Wednesday, November 4, 2009
Moving Pictures / National Skyline Third Man to Release 'A Glorious Dawn' Feat. Auto-Tune Carl Sagan and Stephen Hawking
Posted by Steve Haruch on Wed, Nov 4, 2009 at 3:23 PM
First, Fake AP Stylebook gets a book deal, now a YouTube video's getting a seven-inch record. Looks like the Internet is for real! The vid in question is that Carl Sagan Auto-Tune (embedded above) by John Boswell that you may have heard. It's like Boards of Canada meets, uh, Carl Sagan. Anyway.
From Third Man Records:
"A Glorious Dawn" is a moving arrangement of Carl Sagan's sagacious words culled from his magnificent "Cosmos" series. The piece initially gained recognition when composer John Boswell uploaded to YouTube his remixed Sagan dialogue edited, Auto-Tuned and put to a beat and coupled with a guest appearance by Stephen Hawking.
I know I'm splitting hairs here, but is it really a "guest appearance" if the "guest" never intended to be part of the recording? I mean, Hayley Williams is not a "guest" on my Apollo Up! remix, right? But I digress--3M is also producing 150 copies of "Cosmos Colored Vinyl," featuring a reproduction of the Voyager Gold Record, which was sent into space in 1977 in hopes that aliens would lay it on the hi-fi and think it was groovy, man.
Comments (11)
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Lots of websites have become books - Fake AP Stylebook is just another example in a long line of many. However, this may be the first time a song likely never intended to live beyond YouTube fame has been pressed into vinyl. Unless there's some rare "Chocolate Rain" LP out there that I'm unaware of...
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Huh, an overseas friend of mine requested I pick this up for him. I thought it was something about like, science for real, but I guess he's just started smoking weed.
I would recommend everyone pick it up simply for the etching. The song is great in its own way but the Golden Record engraving is the stuff of King Nerds
I love the music video as much as one can, I should think. However, without the footage of Carl beatboxing and the immaculate setpieces featured in the video, I can't imagine that owning, simply, an audio recording would bring me much joy.
Perhaps I'm wrong.
This is great, great news in my world. (Or should I say in my universe?)
True, the video itself is half the greatness, just the gauzy, surreal quality of that Cosmos footage (if anyone's ever seen the whole miniseries, there's a "cosmic ship" set that you can kinda see in a few shots). Plus, yeah the opening/"beatboxing."
Videos like this should be in the Museum of Modern Art in my opinion, as its the contemporary equivalent of video art. And it's a catchy song.
The fact that the b-side is the Voyager Golden Record.... just wow. My 15-year old self (which is basically my current self) is doing backflips right now.
"If you wish / to make an apple pie from scratch / you must first / invent the universe."
Words to live by. See you Monday morning, Third Man.
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