NASA’s Voyager Golden Record gets reissued on vinyl and CD; presumably due to high extra-terrestrial-hipster demand

NASA's Voyager Golden Record gets reissued on vinyl and CD; presumably due to high extra-terrestrial-hipster demand

Hey, Americans in particular: has cynicism been invading your personality like the Tripods of War of the Worlds lately? Are you more likely now to go on extended rants that stem from a universal hopelessness, because that hopelessness is spreading within your mind like an alien garden fertilized by the forcefully drained guts of humans?

Finding someone to commiserate with in 2017 is relatively easy given how outspoken many of us have been with our pertinent national woes, but for an unexpected source of light during this largely discouraging period in our country, it might be necessary to (bear with me now) harken back to 1977, which coincided with NASA’s launching of the Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 spacecrafts. Both spacecrafts carried aboard the legendary Voyager Golden Record, a Carl Sagan-led effort to reach out to our Universal counterparts via sounds, music, and images. The records were literally mounted to the goddamn crafts, and until recently, nobody except some VIP folks at NASA (and possibly Marvin the Martian) had the capacity to hear the extended mix of Beethoven, Laurie Spiegel, and a plethora of multilingual greetings.

Then, in 2015, NASA uploaded some of the Golden Record to SoundCloud (in case you didn’t know, NASA has a dedicated SoundCloud page). Then, this year, an ultimately successful Kickstarter was launched by Ozma Records to release the whole Golden Record in a limited edition vinyl box set.

And now, here we are, planet earth: the record is being reissued as a 2xCD + book and as a new 3LP box set. The former is out December 15, while the latter comes out February 16. Timothy Ferris revisited his role as a producer on the original record by acting as “consulting producer” for these new reissues. Pre-order both or either of them here.

Isn’t there an odd comfort in humans beckoning across the galaxy?

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