Identifying a techno song that featured Carl Sagan's "Contact"

November 3, 2015 2:02 PM

In the late 90s to early 2000s, I found on Napster a techno (possibly trance?) song which had a quote from Carl Sagan's "Contact". It was not a sample from the movie. This dialogue does not appear in the movie.

During the intro to the song, a woman read the following:

By human standards, it could not possibly have been artificial: It was the size of a world. But it was so oddly and inextricably shaped, so clearly intended for some complex purpose that it could only have been the expression of an idea. Gliding in polar orbit, about the great blue-white star, it resembled some immense, imperfect polyhedron, encrusted with millions of bowl-shaped barnacles. Every bowl was aimed at a particular part of the sky. Every constellation was being attended to.


Does anybody know what song this was?

posted by wivy to Media & Arts (5 answers total)

I don't think you're referring to Symphony of Science, but it's a near-miss, and I'd be remiss if I failed to suggest it, since it's loaded with Cosmos stuff, though not Contact that I'm aware of.
posted by Sunburnt at 2:21 PM on November 3, 2015

Mix Master Mike sampled another part of Contact on Anti Theft Device but I don't remember him using that segment. Maybe a remix?
posted by workerant at 2:30 PM on November 3, 2015

That sounds like something from a Biosphere album or maybe Pete Namlook even.
posted by vkxmai at 7:11 PM on November 3, 2015

Best answer: I don't know if this could possibly help you in your search, but it is almost definitely a sample of Jodie Foster reading for the audiobook version of the novel.
posted by BuddhaInABucket at 7:25 AM on November 4, 2015

Response by poster: I have not found the song yet, however I can confirm that the sample is from the audiobook of Contact read by Jodie Foster.
posted by wivy at 6:05 PM on November 30, 2015