Jezero Crater from Celestial Incantations by Sounds of Space Project

Jezero Crater
Location: Mars (230 million km from the Sun)
Date: 20th February 2021
Music: Armenian Duduk, provenance over 1500 years old

In 2021 NASA’s Mars Perseverance Rover made the first acoustic recording of the planet’s atmosphere. This recording is combined with the resonant sounds of the equipment which is part of the sonic archaeology of this landmark recording event. The recording took place in the 49 km wide Jezero Crater, located at 18.38 degrees North, 77.58 degrees East on the western edge of a flat plain known as Isidis Planitia, on February 20, 2021, made by an off the shelf microphone by the Danish company DPA.

While so many of these ‘sounds’ on this album are difficult to believe there is something quite stupendous at having an acoustic sound to work with. One thing that struck me in this process was our collective imagining of Martians, maybe best embodied by the book War of the Worlds by HG Wells. The Martian atmosphere is very quiet by our standards but we have imagined these sounds as a fictitious Martian might hear them, a Martian being a creature that lives in low gravity that breathes a toxic array of gasses that might have stupendous powers of hearing. As such the atmosphere appears much louder, and certain frequencies have been boosted to allow this effect.

This work is hot off the press, it is to us that the project could not finish until we were able to set this sound. This track needed a profound musical response as the sheer human ingenuity of the landing and capture needs to be acknowledged. Some years ago I had written music for the Armenian duduk, (possibly one of the most beautiful instruments in human existence), while setting the Khalili collection of Islamic art to music. At that time I purchased my own duduk and spent the next several years teaching myself this most difficult and precise of instruments. What you hear is the fruit of that great challenge combined with newly composed lines sung by the sublime voice of Heather Lee who we also hear on Celestial Incantations. Heather is an Australian soprano with an exceptionally tender voice. The music is sad, maybe too sad for such a triumph of human adventurism and scientific enquiry, but after the initial jubilation I would like us to think of all the harm we have bestowed on our planet. Mars shows us that there is no second Earth in our solar system.

Artwork Inspirations: The more you look what does this surreal landscape reveal when Mars Rover is removed? Medieval symbol of Mars has been imposed on geological circles, as a fusion of fact and fantasy, Mars Red is a colour favoured by artists through the centuries. Linguistic providence? The circular motif links this design with the other artworks on the album

The track cover design is a layered digital collage created by Diana Scarborough. Some source materials are from NASA and ESA image libraries.

Tracklist

4.	Jezero Crater	6:16

Credits

from Celestial Incantations, released June 21, 2021
Kim Cunio electroacoustics, duduk
Heather Lee soprano
Diana Scarborough track artwork
Nigel Meredith science and 'sound' curation
Sounds of the wind on Mars provided courtesy of NASA/JPL-Caltech/LANL/CNES/CNRS/ISAE-Supaero

License

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