The Sound of – corey jae white

The Sound of Static Ruin

I’ve posted a ‘Sound of’ post for both Killing Gravity and Void Black Shadow, detailing the music (or, for Void Black Shadow, audio performance) that inspired each book, but this time around, I wanted to do something a little different.

If you want to know what the inside of my head sounded like while I was writing Static Ruin, you only need to listen to Young Widow’s full discography, starting with Old Wounds, then onto In and Out of Youth and Lightness, and then finally to Easy Pain, listening to the full album from start to finish. Also add a heavy dose of MY DISCO’s album Severe, though I did have to put this one aside any time I was writing an action scene.

But, as I neared the end of the book, I knew I needed to do something a little different.

I always listen to complete albums, from start to finish, without skipping any tracks. This is why I can’t listen to an album for an extended period of time if there’s even one track on it that I actively dislike. I could remove that track from the playlist, but I don’t see that as a viable choice. The way I see it, an album is like a book, and you would never tear a chapter out of a book.

Anyway, when we’re talking about individual songs, I find that I tend to really latch on to final tracks – usually melancholic, sometimes outright depressing, sometimes uplifting – endings so strong they make you want to start the album again right from the beginning. So, I thought, why not put together a playlist of these final tracks, to set the tone as I was writing the final chapters of the final book in the VoidWitch Saga? And that is what I have here for you now – a playlist entitled Endings. That is the spotify link, but the full list is below. Each one of these songs is from an absolute favourite album of mine, and I recommend listening to the full album if any song takes your fancy. Bandcamp links are included where available.

These Arms Are Snakes – Briggs (from Tail Swallower & Dove)
CHELSEA WOLFE – The Abyss (from The Abyss)
Isis – Threshold of Transformation (from Wavering Radiant)
Clann Zú – You’re Listening to a Dead Man Speak (from Rua)
Fiona Apple – Waltz (Better Than Fine) (from Extraordinary Machine)
Chelsea Wolfe – Lone (from Pain is Beauty)
Clark – The Autumnal Crush (from Body Riddle)
Autolux – Becker (from Pussy’s Dead)
Isis – Garden Of Light (from In the Absence of Truth)
Fiona Apple – Hot Knife (from The Idler Wheel […])
Purity Ring – Shuck (from Shrines)
These Arms Are Snakes – Crazy Woman Dirty Train (from Easter)
The Mars Volta – Zed And Two Naughts (from Noctourniquet)
Genghis Tron – Ergot (Relief) (from Board up the House)
MY DISCO – Careless (from Severe)
Young Widows – In My Living Room (from Easy Pain)
Mark Lanegan Band – Tiny Grain Of Truth (from Blues Funeral)
Future Of The Left – Why Aren’t I Going To Hell (from How To Stop Your Brain in an Accident)
Isis – Grinning Mouths (from Panopticon)
Russian Circles – Memorial feat. Chelsea Wolfe (from Memorial)
Tom Waits – Blue Valentines (from Blue Valentine)
Fiona Apple – I Know (from When the Pawn […])
Autolux – Capital Kind Of Strain (from Future Perfect)
Liars – The Other Side Of Mt. Heart Attack (from Drum’s Not Dead)

The playlist always had to open with Briggs – the final song off the final album of one of my all-time favourite bands, and (for those playing at home) the place where I took the name for the villain from Killing Gravity. And it was always going to end with The Other Side of Mt. Heart Attack. I can’t listen to this song without crying, and I’m not even sure why anymore, but I know I want it played at my funeral. For the purposes of Static Ruin, think of it as Mars & Squid’s song.

Dedication

Dedications can be difficult to write. Acknowledgements aren’t exactly easy either, but you can ramble on there if you need to, but a dedication needs to be succinct. One or two names, maybe an extra couple of words.

I can’t remember where it was that I heard this, but when I was thinking about the dedication for Void Black Shadow someone, somewhere, said that if you’re struggling to think of who to dedicate your book to, think of the person who that book wouldn’t have been possible without. This stuck with me, partly because it’s exactly what I did with Killing Gravity. Killing Gravity is dedicated to Ella, my cat, because without her Mars never would have had Seven, and if Mars didn’t have Seven, it could have been a very different book… maybe a book that no one would have wanted to publish. She’s sitting on my lap right now as I write this – a fiercely independent (ish), apex (ish) predator who may, on occasion, choose to bless you with her presence. I think that’s why we love cats so much (those of us that do, anyway) – they make it very apparent that they don’t need you, so any attention or affection they give you feels earned…

With Void Black Shadow though, it took me a little while to realise who it should be dedicated to. It’s not much of a spoiler to say that part of the book is set in a prison, and I kind of went back and forth on what sort of prison it should be. A part of me wanted to make it Prisoner-esque, but that simply wasn’t going to work for the sort of universe I’d created. Slowly it occurred to me that there were some modern, real-life concerns that I wanted to touch on in the book.

There’s a large section in the middle of the book that took direct inspiration from Gregory Whitehead’s audio piece titled On The Shore Dimly Seen. I can’t recommend it highly enough, though be warned – it’s based on the leaked documents pertaining to the “no-touch” torture techniques used at Guantanamo Bay, and as such, it’s not easy listening.

You may be wondering then, why I didn’t dedicate the book to Gregory Whitehead. Well, there would be no On The Shore Dimly Seen without the documents that Chelsea Manning leaked, at grave personal risk. As haunted and affected by OTSDS as I was, Whitehead didn’t risk everything to create it. He didn’t spend time in prison for it. He didn’t have to endure the court of public opinion whilst going through what must surely be one of the hardest parts of a person’s life.

I don’t know that Chelsea Manning is necessarily a hero, and I certainly don’t think she’s perfect (or that she should be vehemently condemned by The Left* for any imperfections), but I do think she held a mirror up to us in the West and showed us for the disgusting, hateful, inhuman beasts we can be. That we are. That takes strength. That takes honour.

So, Void Black Shadow is dedicated to Chelsea Manning. Though with everything she must have gone through before her sentence was commuted, I hope she never reads it.

*I’m a total left-wing pinko, but sometimes we seem to eagerly inhabit the stereotype that others constructed about us.

The Sound of Killing Gravity

I’ve spoken before about how I originally envisioned Killing Gravity – as a space post-hardcore EP, as opposed to a space opera – but I haven’t spoken in detail about my thinking behind it, or the music I was specifically referring to when I coined that (admittedly clunky) term.

See, operas are big, dramatic, “epic” performances; not only that but it’s also an old artform, carrying with it the musty scent of tradition. I didn’t want to write something big or unnecessarily complicated, “epic” for the sake of genre conventions. I wanted to pare everything back, cut right to the core, and tell a personal story that hints at larger conspiracies and larger battles but remains focussed on a small group of outsiders. So, if I wanted to write a space opera without the opera part, what would I use instead as inspiration? That’s where the idea of the post-hardcore EP came in.

An EP is short. A post-hardcore EP is short, short, dirty, with jagged sound that reaches out of your speakers and grabs you, forces you to listen close. There are moments of chaotic screaming noise offset by downbeat stretches of experimentation. There’s a poetic and broken quality to the lyrics, nonsense and beauty screamed in the same hoarse tone. There are weird syncopated rhythms and abstract time signatures.

And that’s everything I wanted to do with Killing Gravity, to put everything I love about These Arms Are Snakes (and to a lesser extent Genghis Tron, Refused, At the Drive-In, and Dillinger Escape Plan*) into words. I don’t know if I succeeded, but I’m happy with how it turned out.

If all that sounded like nonsense without the music to back it up, then you’ll be glad to find the links below.

These Arms Are Snakes Discography | TAAS/Harkonen Split EP | Genghis Tron – Board Up the House

Listen to everything at those above links non-stop for a month, and you’ll know what writing KG felt like.

*I’m deliberately leaving out Young Widows because I didn’t discover them until later, but they were basically the sole soundtrack to the writing of the third VoidWitch book.