I’m happy to announce the release of the second single and the title track Life This Way from the debut Space Summit album which will be available on CD from September 10th and on vinyl from early next year. So a bit of a promo blog post today rather than meandering and thoughtful.

If you preorder now you will get a digital download of the full album. The single is exclusively available today as a premiere on the Jammerzine website (thanks Ryan):

First Listen: Space Summit – Life This Way

This is the short overview I wrote about the song:

Life This Way is the second single and title track from Space Summit’s debut album. The track came about with me writing with space in mind, no, not that kind of space, space for Jed to write a melody instead of filling up the song with lots of noise, chords, bass notes, and arpeggios, just space for a melody to be born. Then followed by a catchy chorus, the song became a band favourite and a victory for simplicity.

SPACE SUMMIT (WEBSITE)
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This is an overview of the project if you are not already aware of it:

Space Summit is a collaboration between the ubiquitous Marty Willson-Piper (ex-the church) and Minneapolitan Jed Bonniwell. Writing the music together, Marty handles the luminescent electric guitars and the bass whilst Jed is in charge of lead vocal duties and lyrics. The album is produced by Marty and producer/engineer Dare Mason who also plays keyboards. Phoebe Tsen sings harmony vocals, Olivia Willson-Piper plays the strings and Eddie John the drums. All the usual suspects from recent Noctorum and MOAT projects make an appearance, with the exception of Phoebe who lives in Borneo, yes, really!

Space Summit’s music was conceived in cyberspace – and was recorded in America, Borneo, Sweden and the UK. The music created on Space Summit’s debut album by Jed and Marty is simultaneously modern and classic Dreampop –the subtle shading of dark and light with layered, sonic textures on every track. This album is one of the fascinating results of Marty’s Sessioneer Series, where he works with discovered collaborators from around the globe on new musical ideas.

Space Summit started as discussions around music and guitar technique in 2013 and eventually flourished into songwriting and musical collaboration. Marty would provide some musical sketches, chords or riffs – Jed would then add lyrics and additional musical ideas, and each song would continue to evolve back and forth until a complete demo had been created – finally taking the songs into the studio to record them with other musicians. With touring coming to a halt in 2020, the lockdown provided the time needed to bring this album to completion.

You can pre-order the album here

The track features Anekdoten’s Nicklas Barker and Sophie Linder on real moody Mellotron, Olivia on the violin, Phoebe Tsen on backing vocals, Eddie John on drums, Jed on lead vocals and me on guitars and bass, Dare on the technical.

So, housebound today after pulling some kind of muscle last night. It is actually better today but it still stopped me from going to the gym. Olivia came back with some cream and tablets but I think it’s just time. Yesterday I could hardly move and into the evening I was in some serious pain, holding onto the wall, shuffling micro-steps to get to sit down. This morning I literally crawled to the loo. I’m not quite sure how this happens, one minute you’re fine, one wrong move and the next minute you’re suffering jabbing pain. I suppose tomorrow’s mega-swim will not be happening, a disappointing end to a few months of intense work and with the centre closing for the whole of August I won’t be back in the pool for a while unless I can find another place. Tomorrow I hope to be out of the house and looking.

Music today is physical and also because I got an email today from my friend William in Texas who is the only Judas Priest fan that works for NASA – and has the wardrobe. This album, Painkiller, was from 1990.

Music Of The Daze