Moon Walk from Moontopia by Sounds of Space Project

The Apollo program, also known as Project Apollo, was the United States human spaceflight program led by NASA, which successfully landed the first humans on the Moon in 1969. Apollo followed Project Mercury that put the first Americans in space. It was conceived in 1960 as a three-person spacecraft during President Dwight D. Eisenhower's administration. Apollo was later dedicated to President John F. Kennedy's national goal for the 1960s of "landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth" in an address to Congress on May 25, 1961. It was the third US human spaceflight program to fly, preceded by Project Gemini conceived in 1961 to extend spaceflight capability in support of Apollo. (Wikipedia).

Apollo set several major human spaceflight milestones. It stands alone in sending crewed missions beyond low Earth orbit. Apollo 8 was the first crewed spacecraft to orbit another celestial body, and Apollo 11 was the first crewed spacecraft to land humans on one. (Wikipedia).

The audio for the track is taken from a montage of moonwalks, where we hear details about the Moon itself that are different from the grand statements that have made popular consciousness. The electronic drone of the machinery was one of the reasons this was chosen. It sounds a pedal point almost in B, exactly the same as one of Cunio's wooden flutes. With such a symbiosis Cunio played along with the montage. We hope it allows these words to have a potentially new life.

For this track artwork, Scarborough has taken the iconic boot print from the Apollo 11 Moon landing and blended it with a satellite image of Antarctica to the point of almost white abstraction. Her intention here is to leave the interpretation of the image down to the viewer as at first glance this could be simply a trainer footprint on snow. However, after listening to the track we can truly understand the image from a moon perspective.

Tracklist

2.	Moon Walk	3:03

Lyrics

"Okay"

"Um uh at the foot of the ladder. The lamb foot beds are only uh uh depressed in the surface about uh one or two inches, although the surface appears to be uh very very fine grained as you get close to it it's almost like a powder"

"Brown is gravine and then a long one"

"Okay I'm going to leave that one foot up there and both hands down about the fourth rung up."

"There you go."

"Now I think I'll do the same"

"For those who haven't read the plaque uh we'll read the plaque that's on the front landing gear of this lamb. There's there's two hemispheres one showing each of the two hemispheres of Earth. Underneath it says airmen from the planet Earth first set foot upon the Moon July 1969 in peace. We came in peace."

"I guess you're about the only person around that doesn't have TV coverage of the scene."

"That's all right, I don't mind a bit. How is the quality of the TV?"

"Oh it's beautiful Mike, really is"

Credits

from Moontopia, released June 11, 2025
Apollos sounds held by NASA
Kim Cunio wooden flute, sound design and composition
Image of Apollo 11 bootprint courtesy of NASA

License

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