the stars go waltzing out in blue and red
There's a particular sort of music that I like a lot and can't seem ever to find enough of: music with fantasy landscapes. I get very visual with my music, and I love scenic music, something that through a combination of lyrics, melody, and instrumentation paints a whole world in my head, particularly a world that extends outside of my mostly-average sphere of living. It helps with the writiing, too -- I may or may not have mentioned that music is one of my weightiest catalysts when it comes to writing. I like a song that spins some sort of tale, whether in what is happening, or what it evokes.
So, I've got a lot of city music, and a lot of music that evokes certain -- oh, well, there's Solas and Iron & Wine and Sufjan Stevens and some of Richard Shindell and some others that have this thick, rich feeling of storytelling and being in a certain part of time and landspace, and that earthy, bardic folk tradition. But, as I said, the one thing I can't ever seem to find enough to satiate my hunger is fantasy music. Something that paints a whole new and trembling world of wonder and discovery -- or fear.
So here's a sampling of what I can pin down. (edit: fixed the link to 'Bloodstone'.)
i. Bloodstone - Amon Tobin. Instrumental I downloaded on a whim, and then played obsessively for a week. I still play it obsessively, just not five or more times a day, as I did. It is at the top because I promised
wanderlightthat I would post it. It's a heavy dose of haunted carnival, with gypsies. A bit of circus. The soundtrack to a novel Neil Gaiman would write if he thought of it first. I've never been so taken in by an instrumental before. I love instrumentals, but I don't usually put them on repeat for a week. This is the first instrumental ever to make my Most Played on iTunes, which is Important. I want to write stories every time I listen to it -- I want to write the story that's in it.
ii. Tam Lin - Mediaeval Baebes. One of my favourite traditional ballads, but this one evokes the scary phantasmagoria of the tale told in the ballad better than any other version I've ever heard. It's full of whispering and strange, eerie sounds, and it's got the soul of the story in it.
iii. Can't Take It In - Imogen Heap. Well, of course it's got that fantastical element -- it was written for The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, after all! But this was the one of the four songs outside of the score on the album that was the film. Imogen Heap is good at worldpainting, at being otherworldly, but this might be one of her best efforts. It feels a little bit like magic, and it glitters in your ears.
iv. Blue Caravan - Vienna Teng. This was my introduction to Vienna, and no wonder I fell in love. This sounds like a traditional ballad from another world -- for some reason I always think of Robin McKinley's Damar novels, although I see more of the Far East in this than the Middle. I see so many things when I listen to this song -- it's got lovely pastels in it, blues and golds and soft violets, images of a thin gold moon like a copper plate hanging in a navy sky, and camels, and silk, and the wind in the sand. Then again, it's hard to choose a Vienna song for evoking fantasy images -- 'Feather Moon' is also particularly potent; 'My Medea', 'Between'.
v. Scars - Hannah Fury. Yet another example of my obsession with traditional balladery and permutations thereof. This is a rather dark re-interpretation of the old ballad 'Scarborough Fair', and it does a lovely job -- another one that has me wondering enough to want to write novels.
vi. The Mystic's Dream - Loreena McKennitt. Loreena is my favourite for novel-writing, because her albums are consistent in their worldpainting -- one of the things that I adore about her and her artmaking is that she doesn't just ease a lot of songs into place like puzzle pieces when time comes for a new album; no, she goes travelling and writes about it, and composes about it. Her music has a rich sense of history and culture along with its fantasy. (Very hard to pick just one example, by the by! 'Skellig' is another favourite for the pictures it paints, and 'Dante's Prayer' is one I have always been very, very emotionally attached to for various reasons -- and it sounds like the inside of some beautiful ancient cathedral.) I saw her live -- on television, anyway -- and she is brilliant. She was wearing a gown that had to be tailor-made; an almost piratey affair, with buttons and boots and maybe a bustle, I can't remember.
vii. Mad Girl's Love Song - Fisher. Also known as That One Song Banui Recs Too Much. But it gave me a wonder moment, a slipping-through-the-veil breathlessness the first time I heard it. I might have been flying, inside my head. The imagery is so potent and alive that I can't begin to describe what I'm seeing -- a lot of green and black and looming shadows, and woods dark before spring, and the sense of something immensely delicate, but most of it's too -- clear -- for words.
There's also Solas' The Edge of Silence album, and some assorted tracks on my mix for 'The Mariner's Wife', which I refuse to post because then you will have them and the mix will be sort of ruined, and a few other bits here and there, and probably something immensely important which I am forgetting altogether. But now it is your turn: what music paints worlds for you?
So, I've got a lot of city music, and a lot of music that evokes certain -- oh, well, there's Solas and Iron & Wine and Sufjan Stevens and some of Richard Shindell and some others that have this thick, rich feeling of storytelling and being in a certain part of time and landspace, and that earthy, bardic folk tradition. But, as I said, the one thing I can't ever seem to find enough to satiate my hunger is fantasy music. Something that paints a whole new and trembling world of wonder and discovery -- or fear.
So here's a sampling of what I can pin down. (edit: fixed the link to 'Bloodstone'.)
i. Bloodstone - Amon Tobin. Instrumental I downloaded on a whim, and then played obsessively for a week. I still play it obsessively, just not five or more times a day, as I did. It is at the top because I promised
wanderlightthat I would post it. It's a heavy dose of haunted carnival, with gypsies. A bit of circus. The soundtrack to a novel Neil Gaiman would write if he thought of it first. I've never been so taken in by an instrumental before. I love instrumentals, but I don't usually put them on repeat for a week. This is the first instrumental ever to make my Most Played on iTunes, which is Important. I want to write stories every time I listen to it -- I want to write the story that's in it.
ii. Tam Lin - Mediaeval Baebes. One of my favourite traditional ballads, but this one evokes the scary phantasmagoria of the tale told in the ballad better than any other version I've ever heard. It's full of whispering and strange, eerie sounds, and it's got the soul of the story in it.
iii. Can't Take It In - Imogen Heap. Well, of course it's got that fantastical element -- it was written for The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, after all! But this was the one of the four songs outside of the score on the album that was the film. Imogen Heap is good at worldpainting, at being otherworldly, but this might be one of her best efforts. It feels a little bit like magic, and it glitters in your ears.
iv. Blue Caravan - Vienna Teng. This was my introduction to Vienna, and no wonder I fell in love. This sounds like a traditional ballad from another world -- for some reason I always think of Robin McKinley's Damar novels, although I see more of the Far East in this than the Middle. I see so many things when I listen to this song -- it's got lovely pastels in it, blues and golds and soft violets, images of a thin gold moon like a copper plate hanging in a navy sky, and camels, and silk, and the wind in the sand. Then again, it's hard to choose a Vienna song for evoking fantasy images -- 'Feather Moon' is also particularly potent; 'My Medea', 'Between'.
v. Scars - Hannah Fury. Yet another example of my obsession with traditional balladery and permutations thereof. This is a rather dark re-interpretation of the old ballad 'Scarborough Fair', and it does a lovely job -- another one that has me wondering enough to want to write novels.
vi. The Mystic's Dream - Loreena McKennitt. Loreena is my favourite for novel-writing, because her albums are consistent in their worldpainting -- one of the things that I adore about her and her artmaking is that she doesn't just ease a lot of songs into place like puzzle pieces when time comes for a new album; no, she goes travelling and writes about it, and composes about it. Her music has a rich sense of history and culture along with its fantasy. (Very hard to pick just one example, by the by! 'Skellig' is another favourite for the pictures it paints, and 'Dante's Prayer' is one I have always been very, very emotionally attached to for various reasons -- and it sounds like the inside of some beautiful ancient cathedral.) I saw her live -- on television, anyway -- and she is brilliant. She was wearing a gown that had to be tailor-made; an almost piratey affair, with buttons and boots and maybe a bustle, I can't remember.
vii. Mad Girl's Love Song - Fisher. Also known as That One Song Banui Recs Too Much. But it gave me a wonder moment, a slipping-through-the-veil breathlessness the first time I heard it. I might have been flying, inside my head. The imagery is so potent and alive that I can't begin to describe what I'm seeing -- a lot of green and black and looming shadows, and woods dark before spring, and the sense of something immensely delicate, but most of it's too -- clear -- for words.
There's also Solas' The Edge of Silence album, and some assorted tracks on my mix for 'The Mariner's Wife', which I refuse to post because then you will have them and the mix will be sort of ruined, and a few other bits here and there, and probably something immensely important which I am forgetting altogether. But now it is your turn: what music paints worlds for you?