I’ve been doing some major cleaning back here in Spare Oom thanks to buying new furniture, and let me tell you, it’s been a wild ride on the Wayback Machine lately.
One of the things I’ve been doing the last week or so is going through my old 3.5″ floppy disks; I had three file boxes full of them that have been collecting dust and slowly degrading, so I figured it was high time that I saved what I could to an external drive, deleted what I didn’t want, and recycle the whole lot once I’m done. The earliest of these date back to 1994 when my ex-gf and I were writing True Faith. Every document dated up to around 1999 was a WRI file, given that I used MS Write exclusively until I finally got a copy of MS Word.
So as you can imagine, I’ve got all these songs in my head from that era that fit nicely with The Future Is Internet. Some of the songs are from horrible-but-great SF films like Johnny Mnemonic and Strange Days and Virtuosityand Hackers, while others were part of my ongoing writing soundtracks for TF and thereafter into The Phoneix Effect.
At the moment, I’m focusing almost completely on the revision of Diwa and Kaffi (yes, that’s the Apartment Complex book title now), which means that my writing session playlist has shifted accordingly. Right now it’s focusing mostly on lighter fare, to fit the mood of the novel. In particular, I find myself listening to a lot of synthpop and light alt-rock. Here’s a few albums that have been spinning lately here in Spare Oom…
White Lies, Five. This album kind of reminds me of the modern pop sound of the late 80s/early 90s that I used to listen to back in the day. It’s light but has just enough heft and emotion to it that it’s not throwaway.
The Cinematic Orchestra, To Believe. Great mood music I can get lost in. It’s quiet and lovely and just kind of floats everywhere, and I love it. This is the kind of stuff I listen to when I just need background but not exactly a specific mood.
UNKLE, The Road Part 2: Lost Highway. I can never go wrong with James Lavelle’s brilliant work. It’s dark and brooding, but it’s also quite expansive. (Having Tom Smith from Editors singing a few tunes is also really cool.) I usually reserve UNKLE for my Epic Novel sessions, but I’m such a huge fan of the band that they fit in quite nicely for any book I’m writing.
American Football, American Football (LP3). This is an AMAZING album, and it’s absolutely gorgeous and dreamy. This one’s been getting some heavy replays, almost on a daily basis, since it came out a little over a week ago. It’s just enough for me to get lost in the mood of the record without it interfering with the book proper.
The Sound of Arrows, Stay Free. This one’s a few years old but it’s been a huge influence on the book since I started writing it last year. (So much so that the title track plays during the ending credit sequence for the anime version in my head. Heh.) It’s a lovely and quite positive album to listen to, and it fits the mood of D&K perfectly.
I’m still on the first couple of chapters of this novel right now, and I’ve purposely not given myself a deadline; I’m already damn proud of this book and think it’s one of the best I’ve written (even better than the trilogy!), so I want to give this one as much TLC as I can before I decide whether I want to self-publish it or submit it to a professional house. I’m not even focusing on that right now, to be honest — I just want to give this one my all. Establishing a writing soundtrack, then, becomes an important part of my process; writing with music helps me focus on the work at hand, and it also mutes out any background noise that might distract. Creating this kind of playlist is one of my favorite parts of the process, as the music helps me achieve the mood of the story.
Every now and again I’ll hear a new song that will just floor me. Recently I’ve been grooving to this new single by the band Bob Moses called “Heaven Only Knows”.
It’s got that mid-tempo, low-range electronic groove that I love for many reasons: it’s great chill-out music, it’s got a gorgeous melody, it sounds awesome in headphones, and it’s perfect for my writing sessions.
Sometimes when I like a song that much, I’ll zip online and check out the rest of their discography. As it happens, their entire output is currently available on eMusic, so I was able to download it quite cheaply and add it to my collection.
Come to find out, I already knew one of their songs already! I recognized their 2015 single “Tearing Me Up” from hearing it on the various indie rock stations, but always forgot who it was until now.
I gave their EPs and album a good listen today and I can definitely say these guys are going to get some serious play in the next few weeks. It’s really great mood music for the writing projects I’m currently working on, and it’s also great to listen to during my Day Job hours. And they’ve got a new album coming out in two weeks! Woot!
What’s that, you say? Is this an official follow-up to the original four compilation volumes from 1997-98? Didn’t I make a bunch of semi-official compilations for the trilogy over the next decade and a half? Am I just recycling the same damn mixes over and over again at this point?
What’s the diff, anyway?
Well, the original Songs from the Eden Cycle mixes were made when I was writing The Phoenix Effect and were used to get me inspired, rather than songs that were assigned to specific scenes (with a few exceptions). The follow-up mixes, on the other hand, were when I wrote and revised the Bridgetown Trilogy and were specifically focused on those stories.
Thus, this new “Volume 5” is a return to the original reason for the series: music to get me inspired to write the new Mendaihu Universe book(s). Like the original four, these will be mixes that will be made over an extended stretch of time, as certain tracks pop up.
Here are a few that I’ve gathered so far…
Blonde Redhead, “23”. This song popped up on my radar in 2015 when I was playing around with MU story ideas, and caught me at the right moment with its unrelenting, twisting power. Beauty and tension at the same time.
Kasabian, “Club Foot”. I’m surprised I never put this song anywhere on any of my major compilations other than a half-assed one I threw together in 2005, because it’s one of my favorite badass bass lines. Also surprised I never used it in any Mendaihu Universe stories, either. Admittedly the video (again, one of my favorites) did give me a bit of inspiration as well.
U2, “The Blackout”. Say what you will about U2’s last two albums, personally I still think they’re the best and strongest albums they’ve had in years. Pretty sure they’re both going to get a lot of play when I start writing the new stuff.
Editors, “No Harm”. These guys consistently blow my mind with each release. In Dream was quite the dark affair — not as creepy as In This Light and On This Evening, but emotionally raw — and got a hell of a lot of play when I was revising the original trilogy. Pretty sure it’s gonna get play here as well.
Dot Allison, “Message Personnel”. This track actually dates back to the original TPE/trilogy sessions and popped up on one of the “Mendaihu Universe” mixes, but I’ve chosen to add it to this one because it’s the soundtrack to one of the first scenes I’d come up with for the new story. This is one of the few exceptions where I had a perfect song in mind for a specific scene.
The Horrors, “I See You”. I think I need to look into this band more, because they totally slipped under my radar until I heard their Luminous album a few years back. I love their dark post-punk sound, which fits in quite nicely with what I’m trying to achieve with the new story.
I’m still working on this one right now, and it is in fact a mix of newer and older songs (note: the original four volumes did in fact have the same type of content as well). With the exception of maybe one or two songs, the rest of these haven’t been put on an official Eden Cycle mix as of yet.
Yes, I know…I’ve got two other novels I have to finish first before I can get anywhere serious with this new Mendaihu Universe novels, but it doesn’t hurt to get an early start with the notes and the soundtrack, right?
New mixtape/mp3 playlist! This one’s Songs from the Apartment Complex, and I have to say this is probably one of the quirkiest mixes I’ve made in a while. The Apartment Complex story (still working on the title, folks) has evolved into an unexpected direction for me. Unlike previous book-centric playlists where most of the songs are there to set a mood, many of these tracks here are aimed at specific characters and what kind of person or being they are. Hope you enjoy it!
EDIT: As you may have seen over at Welcome to Bridgetown, I’ve put the Apartment Complex story on hiatus as I’m having even more problems with it than I thought, and need to put it aside for a while. Frustrating, yes. VERY frustrating. But I’m still keeping this up, because I think it’s a pretty interesting mix, and something I’ll listen to when I come back to the project. [And I *am* coming back to it — I just don’t know when.]
Alas, my recent fascination with 70s music has been sidetracked due to my starting in on the Meet the Lidwells project; in this case, I am now immersing myself in the poppier side of alternative rock circa 1990-1996. Not complaining, considering.
I’m trying to avoid the expected hits, the songs that still pop up from time to time: “Unbelievable” and “Right Here Right Now”, Achtung Baby and Nevermind, and so on. I’d like to dig just a little deeper than expected — something I am wont to do for my writing projects anyway — and bring back some of the tunes that were on my Walkman during my college years.
Sure, I’ve often said that the early 90s was definitely an unpredictable era of great highs and miserable lows for me personally, but that’s not the story I’m writing here. [And that’s another blog post entirely anyway.] I’m reconnecting with a lot of the great music that came out at the time, and channeling that energy into the Lidwells story.
The early 90s was an interesting time, for a multitude of reasons anyway. Musically, post-punk and college rock was becoming the new mainstream, 80s pop was aging a bit (sometimes not that well at all), and new voices and sounds were popping up from around the globe. Politically, old walls (literal and figurative) were being torn down, and soon a new President would be entering the White House. It felt like there was a weird positivity in the air that we’d almost forgotten about.
It may have been the political sea change, or it may have been something else. For me at any rate, I was thinking this was the last decade in the millennium, and that we were all looking forward to a more positive future than the sometimes dreary one we’d been recently subjected to.
Musically, I was getting into the wave of Britpop that WFNX was playing (when they weren’t playing grunge, which took me a lot longer to get into). In addition to that, Boston was experiencing a small renaissance of sorts with a hell of a lot of great local bands old and new getting some serious airplay — Manufacture, the Mighty Mighty Bosstones, Tribe, Heretix, The 360s, Think Tree…a bunch of bands I may not have been able to see live, but I certainly bought most of their releases when I could.
I was also doing a lot of shorter writing at the time — my fiddling with the Infamous War Novel had faded into the background; I’d created my comic character Murph and put him through all kinds of weird universes; I’d finally gotten out of the ‘doom poetry’ phase I’d put myself through and was writing some solid Flying Bohemians lyrics; I was also pushing myself to play around with new story ideas.
This is the energy that I want to use for Meet the Lidwells; a feeling of optimism and strong bursts of creativity. Sure, my story will deal with their personal ups and downs and their eventual demise as a band, but that’s only part of it. This is about celebration as much as it is about struggle.
It’s about the love (the characters’ and mine) of music. 🙂
As I mentioned previously, having a new writing project means having a new playlist. Nearly all of the Bridgetown trilogy music leaned more towards darker atmospheric moods, so the hard switch to a new musical style has felt a bit like whiplash.
Meet the Lidwells! features a family band that plays what some would call power pop: quirky and upbeat, often guitar-oriented, sometimes a bit odd, but never an uncomfortable listen.
Well-known examples would be Fountains of Wayne…
or Veruca Salt…
or Matthew Sweet…
or Belly…
….you get the picture.
So why power pop? Well, the story of the Lidwells is partly set in the late 80s-early 90s; they’re a band heavily influenced by the Beatles (thanks to their parents) as well as late 80s college rock (thanks to their elder siblings). Much like the Beatles, they started out writing simple poppy love songs aimed towards the young teen market. Over the course of five chart-topping albums and numerous hit singles, their sound evolves from that catchy pop to more adventurous alternative rock. And just like the Beatles, weary of the ups and downs of fame and tiring of the game, they decide to go out on a big note with their strongest album.
Right now, while I’m working on notes and piecing together a coherent story, I’m also making it a point to look for more music to listen to that would fit this project. It doesn’t necessarily have to be explicitly power pop, of course…as long as it’s somewhere in the neighborhood. And I’m specifically looking for both male and female singers, as it’s important to the story.
So yeah…if you have any suggestions/recommendations for bands and songs, please feel free to let me know in the comments! I’m always open to new tunage. 🙂
Or: Albums Wot I Listened to Incessantly While Writing the Trilogy in the Belfry, 1996-2004. It’s by no means a complete list, as I’ve left out a ton of albums that didn’t get nearly as much play but may have shown up in heavy rotation for a shorter time. I also didn’t list the albums that popped up during the revision years, which would probably be another long list in itself.
I’ve put them in semi-chronological order of release. These are still some of my favorite albums; I would highly suggest checking many of them out, perhaps finding a copy or two for your collection if you don’t have them already. It’s a wide mix; there’s electronica, alternative metal, alternative rock, and even a classical album or two. A lot of these albums still pop up on rotation when I’m working.
To be honest, it does feel kind of odd to finally be listening to a different style of music for my latest project. [Meet the Lidwells! is full of power-pop goodness, so there’s a lot of Matthew Sweet and Fountains of Wayne involved, and a lot of listening to The Power Pop Show on KSCU.] But I highly doubt I’ll stop listening to Fantastic Planet or Sea Change any time soon…
The TDK D90 blank cassette. My tape of choice for almost all of my 90s mixtapes.
One thing I’d always done during the course of a writing project is to give it a soundtrack. Whether it’s a playlist, a list of specific albums, or a mixtape, it serves to create a specific mood that I’m looking for. With The Phoenix Effect, having envisioned this as a multi-book project even then, I’d given the series the name The Eden Cycle (referencing both obvious religious imagery and EdenTree, a megacorporation that would be a part of the plot). It seemed fitting to give the mixtapes the same title.
At the time, my idea had been of souls inhabiting AI cybernetic bodies — which in hindsight created a lot more trouble than it was worth — so the imagery I was looking for was much darker and creepier. That said, however, I chose not to focus on dystopian pessimism; instead I wanted my story to ascend past that into something positive.
This is the first of four mixtapes I made during 1997-8; this one was made in mid-April of 1997, just before I went on a road trip out to Ohio to visit a friend of mine. One of the major reasons for making it was so I could listen to it during my commute and think about what I was going to write. Over the next few days I’ll be sharing the other three original volumes from this era. The links are to their YouTube/Vimeo videos (they’ll open in a separate tab), and I’ll also provide a brief background as to why I chose the song for the mix.
Side A
Poe, “Hello [Band Version]”
I liked Poe’s Hello album, but the kickass single remake of the song felt like a perfect opening to a mix tape. It fit in with the cyberpunk feel of TPE that I was originally aiming for as well. An ‘opening credits’ song, if you will.
Failure, “Heliotropic” Fantastic Planet was getting a crapton of play on my cd players, both at work and at home during my writing sessions. This track’s spaciness, loudness and extremely heavy, crunchy bass evoked the exact amount of tension I was looking for. It had that feeling of being outside on the brightest day with the heaviest of hangovers.
U2, “Mofo” Pop was still getting a lot of play as well, and I loved how twitchy this one was. I used this track as a kind of gauge to remind me of how Bridgetown felt on a spiritual energy level: a sprawl of millions of people, each with different levels and directions of this energy, all dissonant and discordant.
David Bowie, “Dead Man Walking”
I’ll be honest, I wasn’t the biggest of Bowie collectors — I think I only owned maybe five or six releases, tops — but Earthling (released earlier in 1997) connected with me big time. I loved its techno influences and its paranoia. This track fit my image of Nehalé: a man who was destined to take a specific action that would affect a vast number of people, and he had to force himself to come to terms with that.
Psykosonik, “Need to Die”
There was a brief surge of darkwave techno in the mid to late 90s (super-generalization: darkwave = gothy electronica) that I got into, and Psykosonik’s Unlearn was handed to me by one of my HMV coworkers (Thanks, Doug!). I put this here mostly as a mood piece, but I did like how it fit in with one of the TPE themes: people didn’t necessarily have to die to be reborn spiritually.
Live, “Lakini’s Juice”
Another mood piece, this one suggesting (to me) discomfort in a situation one could find themselves in. I believe I used this as inspiration for Poe’s constant irritation at not being able to complete tasks put before him.
Elysian Fields, “Lady in the Lake”
Their Bleed Your Cedar album was handed to me as a promo, and I liked its swampy feel. The album (and this track) helped me focus on how a recently awakened character would have to deal with their situation; both feeling disconnected from everyone (I’m the only one like this) and superconnected (I can intimately sense everyone around me) at the same time.
Moby, “That’s When I Reach for My Revolver”
As a Masshole, I had to appreciate Moby covering the Mission of Burma classic (as well as putting out a punk album, considering he’s more known as an electronic musician). Just like the original, this song was a perfect example of dedicated and determined nonconformity that fit in with Vigil.
The Verve Pipe, “Veneer”
Not that long before this, I’d seen this band live in Boston, and they did a beautiful and transcendent version of this track (which, as it happens, is about a long road trip through Michigan while high). To me, it evoked a sensation of being elsewhere; in the process it inspired how I had my characters react when they first visited Trisanda.
Side B
Richard Einhorn, Anonymous 4, “Exclamavit”
I’d heard Einhorn’s Voices of Light on NPR one evening when I was driving into Boston in the summer of 1995, and I was completely floored by the gorgeousness of it. [It was inspired by Carl Theodor Dreyer’s 1928 silent film The Passion of Joan of Arc and can be heard as its soundtrack on the Criterion dvd.] I wasn’t the biggest orchestral music fan at the time, but this slowly set me on my way. This particular opening felt like another good ‘opening credits’ piece, and thus opens Side B of the tape.
Pulp, “Common People”
The album version of their classic single is a much more sinister affair than the single version (there’s an additional verse that truly reveals the disgust he holds back in the rest of the song). While the plot of the song doesn’t quite fit the plot of my story, it does reflect the bigoted view of The Other that was part of my story’s plot.
Sponge, “Isolation”
There’s a great Lennon tribute album called Working Class Hero from 1995 that I listened to a lot then, and I loved this version of the Plastic Ono Band track. This ties in with the previous Pulp track, a forced cultural disconnect that one can only accept for so long before one has to fight back.
The Offspring, “Gone Away”
Part of the reason this one was on here is that I heard it so many times during that Ohio road trip! Again, tension and discord. This time because something’s been taken away and you can’t do a damn thing about it.
Filter, “Hey Man, Nice Shot”
This track inspired my love for the Slow Build: starting off quiet and sparse, but gradually growing louder and more intense in energy. The original Chapter 1 of The Phoenix Effect used this song as a template, which carried all the way to the opening of A Division of Souls. The ADoS opening is supposed to feel like someone slowly turning the volume louder and louder until it climaxes in an intense burst of energy.
Failure, “Daylight”
Okay, how many times is this track on one of my mixtapes? One of my favorite songs of all time, and even at the start of the project I knew it would be the Ending Credits track to my story. [NOTE: I’m planning on writing a script of the ‘director’s cut’ for the ending of A Division of Souls and posting it over at the Bridgetown blog later this month, which uses this song as its soundtrack.] The story is done, everyone’s exhausted, and the day has been saved…but the fight is far from over…and roll credits. [Seriously, folks…go buy Fantastic Planet. It’s a fucking phenomenal record.]
U2, “Wake Up Dead Man”
A denouement track after the epic ending track preceding. I knew TPE was going to end on an unresolved note, leaving it wide open for its sequel. The day has been saved, but the work’s not over. Relationships between certain characters have been strained or broken; others have refused to give in so easily. For me, this song is a plea for the war to cease before it goes too far. [I never forgot this idea and eventually used it in The Balance of Light.]
The Tragically Hip, “Grace, Too”
Canada’s favorite band with one of their favorite hits, which I remember seeing on MuchMusic back in 1994 (partly because I loved that the video was created using monitor feedback). A lift from the previous song, in which we shift viewpoint to someone who knows they’re in the lower classes but still has high hopes for themselves. This idea would later become the gathering of the Mendaihu at the Moulding Warehouse in A Division of Souls.
Jamiroquai, “Virtual Insanity”
…and after all that, ending on a slightly more positive note (somewhat), the final track brings a kind of…well, not hope, but an awareness. This was a big plot point even in TPE: the characters had to become completely aware of their situation, where the conflict wasn’t in trying to figure it out, but in coming to terms with it and choosing either use it, abuse it, or avoid it as long as they could.
Hope you enjoyed my little bit of tunage sharing there! I’ll be following up with the other three volumes in the original series soon!
Walk In Silence 