1 Giant Leap first graced the airwaves in 2001 with an ambitious record comprised of an artistic ‘dream team’ featuring luminaries such as Michael Stipe, Babaa Maal and Kurt Vonnegut, who between them, and under the guidance of Jamie Catto and Duncan Bridgeman, created a collage of music and spoken word drawing together Anglo-American musical and intellectual ideas with those of Africa, Australasia and Asia. The result was an album which, while attaining a solid commercial status, also smuggled in musical and political ideas into a market largely devoid of critical content.

The Grammy nominated album was released with eleven short films documenting the recording and giving exposure to writers and thinkers speaking about a range of issues such as the role of religion in modern culture, inspiration, money, death, and happiness. It combined the best elements of socially oriented documentary with a musical collage nodding to Paul Simon’s Graceland and Ry Cooder’s Buena Vista Social Club in giving exposure to ethnically diverse artists.

Five years on the duo are soon to release the follow up, in which they continue their musical and anthropological search through music and words for the common salt of humanity, so this seems a good opportunity to highlight their relevance and importance as one of the few artistic projects out there reaching a wide audience with a critical message.

Behind discourse on general topics, 1 Giant Leap has an undeniably moral content, calling for renewed focus on, for instance, spirituality, death and the passing of time – not common themes in mainstream music. There is a strong distrust of the American government and mainstream media and a presentation of ideas which challenge our assumptions about the purpose of our life. Its spokesmen are often anarchists or dissidents, such as author Tom Robbins and Dennis Hopper, or religious and cultural outsiders. It is refreshing, which is surprising given that one of the essential functions of music is, or ought to be, to give shape and voice to unrest, to alternative perspectives.

This is not to say that all music should educate but it should engage with the contemporary environment in a searching, critical way and ‘speak’ to people; to impart sense. And in discussing contemporary civilization, in assessing our motives and our beliefs, 1 Giant Leap go further than the majority of commercial music which seems to have lost the capacity to think completely. Instead mainstream music, guided by the major channels and stations, promotes a commercial gloss, a branded reality, in cahoots with parts of the media and the general product trends of globalization, controlling the way in which music is managed, streamlined and packaged by marginalizing genuinely alternative voices.

Few projects contain the multi-media breadth which provides, intellectually as well as musically, a wide, accessible platform for those nifty malcontents on the margins of this increasingly homogenous world, and to give a voice, through an interweaving of music and film, to an articulate minority of dissent and mission. It is exciting and vital for our sanity and well-being that records with an edge continue to reach a wide audience. Purchase it with your hard earned capital.