man in the moon

in 2005, i was asked by the wire to write one of their inner sleeve articles - picking a record cover that has some sort of personal meaning beyond the music it holds. i chose "jury gagarin in space" because, since i found it, it's the only record cover that's consistently been on my bookshelf facing me while i work. the archives here seem like a good place to bring the text together with the cover and THE SOUND and the piece of mine that the 7" ended up having a huge role in. here's the article text...

"The impossibility of even beginning to pick a coveted sleeve was narrowed when I realized there are two records I look at almost every day - one of them is Jury Gagarin in Space. (the other will be part of an october post...)

When I stumbled upon it at a Paris flea market, Jury's face and the crudely drawn Earth (or is it the moon?) simply spoke to me - this wonderfully awkward eye candy of the front cover; and then the back...

with JURY GAGARIN IN SPACE written in seven languages... I still can't believe that the word SPACE in English is equal to the evocative ESPACIO COSMICO in Spanish; nor that the black printing isn't really a dark shade of green. With so much to let my eyes wander over, the cover rested comfortably in my painting studio for years before I ever listened to the record inside.

It seems like destiny that Joseph Cornell became the inspirational doorway for Jury Gagarin in Space to enter my work, as the cover looks like it could've been collaged together by Cornell himself. When a work of Cornell's inspired me to try to find a way to put the moon inside of a bottle; there was Jury looking down at me, suggesting I finally listen. The record ended up as source material for a sound piece running through 100 small speakers housed in 100 glass bottles called moonfield".

listen: jury gagarin in space