Of course you’ve heard it already by now, but this still strikes me as suitable blog fodder: A new song from Reznor’s post-NIN band is out at Pitchfork’s website. If you haven’t heard it yet, go do so and let me know what you think. I’d embed it here if they’d let me.

When I’m running an RPG, like Razed, I make CDs to play during the game session. They help set the tone for key scenes and, just as importantly, they help me pace the story out during actual play. (If I’ve only played two or three tracks after an hour and a half of play, I know I’m in trouble.) Here, then, are some songs that I’ve been playing during the writing or playtesting of Razed, my new post-apocalyptic survival RPG coming from Pelgrane Press.

This is no complete list — my main Razed playlist, right now, has 186 songs. This is just an hour’s worth of material available for sale individually on iTunes. (Note: I don’t get any money from this — it’s just a nice way to give you samples of what I’m listening to if you don’t own some of these tracks.)

Some of these (like Tom Waits’ “Earth Died Screaming”) are meant to indirectly evoke the vibe and character of the setting — visions of apocalypse and aftermath. Other songs allude to favorite apocalyptic tales of mine (as “The Court of the Crimson King” alludes to Children of Men). Some are quiet mood-setting pieces for safe havens  from the terrors of the razed world, like Andrew Bird’s “Yawning At The Apocalypse” and Bear McCreary’s “Elegy” (played on a busted piano for the post-apocalyptic future-past of Battlestar Galactica). Meanwhile, others are action cues I’ve played during fights and chases. I just dig the mechanical rattle and momentum in “The Harvester Returns,” for example, and the weird machine voice of “The Invid Attacks.” And, of course, if we’re talking about music that I write to, I had to include multiple hits of Bear McCreary and Nine Inch Nails, in one form or another. (I skipped “The Day The World Went Away,” here, in favor of a couple of Year Zero remixes.)

I think this gives a little bit of a clue as to the kind of setting Razed will ship with. At the very least, I think it hints at where my head’s at, in terms of tone, right now.

Thanks for listening.

Yeah, I’m the Will in question:

When I write, I like music. I’m something of a nut for film scores, so I listen to a lot of those when I write. So much, in fact, that I’ve worn a groove in my “Soundtracks” playlist on iTunes. I think I’m going to listen a hole into it.

To avoid some of the chaos and distraction that sometimes comes with unexpected songs emerging in that playlist, though, I also have a few “atmosphere” playlists that I use just to fill the silence between me and the outside world. These aren’t even really thematic playlists, for the most part — I don’t need sci-fi scores to write science-fiction material for example — but they have different attitudes. My “Writing Atmosphere” playlist is pretty dark and theatrical (so much so that I barely ever listen to it), and my “Modern Mission” playlist is full of either high-energy thriller scores or tense espionage cues. The Bourne movie scores by John Powell get a lot of play in my office.

Last week I made a new playlist, called “New Atmosphere,” and for some reason I’ve found it to be wildly productive. Just add the following albums and shuffle. For me, it’s a mix of handsome but not intrusive background music and spur-me-to-action foreground music, befitting the mix of thought and work that goes into writing. Or the mix that I use in my writing, at any rate. (It’s about 5%/95% favoring work.) Here’s the recipe:

• Battlestar Galactica: Season Four by Bear McCreary
• Caprica by Bear McCreary
• Code 46 by The Free Association
• The Fountain by Clint Mansell
• Ghosts I-IV by Nine Inch Nails
• Moon by Clint Mansell

My local record store is selling the remastered Beatles CDs for ten bucks each today, so I resolved to get one—just one—to make up for the fact that I don’t have any Beatles albums in the house, except for Revolver, which I got half of when I got married. The album I bought today? Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and The White Album[1]. Because, come on.

Why didn’t I own any Beatles music? Ubiquity. I don’t own a lot of music staples because I simply don’t need to own them to hear them. The Beatles are so soaked into the popular cultural fabric that the dye may never come out. They’re like water—I’d have to go to a desert to get away from them, and if I’m in a desert, real or proverbial, Yellow Submarine will be the least of my worries.

But I’m not trying to get away from them. I’m not sure I could if I tried. I listened to them on vinyl back in the day, over and over again, to the point that I can summon them up on my internal jukebox if I need to, and they’re so tightly woven into my high-school years that, for me, remembering Beatles songs feels more apt than hearing them. If that makes any sense.

Still, I’m a pretty nostalgic guy, so here I am not remembering but listening to The Beatles on the day one of my best friends from high school turns 31. (”They say it’s your birthday,” Tony.)

Yeah, maybe I should’ve gotten Magical Mystery Tour, because I could be the walrus, or Abbey Road, because it’s Abbey Road. There’s something to be said for Past Masters, obviously (one example of that something is “Hey Jude”), but that thing will presumably be worth regular price somewhere down the line. I have fond memories of “Norwegian Wood” and “Michelle” (as anyone else who has ever loved a girl named Michelle probably does), but these are not songs that I own anymore. As of today, I still don’t own them again.

For all this talk of memories, though, it’s not like my memory of the songs is that clear.[2] My memory is full of holes, but between those holes are palpable details that tighten around my lungs like a coil of rope.

I can’t remember what device I played those records on (it probably wasn’t but may have been the same Fisher-Price turntable that I remember pretty clearly playing the Return of the Jedi soundtrack on), but I know I inherited those records from my mother, who I assume has them now again. I couldn’t remember any of the lyrics to “Within You Without You” until I played it again today, but I know I used to sit on this hideous red shag rug in my room and listen to that song over and over again and feel deep. That rug, which was in our dining room when I was a kid, had this orange-and-yellow shape in it that was either a rounded hourglass or an infinity symbol, which makes my mental image of me sitting on it (I had lengthening hair and knick-knack necklaces back then) all the more ridiculous. I would’ve been surrounded by ill-kept D&D boxed sets, too. I’m not sure what I thought the song was about, back then, but I dug that sitar. I’m sure I read something significant into the fact that it was a song written by Harrison, who was so meaningfully not John or Paul.

This is now as long ago as I was years-old at the time. (Whereas then I was a fifteen-year-old lunatic, today I am more than two whole fifteen-year-old lunatics fused together.) The song plays differently to me today.

Try to realise it’s all within yourself/no-one else can make you change/And to see you’re really only very small/and life flows on within you and without you.

Still reasonably significant to me. Where once I thought little of people who didn’t see how big a deal shit like feelings and life were, though, now I’m struck by how bold the Beatles had to be to say things as plainly as they did—and not just George. Sure, maybe it’s easier to sing about love and shit when you’re rich and high, but the these songs somehow play as meaningful even when the meaning is just a reminder of simple things. As a kid, I imagine I saw that line, “no-one else can make you change,” as some kind of girding phrase, telling me I could be impervious to the pain that people wanted to inflict on my weirdly nerdy self. Now it’s a simple, even rote reminder that if I want to be better than I am—a better person or just better at the things I do—I have to make that happen, not someone else. Simple, but not untrue.

Now, when Harrison sings about seeing beyond yourself and finding peace of mind, I don’t feel the wisdom flowing into me and I don’t nod along. I just feel small. I’m reminded that, outside of this room, the world is full of dudes who would shiv me for my iPod and that, if I die, I’ll be a short obit. Existential dread from a Beatles song? I’m not the same kid from that shag rug, for better or worse.

But it’s got me thinking, and that’s always been the point, right?

These songs aren’t the same as I remember them, but neither is obliterating the other. Now I’ve got the ones I heard through my warped teenage ears and the ones I hear through my warped adult ears, and with them as a reference point, I can more easily measure some of the ground between that lovesick kid and the person (I won’t say adult) writing this now. I’m reminded that these songs are something that exist wholly separate from me and my memories.

So now I can now hear these songs without the emotional echo chamber of my own neuroses distorting them. I can play the song as I’ve remembered it, within me, or I can just shut up and enjoy it for a change, without me. That’s worth the ten bucks.

Music: “Within You Without You,” The Beatles

^{1. As I understand it, The White Album doesn’t get italicized, because it isn’t the real name of the record.}

^{2. My mental jukebox is so defective that I am almost incapable of singing “Hey Jude” without it becoming Pink Floyd’s “Hey You.” Yeah, I know.}

Now listening to the following, dumped together on shuffle:

• Sunshine by Underworld and John Murphy
• Code 46 by David Holmes and The Free Association
• Caprica by Bear McCreary
• The Fountain by Clint Mansell

From the review of Andrew Bird’s Noble Beast, which appeared in Paste magazine (issue #50):

The lyrical confusion doesn’t end there. Some words aren’t even definable (Hobis-hot?), and chinless men are scratching their beards, and someone’s “wearing nothing but a onesie and a veil,” and eggplants are dreaming, and people are having “fake conversations on nonexistent telephones.” It’s not merely challenging—it’s a real gluteal throe (pain in the ass).

[via]

Does reviewer Kate Keifer finds no joy in language whatsoever? Her argument seems to be: Lyrics should not make use of surrealism. Actually, that’s not fair — she’s clearly saying that too much is too much, but I honestly don’t understand what sort of mixture of surreality and plainspokenness she must think is appropriate for surrealism before it ventures too far. What’s the magic number of melting clocks?

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Last weekend, I spent some time messing around with designs for a poster for a Decemberists gig in Austin this March. This is what I ended up with:

This is my submission for a competition at The Decemberists’ IMEEM page. (Have you ever heard of IMEEM? I hadn’t.) It’s not a public-voting kind of thing, but you’re welcome to go over there and say nice things about any of the poster submissions — some are quite fetching. While you’re there you can also hear two tracks off the upcoming album, The Hazards of Love.

Written into the contest was this curious note:

Extra points are awarded to poster designers who are most imperceptibly able to incorporate a portrait of Ladybird Johnson in their design. Just kidding. Sort of.

So that’s what I aimed for, in part — allusions to Claudia Alta “Ladybird” Johnson. The footnotes at the bottom read thusly:

Fig 1.1: A. Claudia (see gens Claudius, from Latin claudeo: “to limp”);
B. Alta (i.e. high, elevated); C. a ladybird; D. M1941 Johnson light machine gun.

Also tangled up in this contest is an interesting, recurring artists’ rights issue. Is it crass to solicit free design work with this kind of competition? I can appreciate the arguments both for and against, and certainly respect any working designer’s decision to skip such a thing in the interests of his or her professionalism… or almost any other reason.

For me, though, once the idea of a gun-toting crippled ladybug got into my head, it itched. So I scratched it. Let’s call it a refresher course in some Photoshop tricks I was getting rusty at and chalk this up to a portfolio piece, then. This year is about trying a lot of projects and getting my name in front of new people, anyway, so maybe this was worth the few hours I put into it. You tell me.

Battlestar Galactica composer, Bear McCreary, has been writing spectacular posts on his blog examining the work that goes into the musical score of each new episode. He reveals the careful thought and hard work that goes into each episode’s music, and every week it reminds me just how insane it is that he manages to pull all this off on a television budget and schedule. McCreary’s music is, I think empirically, my favorite thing about the show — I seldom go back and watch previous episodes, but the BSG soundtracks have been almost constant background music lately when I’m writing.

Lately, McCreary’s been talking to the writers, directors, and actors on the show, too, to explore how the music affects and is effected by their work. It’s this quote about Gaeta, from McCreary’s post on “A Disquiet Follows My Soul,” that I want to talk about:

// Read more…

What a bad idea. Christmas at the end of a holiday weekend? It just makes everything drag. Two whole days feel like that time you kill before the next thing you do, like the hour blown on shitty television before dinner. I think Chris and Nicole had it right: Open the stuff on Saturday and have the weekend to mess around with it all and enjoy yourselves.

We’re not doing that.

I am so bored.

Music: Nine Inch Nails, “My Violent Heart”