Star Trek composer Michael Giacchino releases solo sci-fi concept album Travelogue, Volume 1

Michael Giacchino’s new album, Travelogue, Volume 1. Image Amazon

NOVEMBER 2, 2020 - Composer Michael Giacchino is flexing his musical muscles in a new direction, releasing a new concept album with an outsider’s look at our world from a science fiction perspective. Known to Star Trek fans as the composer for the Kelvin Timeline films, Giacchino has an impressive list of Hollywood music credits, including winning an Academy Award for scoring the Disney/Pixar film Up. He’s also the director of the Star Trek: Short Treks episode “Ephraim and Dot”. In an interview with Variety, Giacchino discussed how his new album Travelogue, Volume 1 steps out of the world of film and into the world of speculative fiction with a musical twist.

“I love old radio dramas,” Giacchino told Variety. “I love the music of Arthur Lyman, Martin Denny and Les Baxter. And I loved Captain Kirk’s ship logs from the original Star Trek. I took those and just mashed them all together into a concept album.” Narrated by Janina Gavankar, the new concept album follows the story of an “unnamed astral traveler” who leaves her home in search of a better place to live. Along the way, she travels to Earth. At first, the planet seems beautiful and the people intriguing, but that idea soon fades and our space-faring narrator becomes disgusted by the behavior of the people there. 

While the narrator’s native planet is full of pollution, racism and civil unrest, she begins to realize that life on Earth shares the same issues. “Do you run off and try to find a better place that isn’t so horrible?” Giacchino asks, “or do you stay and fight to try and make it better?”

Giacchino admitted that much of the inspiration for the album stems from the state of the world today. “We were dealing with the [coronavirus], the political situation, and the fact that we were turning into a society that can’t listen to each other. All of these things just came out,” he said. ”For me, it was about creating a little place where I could go amidst all the craziness that was happening.”

Recorded in Sydney, Australia, Travelogue, Volume 1 is a mixture of narration, electronica, jazz, pop, and orchestral music. The unique album is available for purchase now from Amazon.com and other retailers, or for streaming on your favorite streaming platform.