Top 5 Albums to Blast into Space

Now its official, the bands singer Ian McCulloch told Chartattack. We are the coolest band in the universe.

A surprising pick, perhaps, but it got us thinking: What music would you take on your first space walk?

From rock and hip-hop to jazz, Wired.com came up with a list of five cool soundtracks for a slingshot ride to outer space. Give our picks a spin, then let us know if you have a favorite release perfectly suited for escape velocity.

Pixies, Doolittle
If Korpas going to nostalgically rifle through his record crates, he might as well pick what is arguably the best 80s album from a group that many artists, from that decade and those that came after, consider to be the best band of the era. Stacked with short, sharp pop shocks, Doolittle starts fast with the surrealist anthem Debaser and doesnt let up until the western noir of Silver, before crashing to a close with Gouge Away. Its a bracing blast, especially if you need to stay awake in space. The enviro head-trip Monkey Gone to Heaven alone might be worth the ride.

My Bloody Valentine, Loveless
Speaking of the late 80s and early 90s, this seminal effort and band inspired the term shoegaze, a misnomer for mesmerizing rock music that pushes the envelope. Whether its the straight-ahead fuzz of When You Sleep or the underwater distortion of the serenade Sometimes, My Bloody Valentines last full-length record is well worth the extra fuel need to get it beyond Earths atmosphere. To hear it in space, to get redundant, would be out of this world.

Pink Floyd, The Dark Side of the Moon
A no-brainer; its all there in the title. But its also there in the suggestive grooves: the kinetic synths of On the Run, the grinding rock of Time and Money, the ethereal gospel of The Great Gig in the Sky. You cant go wrong. There are even a couple tunes about going insane, for those who succumb to space madness.

DJ Shadow, Entroducing
If you can find a more stone-cold set of instrumentals made for interstellar travel, do share. Entroducing is the first musical effort built entirely of samples, which means its the perfect sonic soundtrack for boldly going where only a few have gone before. If you want to get culture, pop and otherwise, DJ Shadows stunning debut is a go-to spacewalk. The beat palette is deeper than a black hole, and everything from Altered States to Twin Peaks gets mashed into the turntables. You can even train on Earth: Load it up, close your eyes and let it flow. You never know what you might see.

Miles Davis, Birth of the Cool Jazz and space go hand in hand: Voyagers Golden Record featured Louis Armstrongs Melancholy Blues, among other standouts. But which jazz works best for astronauts? Charles Mingus seems a shoo-in, but his combos eruptions might prove too challenging for a weightless environment. Coltrane, Parker, Sun Ra where to turn? Perhaps stick with Miles Davis classic Birth of the Cool until everyone can agree on something. These legendary sessions marked bebops evolution into the 50s, and inspired a whole new school of cool. Its breezy hypnotics are perfect for the hypoxia of space.

So there it is. Got your own suggestions? Blast off in the comments section below.