A brief history of space age

According to NASA, the probability of a destructive asteroid colliding with Earth is 0.1% each year. That’s roughly the same probability as a disc like A Brief History of the Space Age existing. And yet it does.

Published in 2021 by producer and composer Juan Manuel Mantecón, A brief history of space age is exactly what its title promises: a brief history of the space age and, with it, a brief history of electronic music, so linked in its beginnings with the cosmos and exploration. Mantecón takes advantage of this duality to pay homage, on the one hand, to the heroes and minds of that space race that began with scientists and popularizers such as Carl Sagan, Stephen Hawking, Nikola Tesla, Isaac Asimov, and Arthur C. Clarke, among many others, and which is continued today by billionaires such as Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Richard Branson; and on the other hand, to musicians who imagined decades ago what the music of space would be like, creating a way of making electronic music that, 50 years later, permeates all of Mantecón’s work: Vangelis, Kitaro, Jean-Michel Jarre, Moroder, Kraftwerk, Tomita, Space, OMD, Tangerine Dream, Klaus Schulze, Neuronium… All of them are present in A Brief History of Space Age in one way or another.

However, the exceptional nature of this album, its rarity, its improbable existence, is not solely due to it being a concept album in the age of playlists, nor to its cosmic influences in the age of urban music. Conceived and produced in 2021, to understand its valuable dimension one must look (or listen) far back. In 1975, Vangelis released Heaven & Hell and in 1976, Albedo 0.39; the same year, Jarre released Oxygene; also in that first half of the decade, Tangerine Dream gave birth to Phaedra (1974), Rubycon (1975), Ricochet (1975), and Stratosfear (1976); Space became popular in 1977 with Magic Fly, and in 1978, Kraftwerk released Die Mensch-Maschine. These are all huge names in the history of electronic music who defined a sound that we now call classic and that came from the same instruments with which A Brief History of Space Age was performed and recorded: the Arp 2600, the Minimoog, the Arp Odyssey, the OB8, the Mellotron… Nothing has been left to chance in the production; every detail has been carefully considered to achieve the authentic sound of that era in 2021, to the point that the recording and mastering were done on analog tape using the same recording techniques that were used back then, leaving the mastering in the hands of Paschal Byrne, the producer behind the mastering of legendary works such as Invisible Connections (1985) or L’apocalypse des animaux (1973) by Vangelis or Incantations (1978) by Mike Oldfield, among many other works.

All of this is a culmination of creative decisions and hard work that would, on their own, justify the existence of A Brief History of Space Age in a musical universe completely unrelated to these technological constructs. However, to this framework must be added a core without which everything would amount to empty engineering: the music itself, which shapes the journey through space and time that is the album.

Terms like innovative or novel don’t apply to these compositions by Mantecón, but that was never the intention. These pieces are classics in the broadest sense of the term: in sound, structure, instrumentation, harmony, melody…

The album opens with ‘In Translation’ and Kennedy’s famous speech about going to the moon. It sounds as if Jarre’s ‘Rendez-Vous 4’ is about to begin, but instead, a soaring sequence and Tangerine Dream-esque effects unfold, over which an overture is built, reaching great heights of epic grandeur with the entrance of the University of Seville choir.

In ‘Ignition’, the countdown is ever-present, the sequences accelerate, and the percussion kicks in. It’s a space-disco track with retro-futuristic leads and Christian Ruiz’s voice, robotic at times as it passes through the vocoder, encouraging us to leave limits behind. Because, isn’t the space race an obstacle course that we must overcome?

‘Oort Cloud’ refers to a cloud of objects whose orbit lies beyond Neptune and which scientists consider the source of all long-period comets. It is a more ambient and solemn piece, to which the choir again contributes, this time with a prominent role.

‘Sputnik’ was released as the first single from A Brief History of Space Age with a spectacular live performance video. It’s a risky move, given its seven-minute length, but as we’ve seen, nothing about Mantecón’s work is conventional. It’s the album’s most representative track, making extensive use of sequences, 70s-style percussion, and loose, almost jazzy melodies in its first third, before shifting in the second third to a style closer to OMD, again featuring Christian Ruiz’s vocals, and concluding with a melancholic coda of distorted pads.

‘Hawking piece’ is a transitional track, a short ambient piece with a message from the famous astrophysicist that leads into ‘Space and time’, a surge of rhythm and melody with a duet by Christian Ruiz and Ayrin.

Space or Nova are groups that may come to mind when listening to ‘Mr. Hubble’, another track with potential as a single.

‘Sagan Piece’ is another transitional track, this time featuring the voice of the popular science communicator, whose legendary series Cosmos included music by Vangelis in its soundtrack. And Vangelis seems to be the most obvious influence on the track ‘Neowise,’ with a bass line that immediately recalls ‘To the Unknown Man’ and a lead guitar very similar in timbre to that of ‘Hymne,’ but with which Mantecón demonstrates his talent by crafting the most beautiful melody on the album.

Not everything in the space race was a success. There were also tragedies, and ‘Last Goodbye’ is a melancholic adagio, a tribute to all those who gave their lives in the conquest of that final frontier, and especially to the crew of the Challenger.

And this brief history of the space age couldn’t conclude without a reference to alien life, its existence or non-existence, and all that this would imply, whatever the answer to the question. ‘Oumuamua’ is the first object from outside the Solar System discovered, and since its first observation in 2017, it has given rise to numerous speculations about its origin and the possibility that it was the “first distant messenger,” which is the translation of its Hawaiian name. Given the vitalistic nature of this topic, it seems that Mantecón is optimistic regarding the question of whether we are alone in the Universe…

While the enigma is being solved, we can enjoy this extraordinary object, like a supernova, that is A Brief History of Space Age, feeling fortunate to have coincided in time, as if it were the passage of a Halley’s Comet, knowing that a conjunction of talent and good ideas like the one embodied in this album will hardly ever be repeated.