The album Spendor and Misery by Clipping is awesome, it's an industrial hip-hop sci-fi concept album about a colony ship (I think?). The Breach and Wake Up are my favorites from it. Their EP The Deep is also pretty good, it's about an underwater society made up of the descendants of people who were pushed off of slave ships rising up to take the surface world back.
On the complete opposite end of the spectrum, there's Janelle Monae's Dirty Computer (although the sci-fi themes are a bit less out in the open). Her other albums take some inspiration from sci-fi as well
Just listened to “The Deep”. I love it, I love the interspersed robotic speech, I love the tempo switches. The tempo switches remind me of “Idol” by YOASOBI (completely different songs, but it has sudden tempo changes and key modulations).
Is it more “songs sci-fi fans like”, or songs that ARE sci-fi?
I’ve always had a hard time saying a song itself is sci-fi. I more associate certain songs with “a sense of wonder” that SFF also provokes? While the song genre itself may or may not be “electronic” or “techno” or whatever?
Anyway–this one has long been a favorite for me when it comes to provoking a sense of wonder: Dreaming - BT
Made in the E.U. Not licensed for public sale.
Limited to 10 copies.
Five for each member of the project. The five others were distributed to friends in the Vangelis circle. It is a homemade project.
The double-disc "Esper Edition" combines tracks from the official release, the Gongo bootleg and the film itself.
It is purported to be the most complete collection of music from this film, from the best available sources.
I'm sure I'll think of something obvious later, but for starters: pretty much anything by the Future Sound of London ("Cascade", if I had to pick just one track) or by 65daysofstatic (but especially their No Man's Sky soundtrack).
I’ll go with a list with some scifi/speculative fiction twang:
Highwayman by The Highwaymen, Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard, and Kris Kristofferson. I fly a starship across the universe divide…
It Came Out of the Sky, by Creedence Clearwater Revival. Like a 50s B movie meets Dr. Strangelove.
Turtles All the Way Down, Sturgill Simpson. Okay, so it’s really more of a gentle ode to psychedelics, but then again, reptile aliens made of light do cut you open and take out all your pain, so…. He also has an entire rock album about the disillusionment of musical success that he turned into a post apocalyptic “anime+”, so there’s that. And through it all he still sounds like Waylon Jennings.
Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner, by Warren Zevon. More revenge/ghost story than scifi, but a speculative element to be sure. Also, yes, Warren is country adjacent at most, but between Roland and Werewolves of London, I wasn’t about to leave him out.
The Traveling Storm, but Robert Earl Keen. History? Fantasy? Post Apocalyptic Sci-fi? I don’t know, but it’s a melodic, poetic march of a song and I love it. For a a similar feel but folding Marty Robbins into the recipe, try his earlier “The Raven and the Coyote.”
I just have one offering: the cover of Deep Purple's Highway Star by Cory Todd for The Expanse, in Belter patois. https://youtu.be/hCyGIJl1XUA
Now that i'm back from the appointment I had to go to, I can't believe I forgot Hawkwind. Pretty much everything they ever wrote is sci-fi based, some of it on Michael Moorcock's work.
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