"Asteroid 2467" by Ulrich Schnauss and Jonas Munk

"Asteroid 2467" is a shimmering instrumental by Ulrich Schnauss and Jonas Munk. The song has a cascading calm to it, opening their album Eight Fragments Of An Illusion. The album combines motion and lightness, achieving a bright and floating feeling.

Eight Fragments Of An Illusion was released in 2021, but had been in the works for some time. Ulrich and Jonas began collaborating in 2005.

"Our initial plan was to do an EP, with maybe three or four tracks," Jonas explained to me. "We kept wanting to do more tracks together and eventually we had enough for a full-length, which came out in 2011."

A few years following on from their first album, the two began sessions that would eventually become their 2017 release Passage.

"We were so happy with the result that we immediately started recording Eight Fragments," Jonas said. 

Jonas described their collaborative approach, which sounds slow and relaxed, not unlike the music itself. 

"We've never been in a hurry to complete these albums, so the way we work is that I fly over to London for four or five days of work in Ulrich's studio, which is usually enough to complete one or two songs," he said. "This is something we've done with several months in between each session. So, it's not a particularly fast process, but it's very rewarding having these records slowly brewing over longer periods of time."

And what about the song "Asteroid 2467"?

"Asteroid 2467" is also known as "Kollontai" — an asteroid discovered in the 1960s and named after radical Marxist feminist Alexandra Kollontai, explained Jonas. "Basically our track "Asteroid 2467" is Ulrich's homage to her."

You'll find a single version and album version of "Asteroid 2467" on Bandcamp. One is shorter than the other, but both are equally lovely.