FYI: Long Strange Trip, the first com­pre­hen­sive doc­u­men­tary to tell the sto­ry of the Grate­ful Dead, is steam­ing free right now on Ama­zon Prime. Exec­u­tive pro­duced by Mar­tin Scors­ese, and direct­ed by Amir Bar-Lev, the four-hour film can be streamed right here if already have a Prime account. If you don’t, you can sign up for a 30-day free tri­al, watch the doc, and then decide whether to remain a sub­scriber or not. It’s your call. (Note: they also offer a sim­i­lar deal for audio­books from Audi­ble.)

By the way, if you can watch the film with a good sound sys­tem, I’d rec­om­mend it!

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bob Dylan & The Grate­ful Dead Rehearse Togeth­er in Sum­mer 1987: Hear 74 Tracks

The Night When Miles Davis Opened for the Grate­ful Dead in 1970: Hear the Com­plete Record­ings

Jer­ry Gar­cia Talks About the Birth of the Grate­ful Dead & Play­ing Kesey’s Acid Tests in New Ani­mat­ed Video

The Grate­ful Dead Play at the Egypt­ian Pyra­mids, in the Shad­ow of the Sphinx (1978)

If I had one piece of advice to pass on to a younger gen­er­a­tion it would be this: lis­ten to more space rock. The 60s/70s sub­genre of progressive/psychedelic rock gets its name as much from its sub­ject mat­ter as from its loose, hyp­not­ic, futur­is­tic son­ic character—“Third Stone from the Sun,” “Space Odd­i­ty,” “Inter­stel­lar Over­drive,” “Dark Side of the Moon,” “Sil­ver Machine”… you know…. It mel­lows you out, man, some­thing every­one could use right now, and inspires visions of a groovi­er future, though not with­out the occa­sion­al dystopic edge.

Alter­nate­ly, I would rec­om­mend that every­one acquire a col­lec­tion of cos­mic jazz, the Afro­fu­tur­ist genre pio­neered by Sun Ra and John and Alice Coltrane. But maybe you don’t like space rock or free jazz, yet you still dream about space? Maybe you pre­fer more clas­si­cal, min­i­mal­ist, or ambi­ent fare? Nev­er fear, we’ve got a sound­track for you—one sure to mel­low you out and inspire you, who­ev­er you are.

Cre­at­ed to cel­e­brate Stephen Hawking’s 75th birth­day this past Jan­u­ary, the “Space-Themed Clas­si­cal Music” Playlist below draws togeth­er pieces you’ll rec­og­nize from clas­sic sci-fi films, like Richard Strauss’s Also sprach Zarathus­tra; pieces writ­ten espe­cial­ly for such films—such as John Williams’ E.T. score and Jer­ry Goldsmith’s main title for Alien; and music inspired by space themes, such as Bri­an Eno’s “Under Stars” and Judith Lang Zaimont’s Jupiter’s Moons. The Spo­ti­fy playlist con­tains a total of 75 tracks of space-themed or inspired clas­si­cal works. (If you need Spo­ti­fy’s free soft­ware down­load it here.) The YouTube ver­sion at the top only has 62 of those tracks.

The com­pi­la­tion does give a lit­tle nod to space rock with the inclu­sion, at the very end, of Pink Floyd’s “Keep Talk­ing” from The Divi­sion Bell. And the penul­ti­mate track nods to the very space-inspired genre of trip-hop, with John D. Boswell’s Carl Sagan- and Stephen Hawk­ing-sam­pling “A Glo­ri­ous Dawn.” I don’t know about you, but Sagan’s mel­liflu­ous voice—autotuned or no—never fails to bright­en my mood and make me more curi­ous about what’s out there.

Of course, apart from sci-fi sound­tracks, there is a long tra­di­tion of com­posers writ­ing space-inspired music, stretch­ing back before sci­en­tists like Sagan and his Russ­ian coun­ter­parts helped send astro­nauts and satel­lites into orbit. Clas­si­cal sta­tion WQXR has put togeth­er a list of 11 such com­posers: from the 18th cen­tu­ry Franz Joseph Haydn to the 20th cen­tu­ry Karl­heinz Stock­hausen.

Then there’s Gus­tav Holst, who wrote a suite about all 8 plan­ets between 1914 and 1916—before Pluto’s dis­cov­ery (and lat­er dis­qual­i­fi­ca­tion). I’ve always been par­tial to the bom­bas­tic “Jupiter,” above. Even if you haven’t heard it, Holst’s suite will sound very famil­iar, hav­ing inspired every­thing from video game music, to the Rug­by World Cup theme, to the score for Brave­heart. It has also—showing that clas­si­cal space music is a bona fide sub­genre in con­ver­sa­tion with itself—directly influ­enced John Williams’ Star Wars music and the main theme of Bat­tlestar Galac­ti­ca. In what­ev­er form it takes, I think we could all do with a lot more space music in our lives. Lis­ten, for exam­ple, to the excerpt from Alan Sil­vestri’s score for the 2014 Cos­mos reboot, below, and tell me oth­er­wise. For anoth­er fla­vor of a space­man’s sound­track, check out Space.com’s “Astro­naut’s Playlist” here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Clas­si­cal Music in Stan­ley Kubrick’s Films: Lis­ten to a Free, 4 Hour Playlist

Pink Floyd’s “Echoes” Pro­vides a Sound­track for the Final Scene of Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey

The His­to­ry of Spir­i­tu­al Jazz: Hear a Tran­scen­dent 12-Hour Mix Fea­tur­ing John Coltrane, Sun Ra, Her­bie Han­cock & More

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Blade Run­ner, among its many oth­er achieve­ments, stands as quite pos­si­ble the only 35-year-old sci­ence-fic­tion movie whose visu­al effects still hold up. Direc­tor Rid­ley Scott and his col­lab­o­ra­tors’ thor­ough­ly real­ized vision of 2019 Los Ange­les rewards a seem­ing­ly infi­nite num­ber of view­ings, reveal­ing some­thing new to the view­er each and every time. Yet the sheer amount to look at can also dis­tract from all there is to lis­ten to. For a visu­al medi­um, movies stand or fall to a sur­pris­ing extent on the qual­i­ty and design of their sound, and if Blade Run­ner remains con­vinc­ing and com­pelling, it does so in large part not because of what see when we watch it, but what we hear.

This in addi­tion to all it makes us think about, some of which the video essay­ist Evan Puschak, bet­ter known as Nerd­writer, explained in “Blade Run­ner: The Oth­er Side of Moder­ni­ty.” Appar­ent­ly as big a fan of the film as we here at Open Cul­ture, Puschak has also made anoth­er video essay focus­ing on the mas­ter­piece’s aur­al dimen­sion, “Lis­ten­ing to Blade Run­ner.”

As every­one inter­est­ed in its mak­ing knows, Blade Run­ner would­n’t quite have been Blade Run­ner with­out its music by Van­ge­lis, a com­pos­er who used syn­the­siz­ers (espe­cial­ly the leg­endary Yahama CS80) in a way sel­dom if ever heard at that time. But as Puschak points out, “the score isn’t laid on top of the visu­als. It’s not a guide or an addi­tion” but “baked into the DNA of the movie itself.”

Every piece of audio in Blade Run­ner, “includ­ing score, sound design, and dia­logue,” is tight­ly inte­grat­ed: “each blurs into the oth­ers.” Puschak shows us how, as in the scene above, the film keeps the audi­ence unaware of “where the music ends and the world begins,” by match­ing the qual­i­ties of the music to the qual­i­ties of the space and light, incor­po­rat­ing “faint computer‑y nois­es,” and apply­ing still-new dig­i­tal rever­ber­a­tion tech­nol­o­gy Van­ge­lis uses on both the music and the dia­logue to “fold sep­a­rate audio sources into one mas­ter track,” cre­at­ing a “cohe­sive acoustic envi­ron­ment” that empha­sizes dif­fer­ent dimen­sions of sound at dif­fer­ent times in dif­fer­ent ways — in ser­vice, of course, to dif­fer­ent ele­ments of the sto­ry.

Though still active as a com­pos­er, Van­ge­lis, alas, has­n’t returned to do the score for Blade Run­ner 2049, Den­nis Vil­leneu­ve’s much-antic­i­pat­ed sequel com­ing out lat­er this year. But the son­ic world he cre­at­ed in 1982 has had a more recent trib­ute paid to it in the form of the unof­fi­cial so-called “Esper edi­tion” of the Blade Run­ner sound­track. The exist­ing edi­tions, say the two fans who assem­bled it, “nev­er ‘got it right’ in terms of chronol­o­gy‚ or thor­ough­ness,” so, “like tak­ing pieces from a puz­zle‚ we decid­ed to sim­ply ‘cut and paste’ from all the excit­ing releas­es…‚ 1982 video‚ 1992 direc­tors cut… and con­struct some­thing fresh.” The near­ly two-hour lis­ten­ing expe­ri­ence will under­score just how much putting in the right music and sound can do for a movie.

Con­verse­ly, watch­ing the five min­utes of Har­ri­son Ford’s now-excised voiceovers from the orig­i­nal the­atri­cal release below will under­score how much tak­ing out cer­tain sounds can do for one as well:

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Stream 72 Hours of Ambi­ent Sounds from Blade Run­ner: Relax, Go to Sleep in a Dystopi­an Future

How Rid­ley Scott’s Blade Run­ner Illu­mi­nates the Cen­tral Prob­lem of Moder­ni­ty

The Art of Mak­ing Blade Run­ner: See the Orig­i­nal Sketch­book, Sto­ry­boards, On-Set Polaroids & More

Watch an Ani­mat­ed Ver­sion of Rid­ley Scott’s Blade Run­ner Made of 12,597 Water­col­or Paint­ings

The Blade Run­ner Sketch­book Fea­tures The Orig­i­nal Art of Syd Mead & Rid­ley Scott (1982)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.