Foreign Grounds is widely-regarded as one of the music industry’s leading, multi-talented creative houses. It consists of a group of gifted brand architects known for projects such as Drake’s grammy-nominated, “So Far Gone” and J. Cole’s “The Warm Up”, which introduced Aubrey “Drake” Graham and “J. Cole” to the world.
The production house was founded by Fam Mirza (@iamFam), Ozzie Adjaye (@cookupkwame), and Fenton Shaw (@artbyfenton). The trio started by creating brands, tours, and instrumentals for artists in the hip-hop genre, but will soon be branching into the latin music community. Innovation is key in any progressing industry. Foreign Grounds is unique in every aspect down to the logo. It’s interesting because it looks like a Chinese sinogram, (most complex writing system in use today), but the FG logo is actually an F and a G combined. The logo is also an illusion; even though it displays centered, it is not centered. This logo was sketched and designed by Fam Mirza who also devised the slogan: ”These are foreign grounds, Tread Lightly”. This is used as a message to artists that choose to enter the studio with this veteran team of creatives.
Having been involved in so many notable projects, it is no surprise that they chose to venture into creating a whole new genre of music all together using the sounds of our solar system.
The production house has now become the first in history to make a commercial instrumental with NASA. This work of art came together using the sounds of the Sun aggregated by the ACE satellite. They collaborated with NASA’s sonification specialist, Robert Alexander, creating an instrumental with solar waves that mimic its heartbeat. The bass line of this track includes decades of particle-velocity data compressed into a couple seconds and filtered to accentuate strong harmonic components that were present during the solar-cycle. The solar rotational period provided the stable fundamental tone, while a series of co-rotating coronal hole regions on the surface of the sun give rise to an octave and perfect first with a faint major third note. These frequencies exist in raw satellite data and have been filtered to create a lush bass tone. This data is then time-compressed even further to create a clicking layer of hi-hats.
When we asked why this was done, Fam Mirza answered:
“This was the night that Jupiter covered Saturn, and there was something in the air, because I don’t know whether I will ever be able to see or feel that magic again in my lifetime.”
He is referring to the fact that it has been almost 800 years since this alignment occurred at night, and it won’t happen again until 2080. In 1610, Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei pointed his telescope to the night sky and discovered Jupiter and Saturn. Thirteen years later, in 1623, is when the first great union occurred. The solar system is like a racetrack. This conjunction is the moment when Jupiter caught up to, and passed Saturn in the race. This was definitely a moment of history worth capturing and was dubbed by NASA as “The Great Conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn”. He further elaborates “The conjunction of the planets is such an intense concept, I mean think about it, a mass body of energy aligned in the sky, a tenth of a degree apart.”
When this instrumental was created, two fundamental pieces of history collided. Knowing the significance of this interstellar phenomenon really puts into perspective why anyone would even attempt to create music with the frequencies of the sun on this particular night . In the end, it can be described as the piece of history which shapes where our sound evolves to and from now.
