Pip Summers

Hello friends!

Today I released a 17-track charity compilation with a bunch of other transfem musicians, with all proceeds going to Gendered Intelligence. It's available for PWYW, and it's absolutely chock full of styles, vibes, and so much love and passion. I was fortunate enough to be able to share two tracks as well: the first real recording of 'Soldiers and Spies', and a demo for a new bedroom pop project called Echobot. Check it out if that, or a queer multi-genre experience for charity sounds like your kinda jam!

Pick it up now!

This new proposed revision to the Equality Act by the EHRC is essentially looking like a rollback of pretty much all of the few legal protections that trans people have in the UK. It's a backdoor bathroom ban that only serves to make us even more vulnerable to harassment, assaults, alienation, poor mental health, unfair policing - you name it. All just so the tories can continue to try distract from all the real problems they've caused and refuse to fix.

Let's look at just one hypothetical for a second: either I continue using female bathrooms (like I have been for almost a year, without issue from myself) and risk getting arrested, or I use the mens and wait to get inevitably, violently assaulted in any number of traumatic ways. I've already been SA'd in a busy park, in broad daylight, without anyone around the situation doing a thing - you think a space where gender is as heavily policed as a mens fucking bathroom is going to be at all safe for me, or any other transfemme? Are we so quick to forget how at-risk trans people are already - when a trans child was murdered in a public space in broad daylight not even two months ago?

It dehumanising, alienating, and humiliating to have your rights kicked around like a political football. The media and prominent TERFs like JK Rowling keep describing trans women like we're some evil cabal of all-powerful anti-feminists when the reality I know is that most trans people are just trying to barely scrape by these days. Healthcare is either prohibitively expensive or with waiting lists so long that it may as well be non-existent. The rate of hate crimes against trans people is skyrocketing, and 88% of them go unreported (because of course they do - the police do not take us seriously.) These days I can't even so much as dare to walk down the street without getting stared at with contempt and suspicion by strangers I've never met before... just for existing.

Coming out and transitioning was the best thing I've ever done for myself - I'm not constantly suicidal for starters. I now know what its like to just exist without the constant numbness and disassociation that comes with living a lie so deeply ingrained into your identity that you don't even know its there. Discovering who I really am, and what parts of me were actually me all along, has been a joy and I feel like I've lived more in the last year than in my whole life up until that point. Understanding how beautiful transness is is what makes seeing all this targeted abuse towards us so nightmarish. We just want a chance to live, not as shells of who we could be, but like normal fucking people who're given as many opportunities to thrive and flourish as anyone else. Apparently that deserves to be punished, and punished so... so hard... How pointless. 🙁

Fuck Kemi Badenoch. Fuck the Tories. Fuck Rishi Sunak. Fuck the EHRC. Fuck TERFs. Fuck the UK press. Fuck this stupid, meaningless """culture war""". Fuck this nightmare of a country.

Hi lovelies!

This website has certainly laid dormant for the longest time. In particular this blog hasn't been updated since 2018, which is unfortunate because the last post I made was essentially a teenage-angst vent post. Charming. I'm sure that's done my ''''brand'''' wonders.

With my recent name change I've decided now is as good a time as any to update my socials with new ''''branding'''' and that includes the website. So here we go - a nice new coat of yellow paint and a new logo. The old logo has served me well (if anyone still has one of those T-shirts with it on, let me know! There's got to be a couple still floating around) but it did lay a little too close to Frank Turner's and over time I've felt like it represents me less and less. I'm happy with the new one, at the very least as a placeholder, and I hope ya'll do too.

New music should be coming sometime soon. I've been sitting on a few songs for a while that I think are some of my best yet, workshopping them about to refine them best I can. A couple have full arrangements and are at the mixing and mastering stages, which feels very nice to say. I haven't put anything personally significant out since Black Light and that was all the way back in 2020. I like to think I've grown as a musician, writer and arranger since then and I'm really excited to share all that with ya'll. No solid news on release dates or anything (I've been trying not to rush projects out of the door lately), but hopefully I'll have something to show before the end of the year. Watch out for new stuff coming soon.

Much love, Pip x

Hello lovelies!

So I'm continuing with those road based puns apparently...

One a better note, while the album has been pushed to the side due to time constraints for the people working on it, the smaller project has taken smaller focus and gosh darn am I proud of the nearly complete result.

You guys can expect an amazing announcement in the next few weeks or so. Let's start this hype train!

Much love,

Ash x

Following the theme of road-based titles that are getting progressively more convoluted, the road continues.

Recording for the album is well underway, though it is definitely taking a long while. In the meantime, I'm starting on the production of another smaller project that can be released before the album.

We're getting some fun guests in to do vocals, artwork etc. for the album proper and there are some older songs as well as many newer ones. I'm very excited for it all.

The essential point of this post was to let you all know that production is well underway and things are on track for a release later this year. I can't wait.

Much love,

Ash x

Well, as the title suggests, things have been both good and bad recently, both personally and professionally.

Regardless, I'm working through the hard and enjoying the good. December has, after all, been one of my busiest gig months of the entire year, finishing in spectacular fashion with our big 19th gig at Heartbreakers.

Though the band and I have had minimal rehearsals, I still have my heart set that this will be the best show of the entire damn year. We're playing songs new and old, acoustic and updated for the full band. It's going to be a hell of a night.

I'm very excited. We're also actively working on the EP, finally, which is exciting. The new songs (which we've been hammering hard into all our set lists) are sounding fantastic and I can't wait for you all to hear them!

Much love, Ash x

So, who'd of thought this was coming?

The record release line-up has changed again. At this point I refuse to make any solid promises however stuff is in the works, so do not fret. With a planned release of mid-2018, The Embers and I will be heading into the studio soon to work out some newer songs and get them not only fit for recording, but also fit for the road. It feels good to be able to say that after almost three years of hard work and music-ing as much as possible.

On another note, we're playing a big Christmas blow-out show on the 19th of December at Heartbreakers in Southampton. Free cookies with every ticket as an added bonus to all you lovely people. Shirts will also be on sale and we'll be playing covers and originals new and old, updated for the full band.

We hope to see you there, tickets can be bought here: https://www.seetickets.com/event/ash-ellis-and-the-embers/heartbreakers/1175975

Much love,

Ash x

The blog has been pretty quiet over the past few months, so here's the reason why.

The record line-up has slightly changed, for the better I might add. The first thing I release now will be a self-produced record featuring 15-20 songs to give all you folks something to listen to. This'll be fully acoustic, featuring just me and my guitar. This allows me to get this out with relative ease and then it's onto the more important records. I'll be releasing a two-part single featuring both parts of a new song called "Dry Lips". This song is hugely important to me and if you've seen me recently I may have played it live. I'll be recording that with the wonderful Armistice Records and if all goes well they'll be producing the long-time-in-the-making "Punk Rock Poetry" EP, which will feature full band instrumentation from the band.

On top of all that work and admin, I've been working on a new, totally separate band. Rogue Gallery has been a passion project I've wanted to do for a long time and now with the help of the wonderful Robin Prince we've finally started working on stuff. Progress with that'll be relatively slow for a short time, but I expect it to increase as we settle into a new educational year that's taking both our time right now. Expect much more on that after the Christmas period.

Thanks for sticking with me all this time and I hope you continue to join me walking down the long road ahead. Much love, Ash x

My musical career has been completely filled to the brim with new experiences lately, so I thought I'd share a few.

• I play a charity gig recently, managing to raise £53.50 for charity (After deducting £40 for gig expenses), which, while it may not seem like a lot, was much more than I was expecting.

• I booked, promoted and overall put on a DIY gig all by my little self, which I guess technically means it was my first proper show. This meant I got to choose my supports too, which meant experiencing some sets from people I'd definitely go see with my own money.

• I played a song that the head of my course watched me play. He is notoriously critical but apparently really liked it. 1-0 to me.

• And perhaps most importantly, I wore some fucking awesome stage makeup (Pink, blue and purple eyeshadow) for a duo set while singing gay songs. Positively queercore! <3

It's strange experiencing cool new things, kinda makes you feeling like you're growing as an artist. Whether this is the case remains to be seen, but I think it's pretty cool. Thanks to everyone who's been super dope lately!

Hello lovely people!

Final update on the progress of the EP before it all get's formally announced. The writing is about 99.5% finished, just a few of the tiniest tweaks need to be completed, a few swapped lyrics here and there. The backing band is all formed and ready to roll (we played our first full band gig this Tuesday actually) and we've got three songs out of five with full band compositions. I'm a little cautious of releasing any solid information outside of the official announcement, though it is definitive that the EP will have five full tracks (perhaps a sixth hidden track exclusive to the CD, if you know where to find it of course hehe) and that the EP will be titled "Punk-Rock Poetry". The tracklisting is set in stone at this point and I'm very happy with the progress. We'll be posting small little sneaky previews and teases like photos and videos from the studio once we get in there. Recording starts in a months time. Let's all get excited together.

Hope you're all well! Ash

Hello friends! I'm very very happy to finally let all you lovely people know that I can now confirm that the writing process for an actual EP release is in the works! So far all I can say without spoiling anything or breaking any promises I said I'd keep is this: - It doesn't yet have a name. - It will be 4-6 songs long, each 3-6 minutes in length. - I am in discussions with various people about a limited run of physical copies. - There is also a chance of a short yet awesome supporting tour around various towns in the UK (sorry to all my American and European friends, we'll get there eventually) - It will be available on digital services such as iTunes, Spotify and Soundcloud. - And finally, it will include songs (which you may recognise if you've seen me play live anywhere lately) currently called Lipstick, Nothing Left Of Us and Half-Way Out, as well as more (It won't include Last Year though, I know a few people have been asking for that one to get an official release so sorry Chloe and Shannon and a few others, maybe one day haha) And finally that's that. This year's shaping up to be a good one, I'll give an update once I get into the studio. Much love all!

Hello there! I'm pleased to reveal that I now have a website (You already know that though, you're already on it), as have I wanted for a while! From here you can keep up with more consistent updates than my Twitter and Facebook (I also have a Tumblr now!) accounts, with features here such as blogs, a mailing list and even a store. That's right, whenever I start selling things you can buy them from here (Who wouldn't want a shirt with a picture of my beautiful face on it, eh?) Mailing list is to the right of this post (if you're on desktop at least), I'd encourage you to sign up for free MP3's with every new email!

Thanks for sticking with me for so long and supporting me all this time, new music coming out soon! Ash