Commencing Countdown from Moontopia by Sounds of Space Project

This is Cunio's attempt to imagine the amazing rockets used to launch the space probes sent to explore the solar system as a piece of music, not in a literal sense but instead a response to the optimism of these endeavours. As with some of our earlier albums the piano in this track is 'prepared', with selected strings covered with rubbers and clips providing a series of distorted sounds when played, which are then further processed in the electronic domain. The piece is very simple built around the D Lydian scale with its enigmatic sharpened 4th interval, an interval we also see in "Portents and Dreams of Enceladus".

Scarborough's art response to the upbeat music and title has been interpreted in an almost abstract way combining a launch pad scene during a countdown with a trajectory. The image you see here is blended, consisting of an image of Artemis I on a mobile launcher and an image of a rocket launch. She chose the launch pad scene not purely for its beauty, but also because Artemis is the Goddess of the Moon in Greek mythology and the eventual launch of Artemis I, on 16 November 2022, was the first in a series of missions to enable human exploration of the Moon.

Tracklist

1.	Commencing Countdown	1:27

Credits

from Moontopia, released June 11, 2025
Kim Cunio prepared piano
Image of NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket with the Orion spacecraft aboard atop a mobile launcher illuminated by spotlights on 29 August 2022 at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida courtesy of NASA/Joel Kowsky
Image of Rocket Lab’s Electron rocket lift off from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility on 21 March 2024 courtesy of NASA/Jamie Adkins

License

CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. See the Creative Commons website for details.