PJ Harvey is back. His new single is titled Voyagerlike the probes launched by NASA starting from the end of the 1970s. 1 and 2 contained among other things the Voyager Golden Record created by Carl Sagan to tell a hypothetical alien life form about the history and culture of planet Earth. It's a piece that the Englishwoman was working on for her next album when she was contacted by physicist Brian Cox, who asked her for a song for his show Emergency.
“I have long been fascinated by this spacecraft and its journey, and I have wondered what it might tell us if it could talk,” PJ Harvey says in a press release. «It was a very stimulating approach to developing the song. The song had already originated as part of the ongoing work for my new album, so when Professor Brian Cox invited me to write a piece for his new show, I sent him a vocal recording of the song to see if it might resonate with the project. It immediately made him think of the Voyager probes and the sound of their signal sent back to Earth. Starting from these ideas, I let the song develop naturally and discussed an orchestral accompaniment with Dario Marianelli.”
The piece was in fact recorded with an orchestra at Miraval Studios, in Provence. «I am very happy with the final result and it is wonderful to hear how the orchestral score has given such breadth to my music. I really enjoyed delving into the history and journey of Voyager 1 and 2 and I was happy to be able to quote the great Carl Sagan within the song, together with his famous description of our fragile and beautiful pale blue dot», the faint blue dot that is the Earth as it appears in a famous photograph taken in 1990 by the Voyager 1 probe.
