DJ, producer, engineer, sound installation artist, and university professor Phil Moffa is the owner and operator of New York City’s Butcha Sound Studios. Seth Troxler is one of contemporary electronic music’s most recognisable names. 

Lost Souls Of Saturn is their multi-disciplinary live project, which welcomes additional participants congregating to combine music, imagery, and storytelling into an inextricably linked whole. 

Back in June, they released their self-titled full-length album debut, a multi-dimensional mind trip via R&S Records. The ambient house record is unlike anything released by either of them individually. Old sci-fi soundtracks, acid, free-jazz, avant-garde, musique concrète, and world music all whirl around an underground-dance-music axis, underpinning the duo’s intention to explore new ways of opening doors of perception. 

The project’s roots lie outside of electronic music culture and in a mutual appreciation for the work of Alejandro Jodorowsky, Philip K. Dick, and Sun Ra. These spiritual, psychoactive aural vibrations resonate through the release, and through the mix they’ve prepared to celebrate it; sit down and reflect on the music that inspired the album.  

“We put together something that has a bit of a shared and individual influence. These artists not only are our sonic heroes but also conceptually, too. In our music you may hear the same spirits of ritual, meditation, and collage. 

“Without initially realizing it, Schaeffer’s concrete and The Orb’s philosophy of “always be sampling” are similar to the way we source our own raw materials and present them in recordings and live. We’re both longtime fans of Sun Ra and Parliament/Funkadelic, and it should be obvious that we tip our hat to Saturn’s first ambassador and the delegates of funk in our work. Electronic music pioneers can be found here too, from the genius inventor Raymond Scott to the concept album masters, Kraftwerk. Their ‘Radioactivity,’ essentially a double-concept record, aligns somewhat with our own debut in its themes of transmission and as a warning to humanity. Finally, a nod to film composers Alain Gourager, whose work appears in our record, sampled from the soundtrack to ‘La Planéte Sauvage,’ and John Carpenter, who remains a key influence of ours.” — Lost Souls of Saturn

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Tracklisting

01. Pierre Schaeffer “Etude aux cheminsde fer” [Phillips]

02. Tim Maia “You Don’t Know What I Know” [Luaka Bop]

03. Claude Debussy “Voiles” [Deutsche Grammophon]

04. Patrick Cowley “The Jungle Dream” [Dark Entries]

05. Alice Coltrane “Journey in Satchidananda” [Impulse!]

06. Ozo “Anambra” [Isle Of Jura]

07. The Orb “A Huge Ever Growing Pulsating Brain That Rules From the Centre of the Ultraworld” [Big Life]

08. The KLF “Madrugada Eterna” [KLF Communications]

09. Kraftwerk “Transistor” [Capitol]

10. Augustus Pablo “555 Dub Street” [Clocktower Records]

11. New Order “Turn The Heater On” (John Peel Sessions) [Strange Fruit]

12. Alain Gouraguer “Attaque Des Robots” [Pathé]

13. John Carpenter and Alan Howarth “They Live” [Enigma Records]

14. Parliament “Children Of Production (Live)” [Casablanca]

15. Dexter Wansel “Life On Mars” [Philadelphia International Records]

16. Dark Star, Interlude

17. Kraftwerk “Radioland” [Capitol]

18. The Orb “Spanish Castles In Space (Live ’93 Version)” [Island Records]

19. Pauline Oliveros “Primordial/Lift” [Taiga Records]

20. Sun Ra “Journey To Saturn” [Strut]

21. Raymond Scott “Sleepy Time” [Epic]

22. David Lynch, on Enlightenment

23. Sun Ra “Saturn Moon” [Strut]