Just as Skylab pummeled out of the sky Punk finished off all things spacey and hippy, their amphetamine fueled tunnel-vision blind to anything wider than the cracks on the pavement. It may have been necessary at the time with prog-rock yodeling in rock-opera's about the elfin race from planet Peace, but in the end the limits Punk erected where too narrow and self-defeating. The heroic phase of the space age (Ballard) may have been over, but a second psychedelic wave at the end of the Eighties, this time fueled by ecstasy, quickly put space back on the musical agenda. House and Techno (with their fascination for ghosts in the machines, new sacred dances) in a way proposed an enchantment of technology that had been quite alien to Enlightenment thinking. The new myths of technology created by Techno can be traced back to two records by militant Detroit outfit Underground Resistance: Atlantis (1993) as a myth of origin and birth from water, The Rings of Saturn (1992) featuring the spiritual technology of space travel as a myth of the future. Or how the cosmic and oceanic feeling constitute the same longing for the womb (as seen in the climax of 2001: A Space Odyssey).

Analogous with the Sixties a leap in recording technology sparked a new interest in the esthetics of space. Indeed the wildest technological offspring from Techno so called Jungle or Drum 'n' bass, produces some of the strangest space-records ever. One thinks of the way Ed Rush on "Skylab" recreates the eerie emptiness of the abandoned space-station just before it goes up in flames or 4-Hero's psycho-acoustic explorations of black holes and sunspots. Somewhere between these grand gestures operates Sputnik, a band somehow inspired by, but not quite of Techno.

PART II: HOW TECHNO MINIATURIZED MUSIC

When she finished up in the kitchen she decided to vacuum the living room rug but then realized this would make her bad mood worse. She'd recently bought a new satellite-shaped vacuum cleaner that she loved to push across the room because it hummed softly and seemed futuristic and hopeful but she was forced to regard it ruefully now, after Sputnik, a clunky object filled with self-remorse.
Don DeLillo, Underworld