Welcome to Music Monday – a weekly meme created by The Tattooed Book Geek – where we share the songs we love, the bands we like and the music we just can’t get out of our heads.
This week’s Music Monday is ‘In My Heart’ by Moby, an upbeat electronic track featuring The Shining Light Gospel Choir.
In My Heart is taken from Moby’s sixth studio album, ’18’, which reached critical acclaim upon its release in 2002 following the success of ‘Play’. ’18’, which uses more guest vocalists and less samples than its predecesor, remains one of my favourite Moby albums to date and has featured as a backdrop to innumerable sci-fi reads. Favourite tracks include. ‘In This World’, ‘In My Heart’, ‘One of These Mornings’, and the incredibly popular ‘Extreme Ways’ (thanks to The Bourne Identity).
Welcome to Music Monday – a weekly meme created by The Tattooed Book Geek – where we share the songs we love, the bands we like and the music we just can’t get out of our heads.
This week’s Music Monday is ‘Hell Is Round the Corner’, the incredible trip-hop track from Tricky. Sampling Isaac Hayes’ ‘Ike’s Rap II’, which also featured in Portishead’s ‘Glory Box’, Tricky’s trademark sound features elements of rock, hip hop, soul, ambient electro and reggae with additional vocals from Martina Topley-Bird.
And if the chill-out vibes weren’t already enough, Tricky, along with Massive Attack and Portishead, has also featured as the backdrop to my entire read through of the Rivers of London series by Ben Aaronovitch, making it the perfect backdrop to a thrilling urban fantasy.
Welcome to Music Monday – a weekly meme created by The Tattooed Book Geek – where we share the songs we love, the bands we like and the music we just can’t get out of our heads.
This week’s Music Monday is Blade Runner 2049, a synthwave track by Synthwave Goose. As well as being an awesome and addictive piece of music – another I would highly recommend reading space opera to – I absolutely love that single cover featuring Joi and Mariette. Just brilliant!
Welcome to Music Monday – a weekly meme created by The Tattooed Book Geek – where we share the songs we love, the bands we like and the music we just can’t get out of our heads.
This week’s Music Monday is an electro house track from the soundtrack to Furi, a boss-fight game by independent game studio The Game Bakers. My Only Chance is by The Toxic Avenger – a French DJ, song writer and record producer – and is a perfect accompaniment to many an action-packed sci-fi novel or space opera.
Sit back, listen and enjoy!
| The Toxic Avenger: My Only Chance |
Taken from the album: Furi (Original Game Soundtrack) (2016)
Welcome to Music Monday – a weekly meme created by The Tattooed Book Geek – where we share the songs we love, the bands we like and the music we just can’t get out of our heads.
I have always loved listening to music whilst reading and finding the perfect musical accompaniment to each book always makes the experience more fulfilling. In fact, it wasn’t very many years ago that I used to write a ‘Bookish Beats‘ post every Sunday to pair an album with a book, and this post certainly puts me in mind of that.
This week’s Music Monday is an electro house chillout track by French electronic musician Danger which hits all my Science Fiction notes. This instrumental track is hypnotic, melodic and incredibly atmospheric and has me hitting repeat every single time.
Music, much like literature, has the power to drive your imagination; it can lift the soul and create real emotion. This is Bookish Beats, a feature which will showcase some of the soundtracks which have enriched the worlds I’ve found between the pages.
The Ex Machina soundtrack is pure atmospheric ambience. Created by Ben Salisbury and Portishead’s Geoff Barrow, this is a soundtrack which celebrates electronic music; transporting you to another time, another place… and maybe even another world. Dark electronic synths fall across a backdrop of moody reverberating tension to create a score which could only have emerged as a result of pure science fiction inspiration, and which succeeds in creating an incredibly evocative backdrop for reading any science fiction thriller. The Ex Machina soundtrack is subtle and understated yet retains a flair for the dramatic that excites, ripples with tension and keeps the button pressed firmly on repeat.
From the opening track – The Turing Test which, with its distinctive combination of a rolling and beating melody interwoven with dark electronic synths, introduces one of the soundtrack’s main themes – this soundtrack establishes an unyielding atmosphere which remains undiluted throughout the entire score. Watching continues this ambient theme but is overlaid with an electronic beat which slowly transforms into a beautiful creeping melody before disappearing beneath a cloud of tension, cut through with a low and wavering bass.
Ava is an entirely different type of track. There is a certain innocence which permeates the background of tension and the melody is reminiscent of the tune from a musical jewellery box. This same melody is echoed in other tracks such as The Test Worked, a piece which is saturated in gentle ambience until the score’s other main theme – a rousing and repeating electronic melody – cuts in. Skin also features echoes of this ‘jewellery box’ theme before transforming and intensifying until the gentle beat becomes a pounding, climactic finale. Out, which is one of the score’s stand-out tracks, plays with this same gentle tone but transforms it into fast-paced and melodic electronic number.
Falling is an incredibly beautiful track which is a combination of atmosphere, gentle melodies and intensifying tension which reaches a pounding and dramatic climax. This tension is an essential characteristic of the entire soundtrack and, in tracks such as Hacking / Cutting and I Am Become Death, is intensified and entwined with ambience, rhythmic beats and almost discordant sections, which gradually build the pace until cutting out to a whining reverberating chord. Bunsen Burner, a track by Cuts, uses the score’s electronic theme to create a tense and sweeping action track which creates a triumphant finale to phenomenal score.
This is a soundtrack which impresses with its subtle drama and tense atmosphere. If you’re looking for an ambient soundtrack which echoes the character of a moody science fiction thriller, then Ex Machina may just be the perfect score.
Welcome to Music Monday – a weekly meme created by The Tattooed Book Geek – where we share the songs we love, the bands we like and the music we just can’t get out of our heads.
Music, much like literature, has the power to drive your imagination; it can lift the soul and create real emotion. This is 
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