I can't imagine that every founder of every municipality in the country just decided to clear-cut some forestry for the sake of fame and fortune. I just don't believe that. Sure, port towns were ideal places for seafaring businesses, but it seems much more likely to me that plenty of adventurers wanted a place for their own, a community in which they could proudly stand and stake a claim of parenthood. It was always clear to me that people pour into their homes the same optimism, care, hopes and dreams that parents pour into their children. Maybe, with just a bit of guidance and love, it'll stand on its own two feet and really make something of itself, we can hear them say.
Upon that, I've come to understand that that attitude, believing everyone can take lemons and make lemonade and shoot for the stars, is much more prominent in Western/European-based civilizations than in others. I may be wrong, but that's how it appears.
On the other hand, the post-apocalypse has always distinctly felt futuristic to me. Knowing what little I do about the space-time continuum, I live with the assumption that the end of human civilization hasn't happened yet, and its image must come later, further down the road. Even a sudden event ceasing the existence of mankind would leave cars in streets, mail in boxes - our cities would be "frozen in time." Even that sounds like the stuff of science-fiction. And yet we're developing a book in which we will step into a dozen of these very scenarios.
So in thinking about these two juxtaposed philosophies - the idealistic optimism for a town's future and the landmarks of its eerily rapid end - I felt they were, at baser natures, traditionally Western and blindly looking for the future. Musically, "traditionally Western" strikes up lonely guitars in my mind - clean, quiet Stratocasters and Les Pauls with a hint of reverb and Humbuckers. Ignorantly future-seeking reminds me of all the things we think music will sound like in thirty years - glitch, crushbits, twinkly Moogs and Pro Tools.
There's even an irony in their sound. The lonely, empty desolation of dustbowl guitar and the self-assured seething drive of radio-unfriendly electronica borrow attitude from each other's supposed timeframe.
At any rate, I wanted to reconcile the starlit night six-string with The End and I pulled out 19 songs from my music library to inspire myself, Ashleigh and anyone else we drag into this project. Of course for legal reasons we can't host this "working soundtrack" here, but we're happy to provide the tracklist for you to hunt down on iTunes, Amazon or however you get your music.
01. The Ocean - Siderian
02. Between the Buried and Me - Mirrors
03. Johnny Cash - The Man Comes Around
04. Tool - Eon Blue Apocalypse
05. Talk Talk - The Rainbow
06. Radiohead - Hunting Bears
07. Tuk - Welwitschia Valley
08. Gorillaz - Hip Albatross
09. Tom Waits - Soldier's Things
10. Kevin Shields - Goodbye
11. Gorillaz - Bobby in Phoenix
12. Atticus Ross + Claudia Sarne - Human
13. The Mars Volta - Asilos Magdalena
14. The Protomen - Intermission
15. Godspeed, You Black Emperor! - 09-15-00 (pt. 2)
16. Nancy Sinatra - Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)
17. Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross - What Were the Shares Diluted Down To
18. Saxon Shore - May 26
19. The Sadies - Rhoda's Death
Music is a major part of the lives of everyone involved in creating DisasterLand. We're already chomping at the bit to discover how listening to this playlist on a good set of headphones can inspire us on-site and off. We hope to share more music news with you soon, as we're currently reaching out to musicians to create music using these songs as inspiration for use as an actual score or soundtrack to the project.
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