Music For Writers #5: Tim Major

This week's Music For Writers is courtesy of Tim Major, an author of some of my favourite stories of the last few years (I first read his work when I reviewed his debut novella Carus & Mitch). And - hurrah! - it looks like he has a great taste in music too, based on his selections below.

Take it away, Tim:

I always listen to music when I’m working and when I’m writing. Nowadays I work from home as a freelance editor; without a commute, the time I spend at my desk is my main opportunity to listen to music. Incidentally, when I was younger I daydreamed about a jukebox that would allow you to play any song from any point in history, and today Spotify comes close to fulfilling that dream. I listen to around 300 new albums each year and replay many of those, and old favourites, a great deal more.

The music I choose when I’m writing needs to function as a background – dreaminess is a must. This also means the only music with lyrics I can write to are those that are so familiar that they don’t intrude, or performed by singers I can’t understand – either because of a quirk of delivery, audio effects, or because they’re singing in another language. Finland’s Fonal Records is a great source of ethereal albums, my favourite being Lau Nau’s HEM. Någonstans, which Last.fm tells me is the album I’ve listened to most in the last five years, which I’ll confess comes as something of a surprise until I start playing the album again: it taps into something in my brain. Immediately, I feel serene. Other vocal artists that fit the bill include Grouper, Julia Holter and Thom Yorke (at least, his first solo album, The Eraser). This year’s debut album from Holy Motors, Slow Sundown, contains a raft of songs that would have all fit as Roadhouse end-credits songs for Twin Peaks: The Return and which settle at the back of the brain rather than prodding at the front. But for my first selection I’m going to go with Hope Sandoval and Kurt Vile’s ‘Let Me Get There’ from Until the Hunter: ever since her time fronting Mazzy Star, I’ve found Hope Sandoval’s voice to be a shortcut to bliss.

I’m not afraid of dullness or repetition, as everyone I know socially will attest. Take one of my favourite films, Stalker – I’ve watched it half a dozen times and I swear I’ve fallen asleep every time. (See also, to lesser degree, Pickpocket, In the Mood for Love, Les Vampires.) The first recording of modern minimalist music I heard was Steve Reich’s Music for 18 Musicians, a performance staggering in its precision and hypnotic power. (Possibly, the roots of repetitive were sown early for me: when I was a baby, Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells was the only album that would soothe me to sleep.) Albums in the same vein that put me in the zone for writing include Donato Dozzy’s Plays Bee Mask, Porter Ricks’ Biokinetics, Kara-Lis Coverdale’s Grafts, Rafael Anton Irisarri’s A Fragile Geography, Mind Over Mirrors’ The Voice Rolling, Folke Rabe’s What?? and William Basinski’s The Disintegration Tapes. But I’m going to pick a track from one of Alex Zhang Hungtai / Dirty Beaches’ ‘minor’ works, the soundtrack to Water Park (I haven’t seen the film – see note below). I couldn’t begin to estimate how many of my stories have been written to this music.

There are two artists that deserve their own category in a list of my listening tastes. Jim O’Rourke is one of the most prolific experimental musicians imaginable, having worked with Wilco, Sonic Youth, Joanna Newsom, as well as making up half of my favourite post-rock band, Gastr Del Sol, and also finding time to create a handful of sublime pop albums for Drag City. His experimental work with Fennesz (It’s Hard for Me to Say I’m Sorry) and Fire! (Unreleased?) are some of the albums I often return to while writing. Oren Ambarchi has had a similar stellar, and similarly collaborative, career, and his solo albums make me cross-eyed with contentment. Selecting an Oren Ambarchi album means immediately shutting out the world and retreating to a comfortable, secluded place which I imagine to be rather like Roald Dahl’s writing hut. I’m picking ‘Remedios the Beauty’ from my favourite of Ambarchi’s albums, Grapes from the Estate. It’s 15 minutes long, but usually after the first couple of minutes I can barely hear it, like the hubbub of a café, except it’s a café filled with customers that hum happily instead of chatting.

I love jazz, but I listen to it only rarely as a background to writing – usually when I want a hit of adrenaline, and often at the editing stage when my motivation may be flagging. Charles Mingus’ Ah Um hits the spot, as does Thelonious Monk’s Monk’s Music and Sun Ra’s Sleeping Beauty. The one I’ve been returning to most recently while editing my most recent novel is Duke Ellington’s Money Jungle, so that’s my next pick.

Sometimes intensity is what’s required as a background. I rarely write action scenes – possibly a failing of mine – and so when I do, I really need to gear up. Splazsh by Actress works fantastically well, as does the space-techno STRGTHS by SHXCXCHCXSH. For now, I’ll pick an incredible, disorienting live recording from Throbbing Gristle and Factory Floor supergroup, Carter Tutti Void, included on Transverse. 

I know that soundtrack albums are often popular with writers, but I find that anything that specifically recalls a film I like is problematic – I wouldn’t want to unconsciously adopt things half-remembered from a favourite film. Soundtracks that are more tonal than melodic work fine: Geoff Barrow and Ben Salisbury’s score to Annihilation being a case in point, or the contextless drones of Dean Hurley’s soundscapes for Twin Peaks: The Return, released as Anthology Resource Vol. 1: △△. This will sound obtuse, but I like listening to scores of films I haven’t seen. I’m planning a novel right now, and the laborious process of creating a synopsis has been soundtracked by Ennio Morricone’s score to Senza Sapere Niente Di Lei, a film about which I know literally nothing. It’s my bonus pick.

What Horror Writers Talk About When They Talk About Love: Tim Major

I thought I'd have some guest pieces to celebrate the release of Trying To Be So Quiet, and I wanted to feature some writers that I've not had on the blog before. The theme came to me when Claire, who works for Boo Books, was interviewing me about TTBSQ and said she thought it was a love story as much as a ghost story. So a plan was born: I'd ask some horror writers who I especially admire to write a piece about their favourite love story. It could be a novel, poem, song; it could be happy, sad or despairing. Today's piece is by...

Tim Major is an author and editor from Oxford (appropriately enough, as some key scenes in TTBSQ are set there). The first piece I read of Tim's was his excellent novella Carus & Mitch, which I reviewed for This Is Horror. His time-travel horror novel, You Don’t Belong Here, will be published by Snowbooks in September 2016

Take it away, Tim:

Neither of these men is Tim Major

I have a two-and-a-half-year-old son, and another son due to arrive within the next couple of months. So – with apologies to my wife – right now, when I think about love, it’s often parental love that occurs to me.

Two of my favourite films concern fatherhood. Rebel Without A Cause is more about children than parents, of course, but it contains one of my favourite depictions of a father-son relationship. The pent-up rage of James Dean’s Jim Stark is often aimed at his father, Frank, played by Jim Backus. The reasons are at first unclear – the anger seems arbitrary, and Frank is as well-meaning as parents come. At the one-hour mark of the film, Jim confronts Frank in a scene in which the dialogue is less interesting than the positioning of the characters within the frame. The camera tilts to accommodate the shifting, arguing pair, granting Jim the literal high ground and forcing Frank to peer in from the bottom corner of the frame, becoming all shoulders. It transpires that what Jim really wants from his father is a role model. The moment when Jim says, without even looking at his father, ‘Dad, stand up for me’, is quietly devastating, particularly as it’s then followed by Jim physically yanking Frank to his feet, then wrestling him to the ground. He’s attempting to shake his father up and reveal the real person inside. It’s motivated by love.

At another point in the film, Jim comes home to find somebody on their hands and knees on the landing. At first he assumes thinks it’s his mother, but it’s actually his father, wearing a frilly apron, picking up a dropped plate of food. As a comment on gender roles, it’s a few decades out of date (the gist is that Frank is henpecked and meek, when he ought to be in charge; as well as the frilly apron, he’s trapped behind the bars of the banisters), but the exchange between Jim and Frank is wonderful. There’s real love there, real laughter as they joke about Frank’s clumsiness, then real frustration about Frank’s anxiety over something so trivial. I find it hard to put my finger on what I adore about this scene. I think it’s Jim’s pleading intensity as he wills his father to be something more wonderful than he really is. I find the scene a useful reminder that love goes both ways and that, one day, my sons will be vocal about how they feel about me, too.

The other film is simpler, but stranger. We never find out much about the child in Stalker. We don’t know why she’s called Monkey. We don’t know the nature of her illness or whether it’s linked to her telekinetic powers, which we witness only at the end of the film. We don’t know for sure whether the Stalker keeps re-entering the bewildering and psychologically damaging area known as ‘the Zone’ for the sake of the child, although I suspect that’s the case. Following a bleak, monochrome scene when the travellers return from their ordeal in the Zone, we see Monkey, in jarring, alarming colour, her expression sombre, her hair hidden under a bright yellow shawl and her head bobbing as she walks. Then, slowly, the camera pulls out. As Monkey moves away from us, we see that she’s actually being carried on her father’s shoulders. They plod towards a filthy lake. I don’t know why. But it’s heartbreaking. We can’t see the Stalker, and we don’t need to, to understand that he loves the child more than anything in the world. He carries her, and that’s all.

Bad Memories

Just a quick note to say that my story, Bad Memories, is included in Dark Lane Anthology Volume 2 from Dark Lane books, which is out now.

The book also features tales by Rebecca Lloyd, Tim Major, and Kelda Crich plus many others, so it is well worth a read. The interior and exterior artwork are both great as well.

Bad Memories is a slightly unusual story for me, being set in the future. Or at least, a version of the future. The future of the world outside the Other Room, perhaps? It's a story about the relationship between a psychiatrist and a patient with an unusual malady...

Dark Lane Anthology Volume 2 is available now (UK | US)

In other news, the final two parts of The Quarantined City should be out this month from Spectral Press - it will be interesting to see what people make of the whole thing...