METRONAUT are a Hitchin based music duo, Ian Kinsey and Mark Holt who have been writing and performing music together since the 1980’s and have just released their new album, ‘To The Moon’, but it’s not as simple as that, in fact, it’s been one giant leap for Metronaut.

Every other year the duo produce an album of their latest music, but this time they wanted to try something completely different.

Ian said “We have been inspired by the 50th Anniversary of the first Moon Landings, and being children of the 60’s and early 70’s, we grew up watching astronauts going to and walking on the moon”.

“It was tempting to simply write a series of songs about Apollo 11’s journey to the moon”, adds Mark “but we wanted to do something that actually reflected peoples relationship with the Moon as well as the landings themselves”.

Metronaut think they have achieved this by producing a series of four mini albums, that they call phases (as in phases of the moon).

“Mark says “The concept of four mini albums is to make the music more accessible, given that there is so much new material by literally thousands of artists bombarding everyone every day”.

“We didn’t want to produce a double album that could be buried in all the noise, so we’ve put an average of five songs, or musical parts on each mini album, which we will then release periodically, culminating in the complete album being available by the 50th Anniversary on July 20th 2019”.

That’s the concept, but what’s the music like?

“We come from a background of ‘songs’ but we’ve strayed well out of our comfort zone by writing some orchestrated, instrumental pieces, then blending these with synths, featuring loads of analogue sounds. There are some vocal parts, but the element of songs with a verse, chorus, verse chorus, middle bit, end, has been replaced by music that starts at one point and ends up a long way from where it started, and we’ve done this to represent a journey to the moon and to retain the listeners interest (hopefully)”. said Ian.

“We’ve also been joined by some really talented artists from America, Brazil and Canada, who have added vocals, and live trumpets to some tracks. It’s amazing to be able to collaborate with people from all over the World, thanks to the Internet, which is incredible seeing Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins had the computer power of a basic calculator to get them to the Moon”.

TO THE MOON - AVAILABLE ON A LIMITED EDITION DELUX DOUBLE CD - ALL PHASES ARE AVAILABLE NOW, Free for you to stream on Spotify AND GOOD DOWNLOAD SITES