Spaceface Share New Single "Earth In Awe"

The incredibly groovy Spaceface crew are back with their latest single release “Earth In Awe.” The track is a stuff filled with fuzzy cosmic riffs and takes you on a psychedelic trip. This dazed out song is the perfect transition into the autumn season.

"Earth In Awe is about accepting that some things can just be good and if we don’t allow fear to rule our lives, evil won’t destroy the Earth. It’s an awful and gorgeous realization that we allow fear to take hold of so many aspects of our lives. ‘Without hope we fall apart”, hold on to hope and the things you love and we can turn this thing around. It’s not like there’s nothin to lose.’”

- Jake Ingalls from Spaceface

We caught up with members of Spaceface to delve farther into their ideas and thoughts on fear, maintaining hope, and exploring DIY cinematography.

“Earth In Awe” focuses on the life lesson of realizing that good things are all around and allowing yourself to not second guess and embrace. Has this been a hard lesson to come to terms with? 

Eric: It’s hard not to feel the existential dread of living in the 21st century. It seems every day there is a new doom we face. It’s rare to see the hopeful, uplifting news that makes you feel warm. ‘Earth in Awe’ is a small reminder to look for that small kindness in the world. For me, I just try to put my phone down and take stock of my friends and the real moments I experience.

Jake: I’m with Eric on this one. He’s better at that mindset than I am, though. I tend to be the one stressing about deadlines and schedules but I’ve been working on taking a page outta Mr. Martin’s book. Lessons learned about celebrating life’s smallest beauties are best undertaken by unplugging and taking a dog on a nice long walk. 

It’s funny, the song’s origins are much older than 2020 - those with a keen eye that have been following us for a while might recognize the title from a hidden track on our first physical EP’s we’d spray paint the art on and sell out of the short bus on our first tour. 

To be honest, when we were recording it - it felt like the biggest outlier in terms of tone and feel and I was campaigning to shelf it for the time being, maybe build a different world around the song but it was Eric’s baby and he fought for it. So, we saw it through and I’m very glad we did because wow, now it really feels like it was meant for this time.

Have all of you found ways to prevent your fears from controlling your lives? 

Eric: Actually Spaceface is a resource for overcoming fears of the unknown. It takes some courage to pack up your things, travel the country and showcase your art. I get to do that with my best friends. I don’t know how far I would go on my own, but I know we can do it.

Jake: There are a lot of kinds of fear, I suppose. I tend to box up some of the more abstract things like conspiracy theories and say ‘Is there anything I can do about that today? How does this interact with me right now?’ And that sorta keeps me moving on from them. As far as putting yourself out there, I’d refer people to the Dunning/Kruger Effect. I think some fear can be healthy and keeps us safe but dwelling in it is boring. 

How do you hold on to hope? Especially with how the world has been taking two steps forward and then taking five backward.

Eric: Honestly it’s so hard. Where do you begin? It’s really heartbreaking every day when you wake up to some new disaster. Of course, now, our phones connect us with everything all the time. So the common tactic is to put down the phone. I guess you have to really love the day-to-day stuff. My partner and I moved from renting a house to living in a tiny studio apartment with our dog and I’ve loved every minute of it. Knowing we can do that together means everything. 

Discovering new music feels amazing -- especially when you aren’t really looking but you stumble upon it. That feeling when it totally captures you and you love everything about it … that gives me hope.  

Jake: You hold on because you have too. In the grand scheme of things, I don’t have it that bad. If I abandon hope, what good does that make me to someone else that’s truly roughing it that might need my help or light on their way? We’re inundated with a barrage of scary things everyday because outrage sells. If you push that aside and spend some time researching, for every bad thing happening, there’s ten other folks working their hardest to help fight it. On top of that, the generation below us is so informed and on top of things, they give me hope. I’m constantly inspired by the people we find striving to make a little difference every day. 

What is the best piece of advice you have ever received? 

Eric: Oh man, I don't know. I have a hard time separating real conversations and movie quotes. 

My dad jokingly told me one time, ‘If you’re gonna do it, overdo it.’ I compiled that into a long list of things I'll say sometimes. It does, however, remain true to my life, and certainly with a Spaceface show. That comes from Jake though... when we walk into a venue, the first thing we do is eyeball how much space we have for lights -- how many balloons are we blowing up tonight.

Jake: If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing shitty. Which to me means... Maybe all you do is take the first step towards something today, that’s great. Maybe you only have the energy to half your usual workout, or drag yourself outta bed and do some of the dishes. Write half a song. 

I’m not advocating for total productivity but don’t abandon something just because you can’t do all of it at once. I’m a firm believer that if you do one little thing a day, eventually you’ll just do more and more and one day it will feel weird not to do *something* in your day. (This obviously comes with a big asterisk that it’s important to value your downtime and I fully indulge in nothing days - but I try not to revel in them)

The music video was all shot on iPhones with a pink plexiglass piece rubber-banded over top the camera lens - how hard of a DIY project was this? Was this a new idea/concept to play around with in terms of the tools you had? 

Jake: Exactly. This is sorta the way Spaceface approaches everything, to be honest. Once you embrace that you’re just gonna go ahead and do it yourself, the ‘hardness’ of a project melts away into just figuring out your weird little way to make something happen. This one happened very naturally. The process of making the video was inspired by a passage in the Duplass Brothers’ book “Like Brothers” called about not waiting for the right amount of money or time to take initiative. They call it “using the available materials”. 

Last year, I was either stuck in my apartment in LA or staying at one of the Flaming Lips’ roadie’s houses in Oklahoma City while we did these covid safe bubble shows, and in my downtime, I kept racking my brain on the best ways to make music videos for these songs without making every video only have me in them. SO: with some off days in Oklahoma, Zac Cox and I rode some bikes around filming different stuff we liked, built little sets in his apartment with what we had lying around, and found a bunch of different stuff to obscure my face so the “band” could feasibly be everyone. Then I asked Eric for a video of him singing and playing to overlay. 

The newest concept we played with here was basically that the video isn’t really edited or anything. We loaded each of our phone's recorded clips into a bunch of midi trigger buttons within this live visuals program I use and played along with the song while screen recording on my computer. THEN we re-filmed that on a phone to make it even grainier and weirder looking. Something about the process really had me embracing the strange artifacts that come with different low res videos being overlaid on top of each other over and over again. I think it ended up reflecting the hazy low-grade dread of living the world that underlies the overarching theme of all the beauty that’s worth fighting for.

You’ve been creating drinks to go along with each song that’s been released, what is the inspiration behind the “Earth In Awe” Cocktail recipe? How does it embody parts of the single? 

Eric: Okay, this is a drink that formed from the styles of a “kitchen sink” dish. I basically took the only things on my bar (tequila, orange aperitif, and amontillado sherry) and threw them together. I knew it wouldn’t be awful because the ingredients were sound and I'm not too picky at home, but I didn’t expect to fall in love. This drink is built as a Negroni (equal parts) with silver tequila, cappelletti, and amontillado sherry, stirred with ice, and strained. This is a drink to sit and enjoy, as you wait for all the nuances to come to you. Earth in Awe is a song that I want people to sit and enjoy. It’s a relaxed pace with a major key and I hope delivers some catharsis with the album. 

"Earth In Awe" Cocktail Recipe
Negroni Riff with Tequila

Ingredients:
1 oz Blanc Tequila
1 oz Cappelletti
1 oz Amontillado Sherry

How to make it:
Stir and strain over ice
Express lemon peel