We had a blast (ahem) Saturday night at the Yuri’s Night party at NASA Ames Research Center; stay tuned for video and more, including the results of the Futuristic Musical Design Challenge. But that’s no reason the party has to end. If you’ve listened through all 55 songs on the 45 Tribute and want still more music, Amon Tobin and Deru have kindly donated music mixes for the yuricdm.com minisite. It’s good listening to pick up your week:

Exclusive Free Mix: Amon Tobin, Back from Space

Exclusive Free Mix: Deru

And here are the direct links to listen / download:

Download the Amon Tobin Yuri’s Night mix [contains NSFW audio samples]

Download Deru’s Free Mix

Updated! If you were having problems with the links, it’s because I made a mistake generating URLs with Amazon S3, and some browsers (IE and Safari but evidently not Firefox) get picky. It should be fixed now.

For more on Amon Tobin, our friends at Current TV have this interview on the Foley Room album — not exactly news, but inspiring stuff, nonetheless. Anyone who’s a found sound sound design fan (as I know many of you are in your own work) should get a kick out of it:

Let us know what you think of the music in comments. (Truly — thoughtful criticism is welcome as well as praise.)

Hello from Ground Control: this week, I’ll be coming to you live from CDM’s micro-blog for Yuri’s Night Bay Area, ground zero for the global space rave celebrating human exploration of the cosmos. CDM’s challenge: to bring all the goodness up close and personal to you, from California to wherever you are on Planet Earth.

Watch the minisite now, during the event, and in the couple of weeks following at:

http://yuricdm.com

or subscribe to the yuricdm.com RSS feed.

Yuri’s Night needs special nerdster love for a number of key reasons — a huge lineup of music, art, and science, plus a special CDM event and booth:

• Music: The likes of Amon Tobin, Tycho, Christopher Willits, and many others … and our friend Ganucheau, too
• Motion: Interactive installations and visualists everywhere, including our man Joshua with his incredible Wii-powered SuperDraw, built with Processing
• Space and Science and Games: Here’s where I get especially excited — it’s an event on the airfield at Ames Research Center, not typically a place non-NASA employees can go, and we actually get to play there and listen some of the world’s top scientists. And Will Wright (creator of SimCity, Sims, and the upcoming Spore with its generative music) will be there, too, just in case your geek circuits weren’t overloaded yet.
• CDM @ the Hangar: We’re running a special Futuristic Music Design Challenge competition, and we’ll have the CDM booth for much of the evening where various musical / visual makers will be showing off their inventions (with more of our friends elsewhere at the event). So stop by and say hi.

How nerdster-chic is this: a global convergence of the exploration of space exploration, ecological savvy, technological innovation, and musical-motional performance, in honor of Russian Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin launching the first-ever human flight into space? Described as “Cinco de Mayo” for space, Yuri’s Night is a 35-nation cosmorave. It was big last year. It’s going to be much bigger this year.

What’s all this space stuff got to do with music and motion? Everything: music and visual performance are a big part of this party, as Sun Ra-loving, space-inspired, Space Age technologist artists push creative tech. (Amon Tobin is headlining, Will Wright is keynote speaker.) Winter Music what? I want my space fiesta.

Attention, Cosmonauts

CDM is involved, and you can be, too, wherever you are in the world:

Keyboard Magazine, I have a challenge for you:

I think this solo desperately wants a Keyboard transcription. You know, “Play like Sun Ra.” It may require a larger insert, but maybe it could be sponsored by Yamaha or something.

Okay, granted, Earthlings might argue that this sounds chaotic, but on Sun Ra’s native planet Jupiter, this actually borders on the pedestrian. It’s pretty conventional 83-fingered hyperlocramixydixylycradidian mode, transposed here to what is apparently a Yamaha YC-30. Sun Ra even makes a nod to the fact that the Jupiterians’ torso typically rotates at increasing speed during live performances, as an especially “grupicosmilogical” solo causes their arms to detach.

What?

You want me to do the transcription?

Due when?

SUN RA - Live - Keyboard Solo (1980) [Matrixsynth]

In all seriousness, this just happened to coincide with listening to some Sun Ra records this weekend … if you don’t know his music, take some time to listen to it. YouTube excerpts with bad sound could easily give you the wrong idea. The ability to order a certain amount of entropy into larger forms that really are connected with the jazz tradition is amazing. And for those of you running boring, equal-measured loops in Ableton, spend some time with the polyrhythms. Sun Ra does have good stuff to teach. And it makes me look forward to Yuri’s Night in April all the more — Sun Ra is the artist who really went to space, and brought us back some music. Who needs Virgin Galactic?

Synths and space: they go together like chocolate and your mouth, like Sun Ra and aliens. So, it was with a heavy heart that I had to report the electronic awesomeness of Yuri’s Night, the party in celebration of space exploration at NASA’s Ames Research Center. Telefon Tel Aviv, Plaid, and circuit-bent Touch & Tells and keytars were there, but I was not. And maybe neither were you.

 NASA Yuri’s Night Rave: Space is the Place

Enough of that, though. Organized Matt Ganucheau writes to say this year will be bigger, better, “twice the art and twice the music.” 2008 will make 2007 look like a side party at Burning Man. So, in the interest of making sure your calendar is marked and your project is submitted, here’s a call for works — and hope to see you there.

Adding to our running tally of totally geeky events, electronic musician Chachi Jones writes with a report from the Yuri’s Night party at NASA’s Ames Research Center. Sure, Yuri’s Night events, in honor of the great space explorer cosmonaut, take place all over the world. But when it hits Ames, you get a full-blown rave — and fantastic electronic music, to boot.

Among others, Plaid and Telefon Tel Aviv made appearances. Chachi jumped into his flight suit with his circuit-bent Touch & Tell and Korg Kaoss Pad, which makes a nice mobile music setup. Also spotted: a toy keytar running through a ghetto blaster, our friend Steve Cooley’s space suit and jetpack, lots of space pr0n, and a spaced-out stage anyone would kill to play.

Check out the evidence, and you’ll no doubt be as jealous as I am:

Chachi’s flickr set (as pictured above); full flickr pool

cnet TV: NASA’s Space Rave

Yuri’s Night Coverage Links from the official party site

(NASA didn’t officially endorse the event, presumably in fear we’d see them as really cool, or aligned with the CCCP.)

If you’re looking to hold your own space party, see Create Digital Motion on 3D space video and photos of the sun.

In the ongoing quest for sounds from the hearts of space for use as digital music sources, I give you NASA’s SuitSat. The crew of the International Space Station has equipped the Russian Orlan spacesuit with batteries, a radio transmitter, and sensors; it’ll transmit power and temperature info Earthward. To pick it up, you just need a radio receiver that can be tuned to 145.990 MHz FM. February 3 is the launch, with tracking info posted to the SuitSat Tracking site.

Now this sounds like a sound source even more interesting than the dying hard drive. (More on the results of the latter from Gizmodo.com soon.) Anyone got a good FM receiver to pick this up? Let me know!

If we can get some audio, we can start the remixes. Disembodied space suit tumbling to Earth? There’s probably a whole concept album here.

Bored with keyboards and drum pads? How about light-sensitive photocells with customizable control options, all in a spacey case that looks like it escaped from Sun Ra’s Arkestra?

Tony Amendolore of ElectroKraft has a new MIDI controller creation he calls the Lunar Module:

Multiple photocell “portholes” light up blue for feedback; use as a Theremin-like control

Push-button controllers can be used in combination for controlling effects

Send MIDI messages like program/bank change, notes, transposition, or all notes off “panic”

Customization options, before or after purchase, for controller options like pitch bend, sustain, modulation wheel, etc.

US$249, free continental US shipping, each handmade

The idea is, you hook the Lunar Module up to your existing MIDI hardware and/or computer and take advantage of the alternative control options. Looks quite nice, and the price is about right, knowing what these parts cost. Tony also offers an unlimited lifetime warranty, which is more than you can say for most music manufacturers.

Thanks for the heads-up, Tony!

Previously on CDM: (More of Tony’s creations!)

Theremin Guitar
Space Box: Theremin + Effects Box
Space Invaders Invades Synth, Guitar

Let’s get the bad news out of the way first: “It should be noted that it is very unlikely that an artist would have the opportunity themselves to go to the International Space Station, certainly in the foreseeable future.”

Damn. Okay, that said, though, Arts Electric reports the European Space Agency is looking at ways of using the ISS for artistic purposes, contracting an arts consortium that includes the very cool science-and-arts group Arts Catalyst and Leonardo (the MIT journal, not di Caprio.)

So, if you can’t go perform on ISS, what can you do? First, you need to be in Europe. (Damn again.) Second, you can use the “features” of ISS and ground facilities: “Artists and cultural practitioners across Europe are being consulted on the features of the International Space Station and its ground-based support facilities - including launch sites, astronaut training facilities and national user support centres - that would be of interest to them.”

Excellent. I’m seeing new interactive digital opera at the astronaut training facility, which has a giant water tank for simulating zero-G activities. Any takers?

For more on digital music and sound in space: see our space sound roundup, including info on Voyager 1 sound sampling.