NASA Samples Turn Into ‘Space Music’ on ’80UA’ EP

Two months ago, NASA compiled decades’ worth of sound samples and placed them on SoundCloud to create a library filled with space noises, rockets launching and transmissions between “Houston” and the astronauts. The NASA SoundCloud library even gathers historic moments in interstellar travel, including President John F. Kennedy’s speech promising, “We choose to go to the Moon in this decade.”

Davide Cairo and Giacomo Muzzacato, two musicians in the Fabrica Music Area collective, were working on a soundtrack for a documentary about aliens when they stumbled upon the NASA SoundCloud library. After rummaging through the samples, they recruited some musician friends to create the collaborative 80UA, a recently released four-song EP that remixes the samples and transforms them into “space music,” the Creators Project writes.

80UA was shared as a free download by Bad Panda Records earlier this month to celebrate the 12th anniversary of Creative Commons. For the project, the musicians were required to only use the NASA samples provided, but they were able to twist and contort them anyway they pleased. For instance, the noise of the Kepler space observatory spacecraft in orbit was turned into a powerful bass noise.

“I think it’s really crazy to be able to listen to the sounds that do not really exist,” Muzzacato, who records under the name Yakamoto Kotzuga, told the Creaters Project of his track “Yellowknife Bay” with Davide “edisonnoside” Cairo. “Especially if they come from light-years away. Space has always been fascinating to me, and I believe that this discovery represents the highest point of human evolution.” The EP also features tracks by Geremia Vinattieri, JWCM and Francesco Novara.

Check out 80UA below and visit NASA’s mind-blowing SoundCloud library.