8.29.19 by Ryan Masteller
Some people were terrified when they saw the image of M87, the first visible image of a supermassive black hole (that’s it on the cover above). Some people were awestruck, unsure of what confirmation of something so disproportionate to any characteristic of life as we know it would mean in a philosophical context. I mean, we figured black holes were out there. But now that we could see one? Sheee-it. The moment has finally arrived to confront the brainbusting implications of just how tiny and insignificant we are and face the fact that essentially everything – literally everything – in the universe outside of Earth could kill us.
The people who were terrified of it had watched “Event Horizon” too many times, which is a weird coincidence because the image was captured using the Event Horizon Telescope.
But here’s the thing: we are once again saved from having to face the internal and the eternal, from having to batter our minds against the rocks of the infinite, by Our Hero, the Last Ambient Hero, the only one who knows us better than ourselves and can process into sound the deepest contemplations of human capacity and the secrets of the tiniest fractions of the universe that we can even observe. It’s like the LAH took one look at the image of M87, closed their eyes, and teleported straight there, to a location where the black hole could be observed from a safe distance. Also not too close that time didn’t get effed up for the LAH in a big way – I’ve seen “Interstellar,” I know the risks. The Last Ambient Hero teleports there, to a safe distance from the black hole, observes it, and meditates on it.
Then the Last Ambient Hero creates a sonic reverie of the experience with synthesizers.
Look, it’s not easy. It’s not a cakewalk being endowed with the power of celestial sight as the LAH obviously is. But if someone had to go to some far-off reach of outer space and report back in a perfect sonic encapsulation of what they’d seen there, it would just have to be the Last Ambient Hero, wouldn’t it?
Maybe Eno.
Get on down with this crazy space music. “White Type I C79 tape with full colour J-insert in a clear case, dubbed in realtime. Handmade with love. Includes bonus cassette only track ‘Sagittarius A’ … edition of 20.”