SONG: “2014 MU₆₉ (Approach Me)”.
ARTIST: grant.
SOURCE: Science News, 30 Dec 2018-1 Jan 2019, “Live updates: New Horizons’ flyby of a distant Kuiper Belt object,” as used in the post “A First Look at Ultima Thule.”
ABSTRACT: I tried to be less “programmatic” in this one – that is, I tried to avoid using sounds that “sound like space”. There is a bit in the first verse that uses that astronaut-vocals effect, because, well, with the word “blip” in the lyrics I really couldn’t help it. But other than that, I tried to keep away from spacey reverbs and delays and metallic pads on the keyboards and rushy speed sounds. (Well, a little lo-fi vocal hiss, sure.) The chords and the words are supposed to do the heavy lifting here, as far as evoking distance and the boggling littleness of solid things once you’re away from our home planet.
I started with the super simple three chords-plus-walkdown thing on a guitar. Knew it was going to repeat for verses and choruses. Then, there came a bridge. The melodic percussion there is a set of gamelan samples that someone offered for free on Reddit’s “We Are The Music Makers” subforum. I tried to do a genuine polyrhythm there, but it sounds a little like a round canister of metal plates being rolled downhill. Which is musical in its own way. The main percussion is an empty oatmeal container hit with a drumstick and put through a bunch of filters, reversed, pitched up, and all kinds of stuff.
The subject – well, it’s kind of the news of the moment. One of the limits I put on myself was to not use the name “Ultima Thule” in the lyrics. Instead, I used the formal nomenclature – the Minor Planet Center catalog number and the provisional name, based on the year it was discovered. The double-lobed body is likely to become a comet someday, they say now, so will eventually be trailing ice and dust across the solar system before, in all likelihood, burning up in the sun or in some planet’s atmosphere. Like maybe ours. We have a relationship now, after all.
The song is, of course, mostly from the viewpoint of a lonely planet-like object looking forward to the brief rendezvous. It might be the only song I’ve written in the decade I’ve been doing this to use the word “syzygy,” and almost certainly the only one to use the word as a verb, as something we can do. We can reach our maximum closeness. I also tried to avoid “orbit” and “trajectory” in favor of another space-word with an ordinary meaning – “approach.” The comet-in-waiting as wallflower, trying to be “approachable.” The bridge is sung from the perspective of the New Horizons spacecraft, who’s a little more optimistic and busy but definitely looking forward to the meeting too. It won’t last long, so every second has to count.
LYRICS:
V1
Keep me on
your radar screen
I feel so insubstantial….
Blip! Blip!
Briefly- the traces shine briefly
BrieflyCH
Beyond the angle, beyond velocity
Beyond the whispers, whispers of gravity
Ice and dust and syzygy, we szyzygy
And me, approach me, approach me, approach meV2
The horizon
can’t be seen
The sun, intangible…
Two things
briefly together – so briefly
So brieflyCH
Beyond the angle, beyond velocity
Beyond the whispers, whispers of gravity
Ice and dust and syzygy, we szyzygy
And me, approach me, approach me, approach meBR: You could be (486958)
or Twenty-fourteen MU₆₉
You could be spinning ice into fire
You could be fine.
You could be fine.You could be (486958)
or Twenty-fourteen MU₆₉
You could be a double comet in the night
You could be fine.
You could be fine.CH
Beyond the angle, beyond velocity
Beyond the whispers of gravity, whispers of gravity
Ice and dust and syzygy, we szyzygy
And me, approach me, approach me, approach me
Approach me
Approach me