Love letters to space travel have a unique affection throughout music’s history. Be it “Space Oddity” or “Rocket Man” or “First Monkey Shot Into Space”, artists have always distilled the human wonder of the great beyond into thoughtful songs. And Ian Foster has charmingly captured the longing of stargazers and one of their most important comrades in the video for his new single “Voyager.”
The video is an animated story created by animator Andrew Winter and designer Mira Howards. It’s inspired by Foster’s interest in the lives of those engineers who worked on the Voyager mission and dedicated decades of their lives to receive the information of its travels.
We watch as time passes by for an engineer, from his passion for space as a young man, through to having a child of his own, and then into his senior years as Voyager begins to lose power before its eternal drift through space. The scenes are anchored around the probe itself and the computer the engineer is tied to throughout his life. The creeping time of the decades-long journey is represented well in the relative stillness of the images; a calm and thoughtful energy wafts from the peaceful animations.
It serves as a perfect literal companion to “Voyager”, whose stirring and starry-eyed reflections are loaded with love for the probe’s explorations. Tumbling acoustics carry things forward as gently pulsing synth murmurs in the background. Dramatic flares of deep percussion shots give weight to the dreaminess and subtle strings pull the sound skyward. But it’s the vocals that really shine through- Foster’s confident and academic tone are exactly what’s needed for this song, bringing to mind Ed Robertson of Barenaked Ladies, and Nancy Hynes’ haunting vocal accents give the choruses a truly transcendent feeling.
This year has certainly been one for dreaming, and looking to the stars has always been one way to look beyond one’s troubles. Ian Foster may have set out to honour the wonder of space exploration on “Voyager”, but he also captured a poignant feeling of comfort. The song and its video give a little reminder of what can be accomplished with time and care, and just how much life (and universe) is waiting for us.