First Light from Sunconscious by Sounds of Space Project

The album begins on the day of the first sunrise of the austral winter at Halley VI Research Station in Antarctica. The Sun has been permanently below the horizon for over 3 months and this is a particularly important day in the calendar year at Halley, as the Sun finally rises again, trumpeting the start of lighter and longer days.

In this track we hear the wonderful variety of Earth’s natural radio emissions captured by the Halley VLF receiver on this momentous day. We hear the crackles and pops of spherics, the descending tones of lightning generated whistlers and the rising and falling tones of whistler mode chorus. We have worked with the 'sounds' of Halley before but here we focus on emissions recorded on the day of the Sun's first appearance after the long Antarctic ‘night’, adding a poignancy to the sound of the chorus emissions whose source is ultimately the Sun.

The music is written for virtual choir and felt piano in an expansive scale known as the Lydian mode. This mode is like a major scale with an additional sharpened note, and augmented 4th, which allows a feeling of expansion in the intervals of the music. All of us know the sensation of seeing first light, and we can imagine together how incredible this would be after the long ‘night’ of the Antarctic Winter.

The artwork by Scarborough is a simple evocation of flow and colour, a delicate observation of the first touch of light on an imagined dark landscape.

Tracklist

1.	First Light	6:08

Credits

from Sunconscious, released December 1, 2022
Kim Cunio virtual choir and piano
Diana Scarborough track artwork
Nigel Meredith science and 'sound' curation
VLF ‘sounds’ courtesy of BAS

License

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