Vinyl and CD (digipack, jewlbox and carton sleeve) graphic design.
Typeface by Mário Feliciano: Stella, FTF.
Photography by Daniel Malhão: Pó #7 (lambda print 125 x 250 cm).
“Language is an apposite term for what happens in Space. The sounds are distinctly vocal at times: beyond the laser-like squelches and zaps is a field of clipped gurgles that could be R2D2 quotes, as though the record eavesdrops on a sound designer commissioned to devise an alien language.” — The Wire
This is the Space Program first release. Space is Space Program’s fundamental release, “an orchestral environment for electronic instruments”.
“The Space Program is a long-term project launched in 2004, for performing music with a post-free jazz mind-set but using strange sounds from electronic instruments. Playing physically, the body is involved in making decisions. The Space Program is about articulating silence and sound, structuring musical flow on experimental instruments with a simple and clear sonic identity.
All these instruments are different but have a few things in common. The first is that they don’t have a conventional interface, which means that for all of them i have to find out what they do and develop technique to play them. The second is that none of them respond accurately to performing action. So there’s always a live tension between an accurate decision and its somewhat unpredictable outcome. I meant to play music technically free from any school and teachings, but beyond that i also wanted the music somehow to escape my own self, playing instruments with a sort of life of their own, never allowing complete control and making any repetition virtually impossible.” — Rafael Toral