Damon Albarn’s Mozart spin-off »The Magic Flute II« is replete with synths and spectacle, but does it truly capture opera’s essence – or merely its aesthetics?

The mixtape has always been a format with which to swagger and seduce, meant to project both front and vulnerability. How, though, might we interpret a sampler from another star system; what might its effect on us be? A journey with Ziggy Stardust, Yuri Gagarin, afrofuturists and intellectuals from Mars.