OKB – X Saturn RD – 57 (2020)
For Piano, Computer Generated Sounds, Recorded Sample and Female Vocal
Introduction
This is an electroacoustic piece exploring piano improvisation, alternative vocal and an irony of aesthetic “look-back” of post-communist nostalgia regarding Soviet culture. I was inspired by memories of my 2017 Moscow winter trip at Higher School of Economics, when during the lecture I was introduced a rather different view to global politics after 2016, frustratedly amazed by how the world had been divided by the war of ideology. One day, a friend who was a spaceship-model enthusiast showed me a website about old Soviet Spacecraft, that’s when I saw the name of OKB – X Saturn RD – 57. Everything resonated in 2020, and I decided to write a song: how history ironically repeats itself. Piano performance was recorded real-time for improvisation experiments, on Nord Piano 2; recorded sample of a Soviet Spaceship News reporting.
Lyrics:
Written by Yudan Zou
Believing, surpassing, always, optimizing Pursuing better,
What you work for,
You deserve.
OKB – x Saturn RD – 57 *, 58, 59, 60. In this age of degradation
We all need a Soviet Aircraft
Flying to the Outer Space.
Yudan Zou 