On April 11, 1970, three men, Jim Lovell, Jack Swigert and Fred Haise blasted off from the Kennedy Space Centre heading for the moon. The designated landing site on the moon was near the Fra Mauro crater. It was expected that the crater contained material and minerals which would help scientists discover more about how the moon was formed and potentially more about the Earth’s early history.
When the spacecraft was 180, 000 nautical miles away from Earth a routine stir of the oxygen tanks aboard caused an explosion. This was due to a malfunction in the craft’s electrical system. The explosion severely disabled the craft’s propulsion and life support systems, leading to the famous lines being transmitted from the disabled craft to Mission Control.....
Jack Swigert, “ Erm Houston we’ve had a problem here….”
Mission Control, “ Say again please….”
Jim Lovell, “ Erm, Houston, we have a problem! “
All three men’s lives hung in the balance while they struggled to stay alive for the round trip with the very limited resources and equipment they had onboard. With the help from thousands of ingenious people on the ground, they managed to return to Earth safely on April 17th.
This story blew my mind when I saw the Tom Hanks movie in the cinema in the 90’s. Firstly because it was a great movie, and secondly because it was based on a true story which I didn’t even know existed up till that point.
Inspired I decide to try and create a piece of music to reflect the story. That piece of music turned into my third album The Fra Mauro Highlands. This album was a crossover point for me. I had used stand alone digital hard disk recorders for the previous two albums, but with this one I also had started to use a PC based audio recording. Cubase VST 32, running on a Windows 98 specially built PC which I nicknamed The Green Monster. Mainly because it was housed in a large green case. The large case was necessary at the time due to the amount of cooling fans packed inside it to make the machine run in a cool stable state without it Blue Screening. I still have The Green Monster. It’s in the same cupboard as my standalone hard disk recorders now. Another reminder that technology advancements don't wait for no man nor machine alike.
Using a PC based recording system was new challenge for me, as I had another large learning curve to deal with. So, some of the tracks on the album were recorded on the standalone machines, and others on the PC recording system. I had major latency recording issues with the PC system as the technology wasn’t quite there yet. This along with my own limited mixing and recording knowledge again set limitations, as I couldn’t quite get what was in my head out into an audio format for someone else to hear. But, I feel the album shows a progress in overall quality and listenability.
In the late 60's early 70's big brass and strings sounds featured a lot in movie theme tunes, TV theme tunes and popular music. I tried to emulate this sound in some of the tracks on the album.
It took me from October 1999 to May 2001 to complete The Fra Mauro Highlands. A long of time just to make just 45 minutes of music. A lot of uphill struggles and learning curves to overcome in that time. It was a fun album to make and I’m quite proud of it.
The album cover and CD stomp were again vastly improved on in quality and features over the previous albums. Colin Meechan and I both had access to PCs and were able manipulate and control images and photos in a greater level of detail we could've only dreamed of a year previously. Again, we had some progress in getting what we imagined in our heads to a format where other people could see it.
