Back in the studio today with a reissue hot pink, purposely weathered, Fender Stratocaster in my arms. A brittle, reverbed, sprightly spangle, sprangs, and the ghost of James Honeyman-Scott appeared. You arrive in the studio to play but you don’t necessarily know what you are going to do. The song tells you what it wants, you reason with it and ask it to consider ideas it hasn’t thought of and between the two of you you come to a result that makes you both happy. Then the rest of the band and the techs are happy too, then the record company is happy and then the people that buy your record, or at least hear it are happy. These are the days when buying and hearing are different beasts.

It was a beautiful day, it was warmer outside than in the studio. The equipment hadn’t been switched on long enough to warm up the room whereas after dinner it’s always toasty. Tony had two friends drop in today, checking out the studio, the process and seeing and hearing what we were all up to. DC had borrowed a rev Vox AC30 but today it sat in the middle of the room because we’d found a great guitar sound through a Fender amp and Tony’s Carr amp, a boutique amp of which there are many different brands these days.

The day started with a sesh with Brian in Indiana which had me up at 9 AM and managing both breakfast and lunch before we made it to the studio. We stopped off for coffees and were in the studio by 1.30 working till 11 PM. We were on a roll and we had such a great guitar sound that it was actually disappointing to stop, even though we’d had a nine-hour day. You have to stop at some point and maybe you play better when you are brighter at the start of the day but the ideas can come late at night as you relax into the mood of the night and shy guitar parts tiptoe into the room.

Now in the early hours, everyone is in bed. Buddy, the dog, is snoring and sounds like the discotek you hear from outside in the street before you get in. It’s a muffled rumble and I imagine a spandex-clad Buddy grooving to the Sister Sledge Huskies. Nelly the cat is on the bed and she gets to stay there keeping Olivia company till I go to bed myself and I lift her up and put her on her spot on the top of the couch. We’d leave her on the bed but if we have Nelly we get Buddy chewing a bone or snoring and if we close the door, it’s likely that Nelly will being clawing to get out of the room before we wake.

Jet lag is easing and it’s a relief but now at 2 AM, I’m just tired. It was a great day in the studio but now it’s goodnight, back in the studio tomorrow.

Music today has been the classic debut album by The Pretenders (1979).

Music Of The Daze

I awoke to do a sesh with John in Brooklyn this morning. It seems to be working with American sessioneers – night for them and morning for me. I was wondering whether it would work with the time difference but I seem to have figured it out. Talking of nighttime, it gets dark shockingly early here in Australian winter. After just getting used to summertime in Portugal with clock changes and extended daylight we’ve suddenly been plunged into early darkness. At 5.30 PM the sky is black and although the Australian winter is mild after what we are used to living in England, Germany or especially Sweden, a chilly wind and a short day remind you that winter is indeed upon you. Getting back to Portugal will be a real shock as we return at the height of summer.

We decided to walk to Dee Why. Olivia thinks it’s a funny name and I suppose it is. We were going to walk along the beach but stuck to the road. There was a police breath testing unit stopping the cars and apparently, they have the technology these days to test for weed. As a non-driver everyone drives too fast for me maybe it’s because I’m the son of Merseyside’s road safety officer. My dad was head of a government department that was dedicated to road safety in the northwest, stopping accidents with seatbelt campaigns and the like. He was often seen on the streets of Liverpool sporting a multi-coloured golf umbrella. Drawing attention to child safety and scaring people to death with posters of pretty girls with stitches across their faces where they’d gone through the windscreen because they weren’t wearing a seat belt, the consequence seems to be that with all that horror of death and damage on the roads, I don’t drive.

The bird life here was highlighted again as we walked. On the side of the road were twelve sulphur-crested cockatoos idly picking at the vegetation below one of Australia’s alien trees. We stood and watched them for about fifteen minutes before they eventually flew off, landing in a tall tree nearby, from there, flying through the trees screeching and squawking like the resurrected armies of hell. On the subject of the racket of Australian birds, outside our bedroom window here at Tony’s house, there’s a party tree (bottlebrush) for raucous rainbow lorikeets. Sandy, Tony’s son, put’s it down to the bird bath just below the tree in the neighbour’s garden where they can be seen frolicking and submerging themselves in the water frantically flapping their wings. Then there’s the kookaburra, which we hear each day, another bird with the cackle of an exiled witch.

Still on the subjects of birds, yesterday at Circular Quay where the ferry landed, the clash of beauty, fascinating nature and reality, as an Ibis rummaged through a garbage bin. Also on the walk a bush turkey casually wandering through a garden and of course the ubiquitous Indian Myna bird with its loud melody. By the way, David Attenborough is 95, go and watch his wonderful documentaries, knowing he’s still out there making them.

Last but not least on the subject of the exotic, at the psychedelic psupermarket I bought some psychedelic fruits: paw-paw, dragonfruit and red papaya, taking advantage of being in a country where such things grow. As the night drew close I took a picture from the balcony of Tony’s house that reminded me of Australia’s ghostly dusk.

Music today has been more than one album, Al Stewart’s Year Of The Cat (1976), Kelley Stoltz’s new album The Stylist (2022), Paul McCartney and Wings‘ Band On The Run (1973) and John Lennon’s Mind Games (1973).

Music Of The Daze

A day off and a trip into the city today. There’s a bus that goes express but on the way, you can stop at Manly Vale and take the ferry for the spectacle of sailing across the picturesque Sydney harbour. What we didn’t realise was that when we got off the bus it was 4km to the boat, it seems like Manly is a big place. We made it to the Manly shore but had to ask twice to find the ferry. When I lived in Australia I seldom came to the Northern Beaches and don’t know my way around at all. The Eastern Suburbs and the city I know as well as anywhere but around here I’m a tourist.

The boat trip was rocky and gusty, spray from the water came over the bow and with the icy fingers of a cold bracing wind, we headed for the city. We were dipping and rising on the water like a galleon on the high seas. Suddenly you turn around a headland and there it is, the Sydney Harbour Bridge with its spectacular companion, the Sydney Opera House. The skyline of skyscrapers protrudes out of the land as the boat cruises into the dock. It was well worth the effort, the walk from the bus was justified as much-needed exercise. In the studio, sedentary and concentrated for days, there’s little time for swimming, gyming, and hanging out in groovy Sydney hotspots drinking espresso macchiatos and checking out the wildlife.

We decided to go to Red Eye Records and walked up through the streets and wound our way to the QVB (Queen Victoria Building) where I promptly lost my bearings and had to ask for directions. I was only out by one block and it has been ten years. We spent some time talking to Chris, the owner, and the guys behind the counter. I inquired about buying some original Oz pressings of AC/DC albums for Pete, Anekdoten drummer. Seems they might be $500 each and hard to find, it’s way past what he wants to pay. Rare records aren’t cheap although it’s hard to imagine that an AC/DC record could be rare as they are so big and have been popular enough from the start. But these Oz records with different covers and adjusted track listings are high on the want list for overseas collectors.

I bought Forenzics, some kind of Split Enz regrouping and a Red Eye T-shirt before heading out into the now early darkness of winter and headed back down to the harbour to see the lights of the Vivid Festival. It’s projections onto buildings and onto the sails of the opera house. It’s cool, it’s even a fun idea, but I’ve never seen so many people flocking to see it like it’s Elvis and Jimi Hendrix on stage together, back from the grave.

We got the bus back to Collaroy, my months of swimming and keeping fit helped after all the walking, last year I would have been in pain, this year I just had weary legs. One more thing, to get the bus you need an Opal card but the newsagent was closed at 12.30 PM on a Saturday. What is it with shops closing on the main day that people are around to use them? Shops should close on Mondays. As it happened my UK Visa card worked on the bus too. On the way back a French guy was talking to his son in French with the son responding in English. It seemed he understood everything. We overheard some of the conversations because we were sitting behind them, he was bright and philosophical, he can’t have been older than 10 but his brain was way beyond his years.

So music today is the Forenzics album, starring Tim Finn and Eddie Rayner, with Noel Crombie and Phil Manzanera. Sounds interesting? I’m listening now.

Music Of The Daze

So that was the first week in the studio with Tony, DC, and Arktik Lake. A very productive day today, Gibson SG, Rickenbacker 12-string, Fender Strat, Rickenbacker 620, and EBow. So I just got in and I’m going straight to bed. Today it’s all about Space Summit.

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Hey Space Summiteers!

As we commemorate the one-year anniversary of the release of our first single and video for I’m Electric on June 9, we thought it would be a great excuse to check in with you all, let you know we’re still breathing and give you a few updates.

 

NEW MUSIC!?

We’ve been regularly collaborating over Skype (with Marty mostly in Porto and Jed in Minneapolis), creating new music.

With 18 new demos in the can, we’re well on the way to completing the demos for not only a Space Summit 2 album but a Space Summit 3 project as well!

More updates to come on this, as we start to think about how and when to record the final versions of these upcoming projects. The new material has those unexpected musical and lyrical twists and turns you’ve come to expect from Space Summit and we can’t wait to share it with you all!

But in the meantime…BLUE VINYL!

Space Summit’s debut album Life This Way is available on all streaming services and we expect a Sept. 9, 2022 street date for the coveted blue gatefold vinyl with just 500 available.

For those of you who have already pre-ordered the vinyl, thank you for your patience as the worldwide vinyl supply gets back up to speed.

PRE-ORDER BLUE VINYL HERE

Enjoy your summer or winter and speak again soon!

– Marty & Jed

Follow us on Spotify here

Life This Way CD available here

Life This Way on Bandcamp

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Space Summit is a collaboration between the omnipresent 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 music created on Space Summit’s debut album is simultaneously modern and classic dream pop – the subtle shading of dark and light with layered, sonic textures on every track.

Conceived in cyberspace, 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, Eddie John plays the drums and Anekdoten’s Nicklas Barker and Sophie Linder play Mellotron. All the usual suspects from Marty’s recent Noctorum and MOAT projects make an appearance. Bringing together musicians from England, the USA, Sweden, and even Borneo where Phoebe lives, is recognition of a new future in music. This album is the first of Marty’s intriguing Sessioneer Series, working with newly discovered collaborators from around the globe.

We were tearing along in Tony’s car today on the way to the studio listening to Black Sabbath when a truck signalled to go into our lane and went to move towards us, pulling out at the last minute. Miraculously the two cups of coffee I was holding didn’t spill and we lived. It just reminded me of those split-second decisions that come so close to disaster, “Too beautiful a day to die”.

I was playing an old Gibson J50 acoustic today as well as a Rickenbacker 620 and the Gretsch 6120 from 1961 exploring different approaches to the songs. In the studio all week with Arktik Lake and not finding much time to do anything else. Swimming and gyming are impossible to fit in. Sessioneering, I will be in touch with everyone as my schedule becomes clear. As I write I’m falling asleep after another long day and less sleep than I need. If you are waiting to hear from me, it’s the weekend.

Music today has been The Nits‘ Hat EP (1988), my introduction to the band that led me to seek out all their albums. But today we heard the terrible news that their studio has burned down, losing their guitars, master tapes, their history, see the link here.

Music Of The Daze