Eight held tones to commemorate the sixtieth anniversary of the first communications satellite launched into Medium-Earth orbit, Telstar 1, built by the minds at Bell Labs. Telstar 1 was only active for seven months, before failing completely due to interference from a high-altitude nuclear test, but it remains in orbit even today. Sixty years later, we are no further from nuclear disarmament, no closer to peace, and although we are all able to communicate with much more efficiency than we could in 1962, we have not used this opportunity to move forward together as a world people. Telstar looks on, dead and dreaming, in a floating ocean of metal, circling the drain of our man-made abyss.

This is ON-22/191.

Patch notes: R-EW Audioholistics (Runoff system) consisting of Wildfire Laboratories Sovereign, Bastl Tea Kick / Noise Square, Doepfer A-196 Phase Locked Loop and Dreadbox Ataxia, generating eight different tuned and held tones. Tea Kick (2x tones) and Noise Square (2x tones) routed into Dreadbox Utopia / attenuated and summed to main out (L). Ataxia in dual LFO mode, with both LFOs driven into audible range and tuned / attenuated and summed via Tiptop MISO to main out (R). Sovereign and PLL tuned / summed via SSDP switch mixer / attenuated and summed again via Tiptop MISO to main out (R). L/R outputs panned and summed via Behringer 305 stereo mixer / routed through Zoom H1 digital recorder / captured via Goldwave. All pitch drift / deviation from the initial chordal profile across the 62-minute runtime is the system itself, not externally directed.