"Looking back I'm happy I did, because the music turned out to be beautiful and rich and absolutely perfect to send out in space."
Was it difficult to get the music for the project?
"Not at all! All the artists I invited to join were very thrilled. Few others almost begged to become part of it after they first heard about the project. Electronic music and space have always fitted well together. Think about all the old sci-fi movies with the Theremin sound, the 60s and 70s 'Moog-through-spring-reverb' soundtracks. Also Stockhausen's ground-breaking work in electronic music often dealt with themes about space."
How did you get in touch with the Swedish Space Corporation?
"Sweden is a small country and it's not like trying to talk to the boss of NASA. So I just looked them up in the yellow pages, and called them."
Have they done something like this before?
"No, they haven't done anything like this before and the project in itself is pretty unique. But music has been sent outer space before. NASA transmitted a Beatles song not so long ago. In 1977 the astronomer Carl Sagan compiled a record with music and sounds from Earth which boarded the Voyager 1 & 2 as a golden vinyl type of disc. Now it's beyond Pluto and has just left the Solar System.
"That took 31 years! - we will send radio waves that travel with the speed of light. The downside with the transmitters we have today is that it is very hard for any signal from Earth to reach another star system without being completely absorbed by the radio waves that our own sun radiates.
But the good part is that IF our signal gets through, IF the star we aim at has an Earth-like planet, IF that planet hosts life and IF that life is intelligent enough to build radio telescopes - then hopefully they will reply at the same frequency that we transmitted on. And if the star involved is less than 25 light years away I might be alive to hear the reply! Maybe a remix of my track or one of the other tracks."
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