More People Have Been To The Moon

by Michael Menduno
Header image: Steve Thomas diving OFD mainstream sump, courtesy of S.Thomas

May, 1998—All-night jams, seamless acoustics, and umpteen boxes of half-eaten pizza are standard fare for most recording artists, but not for British composer Steve Thomas who spent two years recording by torch light, often submerged up to his waist in surging 6°C/42°F water, several kilometers beneath the earth. He says that the project was inspired by his underground proclivities.

“I didn’t volunteer to write the music,” explains the 36 year-old caver who writes scores for TV sports events and documentaries, and recently produced two albums with Tangerine Dream founder Steve Jolliffee. “I did it because I had no choice.”

Aptly titled “More People Have Been To The Moon,” Thomas’s latest album combines resonant electronic music with the in-situ sounds of underground stream ways, reverberating drips, and the exhaust bubbles of cave divers finning through freatic passageways. It’s a personal record of his journey to a world where few have been. “I wanted to produce a musical piece that captured the emotions I experienced while exploring the Ogof Ffynnon Ddu system.” 

Coursing beneath the Brecon Beacons Mountains in South Wales, the system, pronounced Og-off-fun-on-thee, a Welsh name meaning “cave of the black waters”—it’s length unknown— is the site of one of the most complicated underwater caves in the UK—a knotty, kilometer-long sump complex called the Dip Sump Series which has confounded British cavers for more than 20 years.

Thomas and 51 year-old dive partner Clive Westlake were the first to negotiate a passageway through the claustrophobic, three-dimensional maze, threading their line through restrictions so tight that they had to breathe out to squeeze through. “Overcoming my fears to accomplish those dives inspired me like nothing has before.”

Twelve humans have been to the moon, whereas only four intrepid souls have ever traversed the extremes of the Dip Sump Series and surfaced in the cave beyond Thomas’s album celebrates the passage.

Each of the 15 tracks, from the driving confidence of “High Plain Drifter” and edginess of “Space Haze” to the sacred sense of wonder evoked in “Ether Black,” was written for a specific event that occurred during the exploration.

Thomas would often come back from a dive and spend the evening and all of the next day in his studio writing music. “I tend to be very focused when I’m diving, but afterwards I experience an outpouring of music. It’s like having a built-in Hi-Fi.”

Originally the underground artist planned to use a sample library to simulate cave sounds, but as the project progressed his purist instincts took over—only authentic sounds would do. The task proved more difficult than expected. For Thomas, the hardest part was keeping his recording equipment dry during the underwater cave diving sequences. His solution was to sheath the Walkman-sized DAT recorder and stereo microphones in double Durex condoms—one of the few “safe” aspects of the dives.

Since releasing “More People,” Thomas has been flooded with emails from around the world, as well as a growing number of visits to his website which features a photo gallery of the cave. He says that he honestly doesn’t know how many copies have been sold to date but regards it as an overwhelming success. As with cave diving, perhaps making the connection is what it’s all about. 

When I asked Thomas if he were planning a potential follow-up, he didn’t miss a beat. “It seems that I just can’t get away from it.”

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Postscript: Having released his cave diving album in 1997, Thomas, who lives in Wales and still loves caving, flying his paramotor and spending lots of time in the Welsh mountains, inspired a host of “underground” artists—there are now a plethora of cave diving titles on iTunes. Ogof Ffynnon Ddu has also become a popular cave diving site though no new cave has been found since Thomas and Westlake’s early exploration.

Dive Deeper

Website: More People Have Been on the Moon by Steve Thomas

Bandcamp: More People Have Been To The Moon Find Thomas’s tracks here!

Peter Collings-Wells: Ogof Ffynnon Ddu, The Cave of the Black Spring

YouTube: Ogof Ffynnon Ddu 1 – A Caving Trip (2011)

YouTube: Ogof Ffynnon Ddu 1.5 – A Caving Adventure (2014)

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Michael Menduno/M2 is InDepth’s editor-in-chief and an award-winning journalist and technologist who has written about diving and diving technology for more than 30 years. He coined the term “technical diving.” His magazine aquaCORPS: The Journal for Technical Diving (1990-1996), helped usher tech diving into mainstream sports diving and he produced the first tek.Conferences and Rebreather Forums 1.0 & 2.0. In addition to InDepth, Menduno serves as an editor/reporter for DAN Europe’s Alert Diver magazine, a contributing editor for X-Ray mag, and writes for DeeperBlue.com. He is on the board of the Historical Diving Society (USA), and a member of the Rebreather Training Council.