Brendan Chamberlain-Simon lives his life on Mars time. For the past 5 years he has been driving the Curiosity Rover across the Martian surface, and is currently part of NASA's team attempting to fly the first-ever helicopter on Mars. On his debut album as Proud Father, appropriately titled The View of Earth From Mars, Chamberlain-Simon takes from his own personal experience to deliver insight from the unique vantage point of a man on Mars looking back at Earth. Today, Proud Father releases his first single and title track from the album "The View of Earth From Mars," accompanied by reprocessed footage from the International Space Station and the Kaguya Lunar Orbiter footage.
Chamberlain-Simon has written and recorded music as Proud Father for nearly a decade, but The View of Earth From Mars is his first project to incorporate themes from his career in space exploration. In order to evoke senses of weight and scale throughout the record, Chamberlain-Simon tapped the expansive sonic palette of heroes like Brian Eno, The Blue Nile, Cocteau Twins, Radiohead, and Deerhunter. The sparkling instrumentation at the beginning of the record burgeons into dense soundscapes by its conclusion, anchored in layers of guitar and Chamberlain-Simon's vocal harmonies.
Chamberlain-Simon conceived of the concept for the record shortly after realizing his lifelong dream of working at NASA. His sense of pride and accomplishment was short-lived: "It felt like the rug got pulled out from under me," he says. "I graduated from college and moved cities, and I began to spend a majority of my time working on another planet. But really, more than anything, I didn't have a goal anymore." After a conversation with his college mentor, astronaut Mike Massimino, Chamberlain-Simon realized that the emotional journey of an astronaut was a useful device for unpacking his own experience. The result is a story about the first man to go Mars that approaches cosmic-looking wonder and inward-looking reflection in equal measure. "How long can I run victory laps / Before it feels like I'm just running?" Chamberlain sings on "Victoria Crater", moments before layers of swirling guitars and synthesizers rise like a storm cloud, swallowing the narrator in a wall of sound.
The cover art pits the base of Mount Sharp (home for the Curiosity Rover) against a bust of Janus (the Roman God of beginnings, endings, transitions, and duality). The View of Earth From Mars thrives in the tension between opposing forces: feeling featherweight yet grounded; freedom and confinement crashing silently; waiting to hear if anyone's listening, all the while drifting further away. On "Perigee", the album's closer and emotional crux, Chamberlain-Simon sings with newfound clarity: "I'm glad I made it here / But sad that I arrived".
Chamberlain-Simon recruited Brooklyn-based producer Sahil Ansari (Margaux, Slow Dakota) for mixing and additional production. The legendary Greg Calbi (David Bowie, Talking Heads, Tame Impala) mastered. Massif Records will release Chamberlain's debut on July 16th.
