THE MISSION

TEGNAPUTÁN is an art-rock band based in Budapest, Hungary and Krakow, Poland. We're on a mission to recruit a few (hundred) good men and women to help us bring our expansive vision for our new album THE SPACE ERASE to life!

THE SPACE ERASE is an unapologetic concept album that can best be described as a psychedelic space opera. The album is based on a true account of four unknown Hungarian cosmonauts in the late 1960s and it is both an alternative history of the moon landing and a cold war allegory about the dangers of propaganda in the era of fake news.

TEGNAPUTÁN embarks on their most ambitious musical journey to date on THE SPACE ERASE

THE VISION

The concept of THE SPACE ERASE is galaxy’s away from a typical album release, and part of the album's vision is a multimedia multi-format release that includes a custom Vinyl LP as well as a limited edition hand-drawn vintage comic book and a series of original videos, film collages and composites that bring the story of the unknown cosmonauts to life and help create an epic and interactive stage show that takes audiences along for the ride.

So far we have collaborated with 17 artists from 6 countries to help bring our vision to life, and you can see the effects of their work above and below and in the exciting Merch packages to the right. We're over the moon to finally launch THE SPACE ERASE into the stratosphere and we're even more excited for you to come along for the ride!

Our mission can only be accomplished with your help!

THE BACKSTORY

In hopes of beating NASA’s Apollo Program to the moon, the Soviet Union brought together 8 Communist countries in November, 1965 to discuss a new outer space collaboration. In April 1967, these countries signed a convention to formalise their collaborative aerospace projects. With that, the largest space cooperation program in history was born. The intergalactic space pact would later be called Interkosmos in 1970.

The first successful Interkosmos project was a Czechoslovakian unmanned satellite launched from Baikonur Cosmodrome (Kazakhstan) in April 1967. While most Interkosmos projects were launched with great fanfare across the communist world to project unity and strength over the US, many were kept top secret, even from other Interkosmos member nations. Such was the case with the 3rd Interkosmos project.

Major Tamás of the Emese crew in his first flight test in 1968.

On the morning of July 23rd, 1968 Hungarian Leader János Kádár signed the launch order for a secret mission to send four unknown Hungarian cosmonauts on a test mission to orbit the moon and attempt the first launch and landing of a lunar module. According to leaked documents, the project was codenamed “Emese,” and officially the Hungarian Mission Control based in Tapolca declared the mission a failure as they lost communication with the spaceship before it reached lunar orbit. But what actually happened to those Interkosmonauts was a mystery until...

Flash forward to April of 1992, a Hungarian military cadet visited a local watering hole near the military barracks on the northern shore of Lake Balaton outside the town of Tapolca.  The cadet overheard a drunk military vet mumbling incoherent stories about an underground military base and a secret mission to the moon. The cadet plied the vet with hard alcohol (palinka) until he eventually gave a detailed description of his connection to this so called secret mission and produced a photograph of himself and several other officers standing in front of a flatbed silo truck in front of the Tapolca Volcano where the underground mission control bunker had been supposedly built. 

"What if the vet was speaking moon truth?

                           "What if this was more than fake news?

 "What if there was an Emese mission and crew?

                          "We pass now these questions to you..."

The Crew of the Emese aka TEGNAPUTÁN

THE STATUS

We have poured the last five years of our lives into THE SPACE ERASE and we've pulled well over 30 people into our orbit to collaborate on all the various elements of our grand album concept from a visual, sonic and performance perspective.  Below is a list of what we have ready to go and what we need your help to deliver to bring our vision to life. 

WHAT'S READY TO LAUNCH? ?

Hungarian photographer extraordinaire Zoltán Tischler documented the MISSION and encapsulated the journey of THE EMESE and its crew in stunning photography. 

We've finished recording the 57 minute nine track album of THE SPACE ERASE in Budapest, Hungary and Krakow, Poland.

The album was professionally mastered for Vinyl and digital release by Márton Kopcsik at his studio in Budapest (www.martonkopcsik.com) 

After 17 months we have finally received The Vinyl records and are ready to ship.

All 40 hand drawn cells for the vintage comic have been finished and the comic is being delivered in early July. 

All four original T-shirt designs have been finalized and delivered to the printers. 

"Come in.. Do you read us?... We need some help up here!"

WHAT WE STILL NEED ROCKET BOOSTED ?

Most of the rewards in this campaign have been finalized and sent off to the best printing and production plants across Central Europe. Budgets are tight and most costs we covered ourselves up front. Our financial target is built around making sure that every artist that contributed to THE SPACE ERASE gets paid and we'll be ecstatic if we come close to breaking even.

This project and album is old school and even when it hits streaming portals, it's not the type of genre-specific algorithmic fodder that you'll hear on shopping mall playlists.  We need your help to spread word about TEGNAPUTÁN and THE SPACE ERASE!!! 

We have been fortunate to work with many amazing visual artists and one of the elements that we have not managed to deliver because of budgetary restrictions has been the professional music video to be directed by official photographer Zoltán Tischler and edited by long-time video collaborator Hana Yamazaki (Éden, News of the World). We hope to shoot in Fall 2023 with your support (and maybe even staring one of you!).

We are planning to take our stage show to theatres across Europe in Fall 2023 and throughout 2024. We need to invest heavily in our stage show, management and promotion so we can send the stage show you see below into the stratosphere!