Edinburgh International Science Festival @ Usher Hall, Edinburgh Wednesday April 12th 2017 “This will always be for Yuri,” says a disembodied laptop-generated voice, sounding like a cross between a more pukka Stephen Hawking and a badly spliced old-school Pearl & Dean cinema ad for a local steakhouse, “but especially tonight.” Fifty-six years to the day since Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human to journey to outer space when his craft orbited the earth on April 12 th 1961, Public Service Broadcasting's musical tribute that follows, simply named Gagarin , is suitably epic. As is too the whole of PSB's The Race for Space album, performed in full at the end of a two-year voyage since the record's release as part of Edinburgh International Science Festival. As with their debut EP The War Room and follow-up album Inform-Educate-Entertain , PSB's mix of vintage newsreel samples and warm instrumental infusions on The Race for Space tap int
An archive of arts writing by Neil Cooper. Effete No Obstacle.