Sufjan Stevens, Bryce Dessner, Nico Muhly, and James McAlister - Planetarium

Double LP with wide spine gatefold jacket

Printed innner sleeves and lyrics plus 10 art prints!

A collaborative album co-composed by Sufjan Stevens, Nico Muhly, Bryce Dessner and James Mcalister. Planetarium is a concept album that occasionally gives way to ambient interludes and majestic brass chorales, buttressed by a percussive drive that keeps the momentum skyward. In spite of all the experimentation in sound and style, Sufjan's vocals provide a clear and coherent center of gravity. The album includes some of his most diverse vocal performances to date (from soft hush to guttural scream), and whether he's singing through effects pedals, vocoders, auto-tune or not, his voice delivers an ambitious flight map through the cosmos.

Planetarium is flanked by a string quartet and a consort of seven trombones, the expansive song cycle explores the Sun, the Moon, the planets and other celestial bodies of our solar system (and beyond) through soundscape, song, science and myth. The result of this creative alliance is a musical and aesthetic journey as far-reaching as its subject: from lush piano ballads to prog-rock political anthems, curious electronic back-beats to classical cadenzas, the vast musical styles seek to explore the diversity and mystery of our cosmos. The subject of the album is not just the wilderness of outer space, but the interior space of human consciousness and how it engages.

 

 

 

Side 1

01 Neptune

02 Jupiter

03 Halley’s Comet

04 Venus

Side 2

01 Uranus

02 Mars

03 Black Energy

Side 3

01 Sun

02 Tides

03 Moon

04 Pluto

05 Kuiper Belt

06 Black Hole

07 Saturn

08 In The Beginning

Side 4

01 Earth

02 Mercury

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