The space elevator entered the collective consciousness over 110 years ago through the mind of Konstantin Tsiolkovsky and remained largely hidden behind the Iron Curtain until it entered pop culture in Sir Arthur C. Clarke's The Fountains of Paradise in 1979.
A portal to a new dimension of the shared mind opened up in mid-2006 with the release of Inquisitor Betrayer's CD Space Elevator four years after an electronics engineer with a synthesizer fixation (and closet alien) named Dale Kay, and multi-instrumentalist/keyboardist Wes Antczak started putting out symphonic electronica on their particular wavelength.
Along the way, the duo was augmented by a maiden named Lorraine who liked Dale's last name so much she took it as her own when they married.
Speaking to the Space Elevator Journal in their collective e-mail voice the band explains what attracted them to the space elevator as an album concept.
Dale and Wes are in harmony on the concept's genesis in the excitement of watching sci-fi influences from Arthur C. Clarke, Stanislaw Lem and "favorite TV shows such as Star Trek, Space 1999, and later Babylon 5, and movies such as (of course) the Star Wars saga" become reality.
"Man's journey into space is at hand," adds Wes. "It's real, it's complex, it's frightening, It's also the greatest ride we can ever imagine. It's all of these things rolled up into one fantastic and unbelievably intense experience."
"The music goes beyond anything earthly and current – to connect with something so into the future," Lorraine explains. "I wasn’t actually in on selecting the concept. It was something decided before I joined the band. Both Dale and Wes are heavily into sci-fi [and] I too am a big sci-fi fan going back as far as the old Buck Rogers serials, Jules Verne books and the 'Danny Dunn and the Anti-Gravity' series of books (and no, I am not that old)."
Once the SE is built and the world is "busy with a mission other than self-destruction" Dale opines SE passengers (and listeners) will be able to "relax, sit back, enjoy the music. The ride is all about you now."
Offered a free ticket to space on the SE Wes would simply "go for a quick spin around the solar system and then probably come back home and get back to making more music."
Lorraine "would probably just give my free ride to someone else [because] I don’t even like to fly in an airplane" [but thinks] "it would work for Dale [because he] is an alien you know ... and lately I’ve been beginning to wonder about Wes. How else could [Dale] come up with all the stuff he puts in our music?"
"I would like to take a look around with my camera in hand," agrees Dale the newly-outed alien. "Maybe park up next to one of the new telescopes that would be in place by the time I could go for a ride. Hook my camera up and just take some pictures [and then]- home ... it's been a while since I been there."
Listen to samples here at Inquisitor Betrayer's web site or just Buy the Disc
--SEJ--
Labels: Space Culture, Space elevator, Space Media
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