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StubleUpon to the rescue again.

I was Stumbling through the Internet last night when I found BlueMars.org. At first I was just attracted to the rather nice looking site with the familiar name. (Blue Mars is the name for the last book in Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars Trilogy. If you like the thought of humans living on Mars, check out the series.) When I loaded the site, I was greeted with the following message:

Welcome to Bluemars, we will shortly transition into synchronous orbit around Phobos where you will be able to board a shuttle down the inertial tether.

Upon arrival, please consult the display in the hall for transportation to one of the three continents on the planet.

Thank you for travelling with Bluemars Spaceways.

“Ok,” I thought, “I’m already liking this.” I clicked on the link named BlueMars in hopes of finding our more, and was taken to a page that read the following:

Long ago, when the waters of Mars were still under the ground and above the sky, our ancestors came to this place and called it “Home”. And from the high Plains of Tharsis to the Elysium Ocean, from as high as Mount Olympus to as deep as the floor of the Hellas sea, one can still hear the song of our brothers and sisters chanting to us throughout the ages.

This melody is one that is made of hopes… It is sang with the voice of nostalgia, and looks ahead with pride. Listen…

I figured someone other than me spent some time curled up with Blue Mars, and thought, “this is getting seriously cool.” When I read “Listen…” that’s when I figured out that this really was an online radio station.

As I found out soon thereafter, it’s more than one online station. The site is home to a two other audio streams,all of which might be considered “New Age”, although one of them, Voices from Within both ancient and new music featuring the voice as a primary instrument. (For example, ever hear those Buddhist monks who sing gutterally and make multiple sounds with their voice? I’m not quite sure of their age, I’m sure there’s nothing “New” about that. But I digress…) The music is perfect for those times when you just want something in the background, not too intrusive, but also modern without being Enya. Personally, I love listening to the station whenever I’m doing long bouts of writing, where I know my mind needs to stay focused on the stream feeding me words instead of having my mind won — hey, there’s a mosquito on my… oh crud! I forgot to get the laundry. I still have my Bucs jersey there. I wonder if Mike Alstott will be back next year. Man, next year’s 2007. I can’t believe it’s 2006 already. What did I have to do today? Let me thin — dering all over the place.

The music style has been called “Hearts of Space” music, a style I got into when I was a kid and used to listen to an old radio show on WUSF 89.7 in Tampa, “Music from the Hearts of Space.” I absolutely LOVED the show. Whenever I could stay up past 11 pm — I was still going to school at that time — I would listen to the show, sometimes even recording it so I could listen to it the next day. I think my collection grew to all of 9 hours of the stuff before I started losing those tapes. (I suppose that now, 15 years later, it’s a bit too late to be asking “gee, I wonder whatever happened to those tapes?) The music style is marked my the general absence of a beat, and the rhythm comes more from what you get of the music than from the music itself. I guess that’s why it’s never really caught on; you could be the best harmonizer in the world, but if you won’t do rhythm don’t expect people to warm up to your music too much, unless they use it to go to sleep.

Anyway, the station is called BlueMars and can be found at BlueMars.org. Go check it out.

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