''The Race for Space'' is the second studio album by British alternative group Public Service Broadcasting, released on 23 February 2015. Working with sound samples from the

British Film Institute The British Film Institute (BFI) is a film and television charitable organisation which promotes and preserves film-making and television in the United Kingdom. The BFI uses funds provided by the National Lottery to encourage film production, ...

, the album relives the story of the American and Soviet

space race The Space Race was a 20th-century competition between two Cold War rivals, the United States and the Soviet Union, to achieve superior spaceflight capability. It had its origins in the ballistic missile-based nuclear arms race between the tw ...

from 1957–1972. The opening track features the

speech Speech is a human vocal communication using language. Each language uses Phonetics, phonetic combinations of vowel and consonant sounds that form the sound of its words (that is, all English words sound different from all French words, even if ...

John F. Kennedy John Fitzgerald Kennedy (May 29, 1917 – November 22, 1963), often referred to by his initials JFK and the nickname Jack, was an American politician who served as the 35th president of the United States from 1961 until his assassination i ...

on 12 September 1962 at Rice University. To launch the album, the band played two concerts on 26 and 27 February 2015 at the

National Space Centre The National Space Centre is a museum and educational resource covering the fields of space science and astronomy, along with a space research programme in partnership with the University of Leicester. It is located on the north side of the city ...

Leicester Leicester ( ) is a city status in the United Kingdom, city, Unitary authorities of England, unitary authority and the county town of Leicestershire in the East Midlands of England. It is the largest settlement in the East Midlands. The city l ...

and went on to complete a 14-date tour of the UK and Ireland to support the album. The band have expressed concern in the past about playing the whole album cover to cover live, due to the subject matter of track 4 ("Fire in the Cockpit") but did so for the first time at Manchester Science Festival in October 2016. The album reached number 11 in the UK chart and number 1 in the UK Indie Albums Chart the week following its release. The vinyl edition was the 5th highest selling record of 2015 in the UK. On 25 July 2019, to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Apollo Moon landing in 1969, Public Service Broadcasting performed a specially commissioned new orchestral arrangement of the album at the

Royal Albert Hall The Royal Albert Hall is a concert hall on the northern edge of South Kensington, London. One of the UK's most treasured and distinctive buildings, it is held in trust for the nation and managed by a registered charity which receives no govern ...

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...

, as part of the summer's

Proms The BBC Proms or Proms, formally named the Henry Wood Promenade Concerts Presented by the BBC, is an eight-week summer season of daily orchestral classical music concerts and other events held annually, predominantly in the Royal Albert Hal ...

programme. The performance was broadcast live on

BBC Radio 3 BBC Radio 3 is a British national radio station owned and operated by the BBC. It replaced the BBC Third Programme in 1967 and broadcasts classical music and opera, with jazz, world music, Radio drama, drama, High culture, culture and the arts ...

and the day after on

BBC Four BBC Four is a British free-to-air public broadcast television channel owned and operated by the BBC. It was launched on 2 March 2002

. The group had also performed album track "Go!" live on

BBC Two BBC Two is a British free-to-air public broadcast television network owned and operated by the BBC. It covers a wide range of subject matter, with a remit "to broadcast programmes of depth and substance" in contrast to the more mainstream an ...

's '' Newsnight'' programme on the eve of the fiftieth anniversary.

Background

The events covered on the album include the launch of

Sputnik 1 Sputnik 1 (; see § Etymology) was the first artificial Earth satellite. It was launched into an elliptical low Earth orbit by the Soviet Union on 4 October 1957 as part of the Soviet space program. It sent a radio signal back to Earth for t ...

, the

Apollo 1 Apollo 1, initially designated AS-204, was intended to be the first crewed mission of the Apollo program, the American undertaking to land the first man on the Moon. It was planned to launch on February 21, 1967, as the first low Earth orbita ...

fire, and the Vostok 1, Voskhod 2, Vostok 6,

Apollo 8 Apollo 8 (December 21–27, 1968) was the first crewed spacecraft to leave low Earth orbit and the first human spaceflight to reach the Moon. The crew orbited the Moon ten times without landing, and then departed safely back to Earth. These ...

Apollo 11 Apollo 11 (July 16–24, 1969) was the American spaceflight that first landed humans on the Moon. Commander Neil Armstrong and lunar module pilot Buzz Aldrin landed the Apollo Lunar Module ''Eagle'' on July 20, 1969, at 20:17 UTC, an ...

and

Apollo 17 Apollo 17 (December 7–19, 1972) was the final mission of NASA's Apollo program, the most recent time humans have set foot on the Moon or traveled beyond low Earth orbit. Commander Gene Cernan and Lunar Module Pilot Harrison Schmitt walked on ...

missions.

Reception

Critical reception

Upon its release, ''The Race for Space'' was met with largely positive reviews from

music critic ''The Oxford Companion to Music'' defines music criticism as "the intellectual activity of formulating judgments on the value and degree of excellence of individual works of music, or whole groups or genres". In this sense, it is a branch of mus ...

s. Most reviews praised the band's choice of theme and commented heavily on the album's use of tone and instrumentation to depict certain events in the space race. While most critics unanimously praised upbeat tracks such as "Gagarin" and "The Other Side", they were somewhat divided on other tracks on the album, such as "Fire in the Cockpit" and "Valentina", which drew, if any, minor criticism. In comparison to the band's debut album, ''

Inform-Educate-Entertain ''Inform - Educate - Entertain'' is the first album by alternative British group Public Service Broadcasting. It features samples from the British Film Institute (BFI) and The National Archives (UK) and features themes from the first expedition o ...

'', critics also believed that ''The Race for Space'' had elevated the band from a "

novelty act "Novelty Act" is a short story by Philip K. Dick. It involves a dystopian future in which the characters' lives are based on entertaining the First Lady of the United States with "novelty acts." Many of the ideas developed in the story were rewo ...

", and praised the album as a

concept album A concept album is an album whose tracks hold a larger purpose or meaning collectively than they do individually. This is typically achieved through a single central narrative or theme, which can be instrumental, compositional, or lyrical. Som ...

that improves on its predecessor. At

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that review aggregator, aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted arithmetic mean, weighted average). M ...

, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album received an

average In ordinary language, an average is a single number taken as representative of a list of numbers, usually the sum of the numbers divided by how many numbers are in the list (the arithmetic mean). For example, the average of the numbers 2, 3, 4, 7, ...

score of 73, which indicates "Generally favorable reviews", based on 12 reviews as of December 2015. Kevin Harley, writing in ''

The Independent ''The Independent'' is a British online newspaper. It was established in 1986 as a national morning printed paper. Nicknamed the ''Indy'', it began as a broadsheet and changed to tabloid format in 2003. The last printed edition was publis ...

'', wrote that the band proved themselves with the album; "there’s fuel enough for manoeuvre in pop that’s piloted with intelligence, energy, craft and atmospheric control, even if it seems frightfully, stiflingly high-concept." He commented on the band's departure form the rock-centric sounds of ''Inform-Educate-Entertain'' to a more electronic sound, relating the band's move to the album's opening track, with John F. Kennedy's speech for "change and challenge". He also further praised the album's mood tonal shifts, and concluded the review by stating, " 'The Race for Space''is richly entertaining, immersive and evocative, orchestrated with fastidious care and feeling." In a review for '' State'', Phil Udell praised the album, and its space race theme, as giving the band's sound "a new dimension". He comments on ''The Race for Space''s music taking "more of a backseat than '' nform-Educate-Entertain'", and goes on to write in praise of "The Other Side". In his review of the album for ''

Drowned in Sound ''Drowned in Sound'', sometimes abbreviated to ''DiS'', is a UK-based music webzine financed by artist management company Silentway. Founded by editor Sean Adams, the site features reviews, news, interviews, and discussion forums. History ''D ...

'', Marc Burrows wrote that "the joy n ''The Race for Space''is in how the duo marry theme and function", citing specifically the album's instrumentals and their fit to the archival recordings used, such as "the beeping signal of the pioneering "Russian moon" built into the loping, housy rhythm of 'Sputnik'", and "'E.V.A's portrayal of Alexei Leonov’s first spacewalk through quietly disorientating switches in timing and mood, breaking from excitement and speed to a gentle drifting." He also commented on the album's unbiased use of both positive and tragic moments from the space race as context to the music; something Harley had also noted in his review. Burrows also notably concluded the review describing "The Other Side", as "history and melody and wonder hitting you all at once in a moment of complete joy and release. Just wonderful." At ''

The Arts Desk ''The Arts Desk'' (theartsdesk.com) is a British arts journalism website containing reviews, interviews, news, and other content related to music, theatre, television, films, and other art forms written by journalists from a variety of tradition ...

'', Thomas H Green wrote that ''The Race for Space'' is an effective reminder of "the 1960s media's wild excitement about the space race" and "the era when every boy wanted to be an astronaut", which had been "almost forgotten". He also stated that the band took advantage of the current trends in electronic music, such as sampling, comparing them to The Egg, in a positive light. He wrote that ''The Race for Space'' was "a rich and thoroughly enjoyable nine-track journey", and that the band "reinvented the concept album as a delightful, historically engaged rave-up." Phil Mongredien of ''

The Observer ''The Observer'' is a British newspaper published on Sundays. It is a sister paper to ''The Guardian'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', whose parent company Guardian Media Group Limited acquired it in 1993. First published in 1791, it is the w ...

'' stated that the album's space race theme was a "smart move", noting the band's use of "finely judged soundscapes", while his counterpart, Jenny Stevens, writing for the parent newspaper ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...

'', wrote that the album "does little to provoke", stating it was "less intrepid than its source material." Tony Clayton-Lea, writing for ''

The Irish Times ''The Irish Times'' is an Irish daily broadsheet newspaper and online digital publication. It launched on 29 March 1859. The editor is Ruadhán Mac Cormaic. It is published every day except Sundays. ''The Irish Times'' is considered a newspaper ...

'', challenged its replay value, stating that while "It’s all nicely “out there”, with music channelling

Kraftwerk Kraftwerk (, "power station") is a German band formed in Düsseldorf in 1970 by Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider. Widely considered innovators and pioneers of electronic music, Kraftwerk were among the first successful acts to popularize the ...

and

Aphex Twin Richard David James (born 18 August 1971), best known as Aphex Twin, is an Irish-born British musician, composer and DJ. He is known for his idiosyncratic work in electronic music, electronic styles such as techno, ambient music, ambient, and jun ...

... whether you’d want to listen to it more than a few times is debatable."

Accolades

Track listing

Personnel

Credits adapted from ''The Race for Space''

liner notes Liner notes (also sleeve notes or album notes) are the writings found on the sleeves of LP record albums and in booklets that come inserted into the compact disc jewel case or the equivalent packaging for cassettes. Origin Liner notes are desce ...

. ;Public Service Broadcasting *J Willgoose, Esq. -

guitar The guitar is a fretted musical instrument that typically has six strings. It is usually held flat against the player's body and played by strumming or plucking the strings with the dominant hand, while simultaneously pressing selected stri ...

synths A synthesizer (also spelled synthesiser) is an electronic musical instrument that generates audio signals. Synthesizers typically create sounds by generating waveforms through methods including subtractive synthesis, additive synthesis and f ...

bass Bass or Basses may refer to: Fish * Bass (fish), various saltwater and freshwater species Music * Bass (sound), describing low-frequency sound or one of several instruments in the bass range: ** Bass (instrument), including: ** Acoustic bass gui ...

banjo The banjo is a stringed instrument with a thin membrane stretched over a frame or cavity to form a resonator. The membrane is typically circular, and usually made of plastic, or occasionally animal skin. Early forms of the instrument were fashi ...

percussion A percussion instrument is a musical instrument that is sounded by being struck or scraped by a beater including attached or enclosed beaters or rattles struck, scraped or rubbed by hand or struck against another similar instrument. Exc ...

, sampling *Wrigglesworth -

drums A drum kit (also called a drum set, trap set, or simply drums) is a collection of drums, cymbals, and other Percussion instrument, auxiliary percussion instruments set up to be played by one person. The player (drummer) typically holds a pair o ...

vibraphone The vibraphone is a percussion instrument in the metallophone family. It consists of tuned metal bars and is typically played by using mallets to strike the bars. A person who plays the vibraphone is called a ''vibraphonist,'' ''vibraharpist,' ...

and

handclaps A clap is the percussive sound made by striking together two flat surfaces, as in the body parts of humans or animals. Humans clap with the palms of their hands, often quickly and repeatedly to express appreciation or approval (see applause), b ...

;Production *Joe Rubel -

engineer Engineers, as practitioners of engineering, are professionals who invent, design, analyze, build and test machines, complex systems, structures, gadgets and materials to fulfill functional objectives and requirements while considering the l ...

Abbey Road Studios Abbey Road Studios (formerly EMI Recording Studios) is a recording studio at 3 Abbey Road, St John's Wood, City of Westminster, London, England. It was established in November 1931 by the Gramophone Company, a predecessor of British music c ...

*Matt Mysko - assistant engineer at Abbey Road Studios *Stefano Civetta - second assistant engineer at Abbey Road Studios *Sam Wheat -

recorder Recorder or The Recorder may refer to: Newspapers * ''Indianapolis Recorder'', a weekly newspaper * ''The Recorder'' (Massachusetts newspaper), a daily newspaper published in Greenfield, Massachusetts, US * ''The Recorder'' (Port Pirie), a news ...

, engineer at The Pool Studios *Jonathan Sagis - assistant engineer at The Pool Studios *Tim Young - mastering at Metropolis Studios ;Artwork *Rich Andrews - band photography *Graham Pilling -

album cover An album cover (also referred to as album art) is the front packaging art of a commercially released studio album or other audio recordings. The term can refer to either the printed paperboard covers typically used to package sets of and 78-r ...

, artwork design ;Arrangement *JF Abraham -

trumpet The trumpet is a brass instrument commonly used in classical and jazz ensembles. The trumpet group ranges from the piccolo trumpet—with the highest register in the brass family—to the bass trumpet, pitched one octave below the standard ...

and

brass Brass is an alloy of copper (Cu) and zinc (Zn), in proportions which can be varied to achieve different mechanical, electrical, and chemical properties. It is a substitutional alloy: atoms of the two constituents may replace each other with ...

arrangement (track 3) * Peter Gregson -

choir A choir ( ; also known as a chorale or chorus) is a musical ensemble of singers. Choral music, in turn, is the music written specifically for such an ensemble to perform. Choirs may perform music from the classical music repertoire, which ...

arrangement (tracks 1, 9),

string String or strings may refer to: *String (structure), a long flexible structure made from threads twisted together, which is used to tie, bind, or hang other objects Arts, entertainment, and media Films * ''Strings'' (1991 film), a Canadian anim ...

arrangement (tracks 3-5, 9) *Jenny O’Grady - choir director ;Featured musicians * Katherine Blamire - vocals (track 7) *

Jessica Davies Jessica may refer to: Given name * Jessica (given name), includes a list of people and fictional characters with this name * Jessica Folcker, a Swedish singer known by the mononym Jessica * Jessica Jung, a Korean-American singer known by the ...

- vocals (track 7) ;Additional musicians *Richard Andrews -

piano The piano is a stringed keyboard instrument in which the strings are struck by wooden hammers that are coated with a softer material (modern hammers are covered with dense wool felt; some early pianos used leather). It is played using a keyboa ...

(track 5) *Mircea Belei -

viola The viola ( , also , ) is a string instrument that is bow (music), bowed, plucked, or played with varying techniques. Slightly larger than a violin, it has a lower and deeper sound. Since the 18th century, it has been the middle or alto voice of ...

(tracks 3, 5) *Leah Evans -

cello The cello ( ; plural ''celli'' or ''cellos'') or violoncello ( ; ) is a Bow (music), bowed (sometimes pizzicato, plucked and occasionally col legno, hit) string instrument of the violin family. Its four strings are usually intonation (music), t ...

(tracks 3-5, 9) *Thomas Greed - violin (track 3, 5) *David Larkin - violin (tracks 3, 5) *Iain Maxwell -

trombone The trombone (german: Posaune, Italian, French: ''trombone'') is a musical instrument in the Brass instrument, brass family. As with all brass instruments, sound is produced when the player's vibrating lips cause the Standing wave, air column ...

(track 3) *John Moore -

baritone saxophone The baritone saxophone is a member of the saxophone family of instruments, larger (and lower-pitched) than the tenor saxophone, but smaller (and higher-pitched) than the bass. It is the lowest-pitched saxophone in common use - the bass, contra ...

(track 3) *Alex Parish - handclaps (track 8), "and tea" *Guy Passey -

alto saxophone The alto saxophone is a member of the saxophone family of woodwind instruments. Saxophones were invented by Belgian instrument designer Adolphe Sax in the 1840s and patented in 1846. The alto saxophone is pitched in E, smaller than the B tenor ...

(track 3) *Sebastian Philpott - trumpet (track 3) *Jonathan Sagis - handclaps (track 8) *Christopher Smith - trombone (track 3) *Joe Stoddart - bass (track 3) *Clementine Vale - cello (tracks 3-5, 9) ;Vocalists (Choir) *Kate Bishop -

alto The musical term alto, meaning "high" in Italian (Latin: ''altus''), historically refers to the contrapuntal part higher than the tenor and its associated vocal range. In 4-part voice leading alto is the second-highest part, sung in choruses by ...

(tracks 1, 9) *Ruth Kiang - alto (tracks 1, 9) *Eleanor Minney - alto (tracks 1, 9) *Helen Parker - alto (tracks 1, 9) *Emma Brain-Gabbott -

soprano A soprano () is a type of classical female singing voice and has the highest vocal range of all voice types. The soprano's vocal range (using scientific pitch notation) is from approximately middle C (C4) = 261 Hz to "high A" (A5) = 880&n ...

(tracks 1, 9) *Joanna Forbes L'Estrange - soprano, chorus master (tracks 1, 9) *Chloë Morgan - soprano (tracks 1, 9) *Ann De Renais - soprano (tracks 1, 9) *Ben Fleetwood Smyth -

tenor A tenor is a type of classical music, classical male singing human voice, voice whose vocal range lies between the countertenor and baritone voice types. It is the highest male chest voice type. The tenor's vocal range extends up to C5. The lo ...

(tracks 1, 9) *Paul Grier -

(tracks 1, 9) *James Mawson - bass (tracks 1, 9) *Lawrence Wallington - bass (tracks 1, 9) *Lawrence White - bass (tracks 1, 9)

Charts

Certifications

Remix album

In June 2016, a CD of remixes was released. Included is a song based on Sergei Korolev, which was included on the ''Sputnik'' CD single. This version of the album reached number 59 in the UK album charts.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Race for Space 2015 albums Public Service Broadcasting (band) albums Works about space programs Concept albums