“Between the Stars” EP Out and Available On All Streaming Platforms

Posted on June 23, 2023    Posted by John Scalzi      4 Comments

Surprise! I have a new EP of electronic music out!

As most of you know, a short story of mine, “Slow Time Between the Stars,” will be out next Tuesday as part of the “Far Reaches” collection, along with stories by James SA Corey, Nnedi Okorafor, Veronica Roth, Ann Leckie and Rebecca Roanhorse. When I release new works, I often commission musicians for a theme song (for example, this Jonathan Coulton song marking the release of Redshirts). This time, I decided, the musician I would commission would be… me! And I would do a whole EP, because why not be ambitious.

And here we are: Five new tracks of electronica, all with space themes, and two tracks, “Between the Stars” and “Asa” inspired directly by the short story. Three of the tracks (“Magnetic Fields Around an Ultra-Luminous X-Ray Source,” “Ganymede Flyby” and “Remnants of the Supernova”) I had previously released here, but “Between the Stars” and “Asa” have their debut on the EP.

I’m really happy with this EP, not the least because I think it’s my most ambitious set of work to date; I’m playing with forms and repetition in ways I haven’t before, and two of the tracks are well over eight minutes, a length I’ve never gone to previously. The music mashes up electronica genres and ranges from what I would called New Age Trance to Goth Vangelis. “Ganymede” incorporates actual sounds from space (data from a flyby of the Jovian moon Ganymede by the Juno space probe). For “Between the Stars,” which is the formal theme for “Slow Time Between the Stars” I tried to approximate the state of drifting, mostly blissfully, in interstellar space. Likewise, “Asa” is my attempt at music for an AI that has grown beyond its human creators, but which still has a memory of them, and a fond one at that.

In other words: A lot going on here. Does it work? That’s up to you to decide. But I like it, which is nice.

The EP is out on all the major streaming services, including Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music and TIDAL, and should be available as musical accompaniment on Instagram and Spotify for reels and stories and such. Also, because I know some of you won’t want to hunt for it, I’m including the whole EP for you to listen below via YouTube. Enjoy.

And remember: Hey! I have a short story out on Tuesday, June 27! “Slow Time Between the Stars”! If you subscribe to either Amazon Prime or Kindle Unlimited (or both) it will be available to you for no additional cost; if you don’t, then it’s available to purchase for $2 or the equivalent where you are. Yes, there’s also an audio version. Please consider picking it up. Thanks!

— JS