I was happily surprised by this as a gift recently.

For me, the intermixing of old original broadcasts with original composition music worked well as an idea. Choosing which broadcasts to include was just as important as composing the right music.

I liked how the composers framed the album around 9 pivotal moments events from 1957 (launch of sputnik) to 1972 (Apollo 17, the last Apollo departing the moon). Obviously, there was a lot of broadcasts to choose from, and I liked their choices – some of which I’d never heard before. Kennedy’s “We choose to go to the moon” speech, a homage to Valentina Tereshkova (the first female in space), Apollo 8’s “see you on the flip side” (the earthrise photo taken by Apollo 8 is still one of my favourites), and the tense interactions of all the ground + flights teams in the final seconds of descent to land of Apollo 11 (including handling the 1202, 1201 errors!).

All heady stuff and well worth a listen.