The mix created by Dasha Stish, who explored the New Composers archive, is a story of love told by a spacecraft’s onboard computer. It reflects forgotten dreams and new hopes, flying saucers and space cowboys.

The New Composers were pioneers of Russian electronic dance music. In the late 1980s and early 1990s Valery Alakhov and Igor Verichev’s group created the first local house tracks, topped the UK charts, and collaborated with Brian Eno. One of their first musical experiments was the audio collage «I Love You When You Take Off,» made up of excerpts from radio broadcasts about Yuri Gagarin, noise effects, and music. It was part of the first album by the group, Cosmic Space. Other New Composers projects are linked to the theme of space. In the late 1980s the group founded the Science Fiction Club at the Leningrad Planetarium, organizing lecture-performances and techno parties. This mix is dedicated to cosmic romanticism. It is a story of the lostness, emptiness, and darkness of space and how to learn to love it.

«It was a long time ago, in the 1980s. We docked with a Soviet spacecraft. One of the cosmonauts gave me this cassette. I wonder what he’s doing now? It’s a cassette about cosmic love.»

Cover: Igor Verichev and Valery Alakhov in front of a work by Andrei Krisanov