding transformation. It's full of sadness and androgyny and friskiness and apocalyptic passion. Starting with the announcement that the Earth is ending in just five years, Bowie's masterpiece takes us through soul love and extraterrestrial salvation, but it all leads to self-destruction, long before the Earth is gone. The apocalypse, aliens, and a rock star who soars too high and then crashes to Earth — in most people's hands, this would be another zany rock opera. In Bowie's, though, it becomes one of the most thrilling albums ever made. — CJA

KOSMIK DREAMS 5

About the author

GALACTIC TIME TRAVEL

Have your dreams ever been influenced by a movie you were watching, or a book you were reading before you went to bed? Maybe you were watching Mad Men or Leave It To Beaver and flipped to the Sci-fi channel until your eyes became so heavy you never realized you dozed off… until you awoke with the most vivid dreams still intact in your memory. Perhaps you unintentionally combined the two stories creating something like a wild west alien invasion or a trip to the moon with June and Ward Cleaver. This example might be a little off the wall to some but that isn’t the case with San Franciscan artist Alec Huxley.

Alec Huxley takes us on a journey into another time period, into a surreal world that puts us in some sort of a dream-state and evokes a wonderment and fascination that makes the imagination run wild. He combines desert landscapes, and SF cityscapes with his take on film noir and sci-fi genres. Often his work tells a story but not necessarily will his story be plausible, or actually make any sense at all. Nonetheless, his creativity is certainly admirable and worth checking out at his next upcoming exhibition, which is to be announced.

Alec is a photographer as well as a self taught painter. You can view more of his works on his website or purchase prints on Society6. He is the founder of Adult Flavored Pudding. Bizarre, we know…but check out his hilarious blog filled with updates and videos about the goings on in the unique world of Alec Huxley.

via: TheFoxIsBlack

THE SUPERIOR HUMAN

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TINSEL MAGIC 14

How Technicolor created ruby slippers without using color film

By Esther Inglis-Arkell

Technicolor film was not color film, and it did not produce anything like lifelike colors. But how did it produce color movies? And why did those colors glow? And why did all of it lead to Dorothy getting ruby slippers?

As anyone who has seen an old Technicolor film knows, it looks weird. Blue eyes look like they glow. Pink faces look like they've been painted peach. Red looks scary. It all looks dyed, not recorded — and that's because it was. There wasn't any color film at the time that Technicolor was making its big splash. No one had figured out how to create a film stock that would record color. They had, however, found a way to make film stock that would filter out all the color that shouldn't get through. And they had dyes. By putting them together, they made Technicolor glorious.

Click to view

Technicolor cameras didn't film in color. Instead they filmed in black and white, with different filters. The light entered the camera lens and went to a half-silvered mirror, which split the beam of light through a magenta lens (red and blue together), and a green lens. Behind the magenta lens was film sensitive to blue light, and film sensitive to red light. Behind the green lens was just plain light-sensitive film. The production crew ended up with three sets of film, one showing the blue light that the object they were filming gave off, one showing the red light, and one showing the green. All of these were black and white film strips. They just showed odd-looking pictures. For example, on the 'blue' roll, a person with few blue tones in their skin would have skin that looked completely dark, while a blue ribbon would look pure white. Each of the black and white images were dyed with its proper color. Sometimes, when they were dyed, the films would combined and re-filtered, so that only bright blues would make it out of the blue-dyed film.

At last, when it was time for the film to be shown, the three dyed films would be layered on top of one another, to make 'glorious technicolor.' This is why, especially in the early films, the coloring looks so painterly. It's also why most early films nearly cause eyestrain — especially the famous film The Wizard of Oz. The Technicolor process was expensive, not just because of the camera and the technicians needed to film, but the many incidental technical issues. Some colors, if they were too subtle, would suddenly pop out as other colors. Yellows would turn green in random patches, if two much of the wrong color was filtered out. And since the beam of light entering the camera was split between multiple films, only a fraction of the light in the studio made it onto any one film. This meant that the studio needed to be extra bright. Many regulars on The Wizard of Ozcomplained of eye damage from the studio lights, that lasted years.

Mostly, though, it meant that production teams didn't want to waste a single opportunity for color. In the books, Dorothy's slippers were silver, and the yellow brick road, silver slippers, and emerald green city were said to represent the gold standard, silverites, and paper money. But silver slippers were no fun at all on film. They might as well be filmed in black and white. Red, however, was easy to see, eye-catching, and didn't wreak havoc with the color mixing — the way the famed yellow-brick road often did. Hence the ruby slippers, which made the most of Technicolor, and an American fairy-tale was changed forever

TERESE NEILSON WORX

Fantastic Star Wars Illustrations by Terese Nielsen Star Wars are one of the few subjects that I'm probably never getting tired of. I'm definitely not the biggest fan out there, but I really enjoy the whole culture around it and love how much illustrators are inspired by it. So much art to see. These are the work of Terese Nielsen, an amazing American artist that's been painting for many years now. It's great to see how much Star Wars have been an inspiration for artists everywhere for such a long time. For more of Terese's works, you may visit her personal portfolio, which is definitely worth the visit. I hope you enjoy these! Cheers. ;) About the author