How Laurie Anderson made the experimental classic O Superman: "The lyrics are a one-sided conversation, like a prayer to God. I wanted it to be like a Greek chorus – not just one voice – so I used a vocoder"

Good evening. This is your Captain. We are about to attempt a crash landing. Please extinguish all cigarettes. Place your tray tables in their upright, locked position.

So goes the opening of From The Air, the opening track of Laurie Anderson’s debut full-length studio album, Big Science. Atop driving vocoder-generated loops paired with a drum sound more prescient of Portishead than it is demonstrative of pop music in 1982, these lines are in many ways a microcosm of multitudes when it comes to Anderson’s astonishing sound and career.