SpaceMusic

Sequencers, synthesizers, and some classic dark techno sounds. Their albums always sounds like you should be in a planetarium seeing a simulation on stellar formations or something.

YouTube: https://youtu.be/2dE7w046lIA

Apple: https://music.apple.com/ca/album/halo-remastered/351941181

Review: https://www.starsend.org/HaloSiren.html

Halo is a work hovering at the eternal dusk of dreams and interstellar space. It is a musical experience that offers the sensation of passing through something; perhaps a beam from some far-off galaxy or a shower of cosmic debris. The album is intelligently designed and the wonderful transistions between movements draw the listener along easily. Relying on moods created through texture and atmosphere, Halo also offers a strong melodic content which is matched by extraordinary ever-evolving sequencer cycling. The tight analogue tones dance up and down the octave, in and out of synchronization with a throbbing bass rhythm and create seemingly endless permutations of pulse and flow. Above this torrent floats misty consonant choirs cut by reed thin themes traversing the scales.

Okay, here's a fun one. A little cyberpunky, a little traditional Japanese drumming, and a bunch of lofi synths.

YouTube: https://youtu.be/2G_o8oNd6U8

Apple: https://music.apple.com/ca/album/tokyo-restricted-area/1091737816

Review: https://metropolisjapan.com/review-yoshimi-tokyo-restricted-area/

The album begins with the washes, bloops, melodic synth stabs, and nightmarish heartbeats of “Plated City,” a track that signals the nightmarish tour-de-force that awaits. Wielding a palette of sounds that rise on a foundation of futuristic trap beats, Yoshimi seeks to present “an unknown story of these ominous memories of the land.”

YouTube: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_kRNF9su8ebmvSQJGpGeqTQsB5ToGSDgvk&si=V0fWu0z06FZiqQ5d

Apple: https://music.apple.com/fr/album/hanging-masses/344713626f

Review: https://www.sputnikmusic.com/review/76445/Cell-Hanging-Masses/

Cell crafts ambient music that evokes this urban, sunny futuristic sound brimming with life. What's impressive is that he does so with such spares percussion and additional instrumentation. Even though he often takes from bands like Talk Talk in the electronic compositions, they really achieve their goal and emit sunshine with every tone.

YouTube (title track only): https://youtu.be/V_wcEr6pC8Y

This album really makes me feel like I'm in a bar in Mass Effect.

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RFm6zudiCys

Review: https://www.starsend.org/Starseed.html

Music can convey a wide range of expression, indicating the musician's restraint, vigor, or willful abandon. On the anthology Starseed (66'23") the fundamental force here is rhythm, but with serious attention to a lavish textural ornamentation. Equating a sonic action with the measurement of time, the ten tracks, by a range of potent electronic artists, create a body-based music which extends to the far reaches of The Cosmos. Traveling through the miles of circuitry of the brain the works presented on Starseed will fulfil the audience's appetite for the exotic. Its most rapturous passages play out in the head in a hot-wired intensity - our cerebral states enhanced by a potent electronic sound. The aural appeal of Starseed never feels slight or superficial. Emotionally direct, it reaches substantial heights. The sensation of a deep throb of powerhouse bass is to feel lilting, airborne freedom. Drum loops stutter and stammer, while plush synthesized chords breath life into future movements. Under an atmosphere of space and exploration Starseed brings the listener into and out of a series of distinctive conditions. The pieces offered by Ascendant, Solaris and Transponder provide the greatest chill factor - while Chronos, Fourth Dimension, Germind, Martin Nonstatic, Motionfield, Omelic, and Subdream charge the hidden activity of our minds with dramatic climaxes, revelatory drops, and dreamy forward motion. With its beat machine energy, the music motors up - fully enjoys its peak, and eventually slows down for a smart gentle landing. Where do these amazing inventions come from? Answering this would take an explanation of the fertile inventive mind. The truth of this substantial journey is to show us, while the world and its heavens are immense, that we are bigger on the inside - that within our hearts and minds there is more... more substance, and more to be discovered.

• Chuck van Zyl/STAR'S END 25 August 2016

A site I often use to discover new space music, particularly of the ambient and "observatory" types

Note: this music is "Name your price" on bandcamp, and is even more amazingly licensed Creative Commons! Use it for your indie game project ;)

Reminds me of Stellaris. Great coding music :)

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MbdbhJ9FEck

YouTube: https://youtu.be/e-VZaSJJTKg?si=seyAiaZI-FHQ8reK

Apple: https://music.apple.com/ca/album/blue-moon-station/925738631?ls

YouTube: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLRpXl5QdzSqXekIWyeixbalK6CD1bYHA9&si=0SbWGdnk3wD-FHMP

Apple: https://music.apple.com/ca/album/elsewhere/1491097005?ls

Most of the album this is from is similarly space-y. A pleasant discovery!

Any ideas? I'd prefer not to sail the high seas when I can support the artist.

https://open.spotify.com/artist/5SFU7HLhBYOfksGMeRUKnR

This might be the lowest budget sci-fi music video I've ever seen. Given how serious both the band and the song seem, I don't think the sci-fi stuff is supposed to be tongue-in-cheek. But using a toy rocket with forced perspective and a model of the Earth made out of play dough? It's hard to tell.

Like Coheed and Cambria, every Mechina album is a concept album that expands on the scifi story told through the lyrics. They'll also occasionally release 10+ minute "singles" like this song which aren't part of an album.

Coheed and Cambria have been making scifi concept albums for years. The lead singer has even released the story as comic books called The Amory Wars.

Brendon Small (the guy behind Metalocalypse/Dethklok) had a project called Galaktikon which had a scifi concept story. I don't think Nightmare is the best song from that album but it's the only song with a music video.

I'm not entirely sure, but this appears to be a thing

Some of this artist's stuff is more space-y sounding than others, but it's all pretty good chillwave.

their personal Bandcamp

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_l7ciBjv-Br8ix9Tt6tGj1nvnk3fiv8L4o

The label, Cryo Chamber, is absolutely amazing for space ambient!

YouTube: https://youtu.be/bvjqdDBVIqQ

Apple: https://music.apple.com/ca/album/the-skies-open/1482119465

Full album: https://axen.bandcamp.com/album/we-are-the-universe

YouTube: https://youtu.be/RzzN5-oihU8