Phoenix Inspirations: Writing Music

I've made a few posts before about the music that I listen to when I write.  If you're a regular reader of this blog, you won't be surprised to hear that I listened to quite a bit of the The Cure again while writing my new book, Phoenix!  But there were some new bands on my soundtrack this time.

This is the first song I ever heard by Sigur Rós. They're a brilliant Icelandic band who make music as epic and huge as the sky. To me, they make the sounds I imagine when I think about the stars singing, as they do throughout Phoenix, from the first page to the last.

This is a song from their untitled album ( ).  It's the song I listened to the most in the seven years of writing Phoenix.  It's what I was thinking of when I wrote that the stars made "a small, soft, silvery sound, like the chime of a faraway bell."  And it's the kind of thing I had in mind when I wrote about how the sound "surged and swelled, rising up into the sky."

The concert that Lucky, Bixa and Frollix go to on Scorpio Six definitely owes something to the various Sigur Rós concerts I've been to in my time... like this one, at Alexandra Palace, back in 2008! Though there were a lot of other concerts in the back of my mind... and lots of other music, too!

If you've enjoyed this post, and would like to hear the whole () album, I've made a Spotify playlist for you here.  And I'll be posting another blog soon with more music that inspired Phoenix...

Writing Music: The Outlaw Varjak Paw

A while back, one of my readers asked if music ever inspired me while writing.  It certainly does, so I made this post about the music I listened to while writing Varjak Paw.  This time, I'm going to share some of the music I listened to while writing The Outlaw Varjak Paw.

I started writing Outlaw in 2002, and finished it in 2005.  During that time, I discovered the band British Sea Power, and particularly their first album, the brilliantly titled The Decline Of British Sea Power.  

I played that album hundreds of times while writing Outlaw.  It had the epic sweep I wanted the book to have; the same combination of darkness and hope.  I would always feel electrified by the surge and crackle of their songs, which often seemed to be on the edge of spiralling out of control - as you can see in this amazing video of them playing live on Jools Holland.

But old habits die hard, and I have to admit, I also listened to a huge amount of The Cure while writing Outlaw. This time, it was mainly their Disintegration album, which remains my favourite of theirs.  To answer an interesting question on my earlier post, I would pick the spine-tingling 'Plainsong' as the music I imagine when Varjak and Sally Bones are on the tower at the end - perhaps not the battle itself, but the moments just before it.

The live version in this video is great, but if you want to hear the original version I heard while writing, you can listen to it on Spotify, where I've made a playlist with a few other tracks that I put on a CD for Dave McKean, when he was doing the illustrations...

Writing Music: Varjak Paw

One of my readers recently asked if music ever inspired me while writing (thanks for the question, Jade!)  The answer is that music is absolutely crucial to me while writing, though different books have had  different soundtracks.  So I thought it might be fun to share some of my favourite writing music with you here.  (Of course, everyone sees and hears things differently, so I wouldn't expect anyone else to share my tastes in music!  This is just a bit of background, if you're interested...)

When I was writing Varjak Paw, I was almost always listening to The Cure.  Somehow their music seemed to be the perfect soundtrack for Varjak's adventures in the city.  Strangely enough, I didn't listen to Lovecats while writing, but it does seem  perfect for Varjak Paw, so I put it on a compilation tape for Dave McKean when he was doing the illustrations!

The album I listened to the most while writing Varjak was definitely The Head On The Door.  The track I would pick as the single most inspiring is A Night Like This.  Whenever it came on, I would always feel an extra surge of energy.  For me, it has exactly the feeling that I wanted to the book to have.

I still love that song; I listened to it a lot while writing Outlaw too, and even Phoenix.  But lots of other music came into the writing of those books, and I'll do some more posts in the future about them, if anyone would like to know more!