Superheroes Of Space - The Album

Downloads

The audio

• Zip file of MP3s (80.7 MB)
  
• Apple Lossless versions from Mediafire (coming soon)
  
• MP3s from Last.FM
  
• MP3s from Jamendo

The artwork

• Ready to print A4 PDF

The track listing

1. Laika
   Music: Kip Loades (produced by Rob Fisher)
   Lyrics and Vocals: Layla Vandenbergh
2. Droids (gonna rock this mothership)
   Music: Dan Gresham
   Lyrics and Vocals: Greg Dean
3. An Echo of Mimesis [subject: James Turrell]
   Music: Joe Dean
   Lyrics: Tim Donderevo
   Vocals: Kelly Hoglund
4. I am the Space Hand [subject: DEXTRE]
   Music: Jimmy Schmitz: First Engineer ISS (additional synth commands: Doctor 30)
   Lyrics: Tim Donderevo
   Vocals: Microsoft Mike
5. Russian Man Outside [subject: Alexey Leonov]
   Music: Greg Dean
   Lyrics and Lead Vocals: Barney Brown / Kip Loades
   
6. Voyager
   Music: Robot Android Fisher
   Lyrics and Vocals: Craig Macintosh
   
7. Dear Mars Rovers
   Music: Craig Macintosh
   Lyrics and vocals: Jules Peters
   Backing Vocals: Sam Berry
8. Probe II’s Golden Message [subject: Voyager II]
   Music: Dan Waldkirch
   Lyrics and Vocals: Kip Loades
9. Klaatu Barada Nikto
   Music: Mike Weber
   Lyrics and Vocals: Joseph Ashley-Smith
10. Lonely Planets Club [subject: Pluto]
    Music: Tim Marchand and Jules Peters (percussion: Julian Lambert)
    Lyrics and Vocals: Dan Waldkirch
11. Dave [subject: 2001]
    Music: Eric Lebofsky/Tim Donderevo
    Lyrics and Vocals: Bob Rocket
12. Space Junk
    Music: Barney Brown (additional drums: Jim Smith)
    Lyrics and Vocals: Eric Lebofsky / Tim Donderevo
13. Step Aside Roger Moore [subject: Yuri Gagarin]
    Music: Digital Midget
    Lyrics and Vocals: Jimmy Binks and the Shakehorns: JuPiter (Jules Peters), Spaceman Sam (Sam Berry) Tim Martian (Tim Marchand) (additional backing vocals: Eddie "Dwiddles" Peters)
14. That’s the Worm’s Game [Subject: Wormholes]
    Music: Jules Peters (drums and percussion: Julian Lambert)
    Lyrics: Nick Osbourne / Richard Yates
    Vocals: Nick Osbourne / Mad Sparks
15. Freeman Lowell
    Music: The Incredible Flight of Birdman
    Lyrics and Vocals: Tim Marchand
16. The Burning Man [subject: Gully Foyle]
    Music: Joseph Ashley-Smith
    Lyrics and Vocals: Dan Waldkirch

Album mastered by Tim Donderevo

Artwork by Greg Dean and Dan Gresham

Images Courtesy of NASA

The lyrics

Read all the lyrics

Copyright

Copyright and Publishing Intercontinental Music Lab 2009

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/

Ta Da 2

Some possible issues of copyright with some of the images used on the last cover had prompted a re-think. The original concept didn't work without most of the subject matter represented so I trawled Nasa's copyright free gallery for inspiration. And there it was - Astronaut Mike Gernhardt doing the classic foreshortened flying pose of a Superhero. In Space! (http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/image_feature_313.html )

A few tweaks, a bit of smoke for effect, lots of sparkle and shine and out pops a new cover.
Thanks Mike...

Are we "Go"?

Are the tracks all in yet?

Because...I am getting Excited!

Ta-Da!

You'll have to imagine the spacejunk and wormholes somewhere around the top just out of view. All your other subjects are there. For some reason there were no Victorian engravings of astronauts and rockets in my source books(!) so we have moved away from this aspect of the brand identity while hopefully retaining all the other recognizable features of the 'Superheroes' trilogy (sorry, I sound like I'm on the apprentice). Thanks to Dan for helping out and providing some other great images for the project which will be released soon.

So close now. Can.. almost.. touch...it...

Inching ever closer, last tracks should be ready within days, some mastering work already started. I think we have just enough oxygen to last...

[For any of you struggling to pass the time until release date, try reading The Dirt (The Motley Crue story). Just finished it - its bloody amazing - and I don't even like Motley Crue! Best rock and roll book I've ever read. Anyone wanna start a glam rock band?!]

Grreg Sevven

Semi-interesting stuff.

Hello everyone,

As some of you may know, I've been working on my senior thesis as a Music Technology student at Ball State University. The topic I chose is speed composition/songwriting, and I picked out a couple artists and groups to talk about and interview. Guess what? The IML is one of them. As part of the assignment, I had to make a website presenting the information...it's not too flashy, but it gets the job done, and here it is:

http://djwaldkirch.iweb.bsu.edu/MUMET/

Greg, Tim, and Barney gave me lots of great insight into how and why the IML works, and I'm sure some of you would be interested to read about it.

The site is basically just my 32-page paper divided into 7 parts...if you're having lots of fun in the IML and want more opportunities to write music, I encourage you to look into the other sections of the site!

Looking forward to more vocals soon!

Dan

P.S. I made the site in about an hour, and it's not due for 2 weeks...if you spot any mistakes, let me know!

But he still hasn't gotten his stuff back.

I just finished and uploaded my vocals for Tim M's Pluto track, and I love how it turned out. It's called "Lonely Planets Club," and I went in a bit of a strange direction for the lyrics. In the song, Pluto is a somewhat bitter divorcee, probably living at some sort of bachelor pad. He recalls his recent breakup with our solar system, and though he's in a lot of pain, he remains somewhat optimistic. His support system is, of course, the Lonely Planets Club. In the end, everything turns out great for Pluto, because he finds happiness in a new relationship with the Kuiper Belt. A little stupid, I know, but the decision was made after I learned that Pluto's heart is literally made of ice and stone. If that doesn't scream "messy breakup song," I don't know what does.

I was obsessing a little bit over these lyrics for the past few days...I think I may have over-thought the concept, but I really like the song. I especially like that you can take it out of the context of the Space album, and it could easily be just about a guy, not a planet.

That's about all I have to say about it...download it and enjoy! And of course, let me know if there are any mixing issues...I've been working on it for the last 4 hours and I have no idea what it really sounds like anymore.

Do Androids Dream of Electro?

Recorded all lyrics to my song yesterday (4 robots, a party rabble singalong, a vincent price impression and some heavy 80s rap) and it sounds .... well... er.. I dunno. So I asked my team of critics for some feedback as I always do. My 4 year old said it 'sounds a little bit scary', my six year old asked for Hannah Montana back on the ipod and my wife said it sounded better in the shower!!

Hmmm..... Anyway, had great fun doing it. Had never sung much in character before and it turns out there were quite a few characters waiting to be released.

Deadline on Monday. I'm all excited like its Christmas Eve and I'm 5 years old.

Prima tempo

As the production of the Laika song draws to a close I wanted to share my experience of being a first-time songwriter. I was handed the brief just after the Cambridge Science festival gig was finished so it seemed particularly pertinent to make it as educational as possible. One of the great things about the IML is everybody's forced to do some research; I love researching so spent a couple of days scouring the web for as much on Laika as possible, moving into the USA-USSR space race and the Cold War, ie ended up generally trying to get my head around 20th century Russian politics and wondering how I was going to fit all that into a 3 and half minute song. What became almost immediately apparent is that the guy responsible for putting Russian animals in space, Oleg Gazenko, actually felt pretty guilty about the whole Laika business so that seemed like a great starting point. In 1998 he said this:

"Work with animals is a source of suffering to all of us. We treat them like babies who cannot speak. The more time passes, the more I’m sorry about it. We shouldn’t have done it. We did not learn enough from the mission to justify the death of the dog."

One of the other scientists (Vladimir Yadovsky) took Laika home, on the eve of her space journey, to have some play time with his kids. I was getting a sense that there was a level of guilt from the scientists about blasting this dog into space on her terminal journey and that Laika was a pretty lovable little dog. Thus the song I've written is an attempt to be from the perspective of these scientists at the time (thus it turned out I didn't have to fit 50 odd years of Soviet politics into the song afterall, phew) and gave me an excuse to try and sing with a bit of a Russian accent. After I'd written what turned out to be pretty much the final version of the song I read the marvellous graphic novel Laika by Nick Abadzis - he did tonnes of research and came up with practically the same story so that was quite gratifying!

Once I'd done the research I was surprised at how easily the lyrics were to write (much thanks must go to Kip here for giving me a firm structure to work with) -- maybe not surprising to you guys but shocked the hell out of me, I thought it was going to be much harder. But I was fascinated by the process and the different way of thinking it provoked (compared to editing medical journals which is my usual brainpower outlet). However, it plagued me after a few days; for a week I had the song endlessly, incessently on a loop in my mind, got pretty sick of it and had to just entirely leave it alone for a while. Still, I played my mum a rough version I'd recorded and it made her cry so I thought I was probably on the right track.

Anyway, the final result will be uploaded soon and I'm happy with it. Barney's been doing some nice production on it (though I did have to say 'let's turn down the robot effect a bit') and I've been learning some basics of logic pro this evening. So, all in all a fun learning and gratifying experience which I'm keen to repeat...

Here's a short animation all about Laika which I wish I had done http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nz7Xbo1m5XA

xx Layla

Only 10 vocal tracks this time. Fighting...urges...

I've just finished recording vocals over Ash's doomy track about Gully Foyle (main character of "The Stars My Destination"). I had a lot of fun with this one. It's DARK, folks. It immediately reminded me of Deftones' "Change (In the House of Flies)"...a whole lot of atmosphere, and a whole lot of groove. There's actually one bit left to record: a teeny tiny screaming part...it's a little too late for that right now. Don't worry, the scream is tasteful. On a related note: I wonder if I'm the only metalhead in the IML...

I don't want to ruin it, but there was something sort of funny about working on this track: half of the lyrics were already written for me. If you're interested in spoiling it for yourself, head over to the Wikipedia article about the book...it won't take very long for you to find what I'm talking about. That said, I did write lyrics of my own, and I really like those too.

And in some IML news: Greg asked me to take on another track in place of my roommate Mike, who is a very busy guy. I'll be singing over Tim M's track about Pluto. I'm really excited about this because the two tracks could not be more different. My work on Ash's track is similar to the Blackbeard track from the Sea album...but I'm going to have to do something completely different for this new one. It's so...happy! I've always wanted to try something a little more...flamboyant, vocally speaking. I'm excited.

An interesting predicament: one of my favorite singer/songwriters, Jonathan Coulton, has a song about Pluto called "I'm Your Moon." It's a love song, from the perspective of Pluto's moon, Charon. Charon is trying to cheer Pluto up after his recent demotion from planet status. Also, Charon and Pluto are roughly the same size, so Charon doesn't revolve around Pluto, they revolve around each other. Jonathan Coulton called this particular phenomenon "the most romantic thing I've ever heard."

So, I have to do something else! I have two ideas for making a happy Pluto song. Idea #1: a song sung by a pre-2006 Pluto...he's just so happy to be a planet, and nobody can take that away from him! Idea #2: a song sung by Planet X (Pluto before 1930). Everybody's looking for him, and he's trying to get their attention...I'm over here, guys! The problem with that: it might come a little too close to "Call Them X"...but maybe not. Votes? Other ideas?

Time for bed!

What music did Neil Armstrong take to the moon?

The answer to this is in an excellent article on the links between space travel and music in american culture.

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/music/article6021883.ece

Hope all's going well with the song writing...

Time travel and the IML

Time passes so quickly. There you are, walking around Cambridge eating Jarlsberg cheese out of your hand, when SMASH! ... a week has suddenly gone by. I used to think that I fell into mini comas, but apparently this is how everyone feels.
All of a sudden, the vocal deadline has started to approach for IML Mission 3. It has reared up like a post-coma rush. It's not in my face yet, it's not days away, but it's there.
My usual method for describing approaching deadlines is to compare them to how close Omar Sharif has come over the horizon in that interminable scene in Lawrence of Arabia. I'll say, for example, "the deadline is three inches high now", or "the deadline is horseback, about three metres away" or even, "the deadline is shooting at me with a rifle; it's an Arab. What the fuck is going on?" It's a very scientific comparison and more people should use it.
Fortunately, I've been doing a lot of reading about wormholes during this period. And if there's one thing that wormholes can actually punch in the guts it's time itself. That's very useful, I thought. These IML deadlines are very tight - let's see if I can use my assigned IML theme to lengthen the amount of time I can spend on the vocal.
Thus, as well as research, I have been conducting experiments. You know, making homemade wormholes out of locks of David Bowie's thigh hair that I bought on the internet, mixed with malt loaf and my own vomit (it's not hard to induce vomit these days - I just peer outside and catch someone's eye and I'm there). Anyway, I succeeded. What I mean is, I passed through my own wormhole - please don't sneer - and emerged in 1977.

No, really.

So what does this mean? Well, it means that - as well as technically being at least three decades older than anyone else in the IML - I've been working on my vocal track now for over thirty years. It's been an obsession. Everything about it had to be perfect. I'd spend half a decade honing it and then I'd suddenly become exasperated and scrap it and start again, moving on to new recording technologies and production techniques. I've made at least sixteen different versions, using at least three hundred different vocal melodies and four hundred different sets of lyrics. At one point I had the perfect version on tape, but then someone on a hover board pinched it from my paws and I was back at stage one again.
It's been an epic adventure, not unlike that of T.E. Lawrence's, except for the lack of similarities. But all epic adventures, of course, have to come to an end.

So where am I now?
Well, after thirty years, back now in 'real time', sharing the same deadline as everyone else in the IML (I can see you, Sharif), I've decided to start from scratch again. You might say that I travelled back in time for nothing, that I've wasted thirty years, but I don't see it like that. Experience is everything. Well, not everything - experience isn't a packet of Frazzles - but it is important. I've been through three decades to get to this point. I've been through a wormhole of my own creation for Christ's sake. Now, more than ever, I am ready to start writing some lyrics, to sing heartfelt of my travails, and to discuss the delights of watching Overboard with Goldie Hawn at the theatre on its cinematic release in 1987 (now that is why people should time travel). My work starts now.

Mars 500

I think we'll miss the deadline for this 'crew', but I reckon a copy of Superheroes of Space would provide great consolation and worthy distraction for these claustrophobia junkies:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/7966731.stm

Under the Radar

When did the new logo go up? I've only just noticed it - another work of magic. I'm disappointed there isn't a Stephen Hawking silhouette in the orbit though ...






Hi Nick, thought I'd edit your post to let you see your idea...

Not really doing it for me (although looks more like Dr Strangelove). The original is way better - love the use of negative to fit the alien onto saturn TT. Very pleasing!

G

41 IML tracks

Science (13) + Sea (13) + Space (15) = 41 tracks!

That's immense. Bands have put out 'best ofs' on less. All in the space of a year too.

Still working on the Vincent Price impression. I am practicing on the way to work. Passers by must think I'm possessed.

Maybe I am.


Vince

gig. done. must. write. lyrics.

Just started work on my space track, a very contemporary slice of 'spacehousepop' from Dan G. Think I'm going lite this time, it seems appropriate after taking my last 2 IML tracks very seriously. The plan so far is to have some rap verses (in the style of King Tim 3rd ), a chorus sung by robots and a Vincent Price middle 8. I hope Dan won't mind.

The world of music doesn't have enough Vincent Price middle 8s and its time to add one more. Sure, he's dead, but who isn't these days? I guess this decision must, in some way, be influenced by my toying with the idea of watching a Michael Jackson show at the O2. At least, I was toying with it until my wife declared 'You 're not spending a hundred quid to watch a paedophile dance' and I guess, put like that, she probably has a point.


Shamon

Write your lyrics you bloody bastards

That was said in the spirit of Tim Dalton a la Flash Gordon. I'm not sure he ever said that but there you go,. Anyway for Dan W's excellent Record Time IV project I built a lyric writing machine. It's great, and you should try using it whilst writing lyrics for Superheroes of Space. It's called iLyricise because unless it's got an i in front of it, it isn't modern or online. Go and play with it

I've tapped "Laika" into it for the purposes of writing about ... Laika. In short iLyricise condenses a Wikipedia article about any subject into a list of words, ranked by how rarely those words appear in that article. What more can you want? What? What? Good night.

James Spader Is All Over Me

I don't know how he does it. I'll spend three months avoiding James Spader and then he'll suddenly pop up somewhere unexpected, usually late at night in some high art/soft porn cine-flick, or he'll send one of his clones out onto the street so that I think I've glimpsed him near Woolworths or Rumblelows or somewhere. Anyway, he's infiltrated the IML this time ...
On Monday I received my IML vocal assignment: a magnificent backing track from Julian, who did such a sensational job on our Robotnik track (which has been played on Radio Scilly, such is its high regard on the islands). Lots of vocal melodies usually come to me pretty quickly when I hear a backing track, but this one smoked me up all nice and foggy. I need to flex some different muscles this time. I am very excited about what might happen though.
Anyway, my theme is wormholes. A great theme. I did a little research, googling and the like, and one of the first things that came up was ... Stargate.
Spader, you c***.

The Space Project: Phase 2 Blueprints

Listed by musical composer, theme, recipient

Barney (Space Junk) to Eric and Tim T
Mike (Free Choice) to Ash
Ash (Gully Foyle) to Dan W
Greg (Alexey Leonov) to Kip
Dan G (Droids) to Greg
Rob (Voyager) to Craig
Incredible flight of birdman (Freeman Lowell) to Tim M
Joe and Greg (Yuri Gagarin) to Julian
Jim (Free choice) to Tim T
Kip (Laika) to Barney
Dan W (Free choice) to Kip
Tim T/Eric (Dave 2001) to Rob
Julian (Wormholes) to Birdman
Tim M (Pluto) to Dan W
Craig (free choice) to Julian
Joe (James Turrell) to Kelly

Space abstinence

For the first time ever with the IML I'm going to not listen to any of the other instrumental entries until the album has been mastered. I've always listened to everything as it was submitted in the past but at the same time, regretted it once the finished album has been delivered. I'm adding a few extra drums (which Jim bashed out for me the other night) to my track this evening then its done. Definitely time to upload and be done with it. And for when we get to the lyric writing stage, I've just written a little lyric writing application (for Dan W's Record Time IV project) which assists with automated lyric writing, so no excuses for a lack of interesting words. And now it's time to say goodnight at the end of a lovely day. Goodnight.