If you subscribe to my newsletter, you already know that I've been working on a secret music project with singer-songwriter Mathias Kom and his genre-shifting folk-rock band, The Burning Hell. I've counted @theburninghellband among my favourite bands for ages (I've seen them play live in four countries!) and I'm so incredibly overjoyed that we got to work together on this collaboration... creating a piece of original music to accompany the release of Under Fortunate Stars!
The "Fortunate Five" in Under Fortunate Stars were five historical human heroes, the legendary crew of the starship Jonah. The Five stopped an interstellar war at its most hopeless moment and successfully sealed a peace treaty. This brought about an age of mutually beneficial partnership with an alien civilization, the Felen, and ushered in a new age of prosperity and technological advancement for humans.
In-universe, there's tons of different stories, folk songs, films & dramas about various aspects of the Fortunate Five's legend and their lives. But there's one particular folk song that is referenced and sung by crew members on the science vessel Gallion during the events of the book. That song is called "The Flight of the Jonah"... and a few months ago, we set out to write & record this song for real!
Mathias wrote & arranged an incredible piece of original music, we co-wrote on the lyrics, and he performed the vocals & instruments with the band. The final product is so, so much fun, and you can listen to it right now on your platform of choice! (It's basically spoiler-free for the book, since it tells the fantastical, legendary version of the historical events as known by the Gallion crew at the outset of the book!)
🎵 LISTEN NOW 🎵
Stay tuned for a behind-the-scenes blog post about the making of the song sometime soon :)
PS. There's a new The Burning Hell album coming out this summer, so please do check them out on Bandcamp because they are amazing!
Under Fortunate Stars will be out soon from Solaris! PREORDER NOW
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