Imagine if you can, being locked into a room that is filled with highly explosive and flammable oxygen. There has been a series of test run on you to make sure that you are able to take the rigors of space. On your last day a tragedy happens and you burst into flames burning ninety nine percent of your body.
It takes your comrades thirty minutes to depressurize the cabin you are in so they are able rescue you. Once rescued you are taken to a hospital where the only place on your body they are able to insert an IV into your body is your feet because that was the only part of your body to not be burned.
You then stay alive for sixteen hours to die. Your eyes are melted and you have no face the only thing that can be done for you is morphine being pumped into you at a high rate to keep you alive.
This is not just a tragic happening created by Kosmodrome it really happened to a young Kosmonaut named Valentin Bondarenko.
We wanted to try and replicate the pain and anguish one must go through dealing with this in a musical format. Nothing can or should be as shocking as dying this way. We wanted to use heartbeats, noise, distortions, and other feelings of unease to stimulate thought on this.
The way that the idea for this song came about was reading of a book by James Oberg titled Red Star in Orbit. Upon reaching the part of the casualities he was shocked to read about something so horrible. After reading this it was decided that we need to make a song.
The song title went through many revisions and visions. From All My Space Heroes Are Dead to Sixteen Hours Left To Die. The song itself was recorded first on a four track cassette recorded, but the master was lost soon there after. It was not until a few months later while Peter was in one of his courses that the song was recorded again. In one day the hour song was recorded, mixed, and finished. It took about nine hours to do all this, but it was well worth it.
For more information about the Valentin Bondarenko tragedy follow the link on his name.
