Text by CLOT Magazine
Last month Sonos London Store brought us the opportunity to listen live for one of the first times to the sounds of the recently re-edited, The Voyager Golden Records. Approaching the 40th anniversary, Ozma Records reissued the records for the first time off the back of a successful Kickstarter campaign last year, and they are now finally available to the public.
The records are a selection of sounds of the Earth, from greetings in different languages to recordings of dogs barking and people kissing. The records also collect humankind’s most celebrated music, from Bach to Chuck Berry, and a team at NASA selected the sounds and music led by star-gazing visionary Carl Sagan.
Launched in 1977, The Voyager Golden Records became one of the most intriguing records in the universe. Pressed onto gold-plated copper phonograph discs and cut at 16 1/3 rpm, they are the ultimate human time capsules. They also included photos and an alien-friendly DIY turntable kit to play it back.
Nowadays, they probably are billions of miles from Earth on the Voyager I and II spacecraft. The production won a Grammy Award earlier in 2018. To mark the occasion, Ozma Records co-founder and co-producer David Pescovitz (who has produced the record alongside Timothy Daly and Lawrence Azerrad) presented the story of the development of this project now and back then.
Dan Spinney, Brand Activation Manager at Sonos London, offered a few words on how this event came about: I had read about the project a while back via Fact magazine & Vinyl Factory and anticipated the release would become available soon. With the arrival in the UK early this year and the project winning a Grammy, it felt a fitting time to bring the project to life in the Sonos London Store.
As a seminal piece of vinyl culture, the story of The Golden Voyager record’s 40th anniversary was a fitting celebration for us to present in the lead-up to recording store day, highlighting the ease of vinyl play through Sonos with the capabilities of our Connect and Connect: Amp products. This incredible project really captures the imagination as a time capsule sent from Earth to outer space with the intention of being a handshake to another civilisation and lies at the intersection between science and art.
