Published: Apr 18, 2012 12:00:00 PM

Stephen King once said that getting into a good state of mind for writing is like getting ready for bed. You need to get into a mindset that is unique to the activity. With that in mind, consider good writing music to be like brushing your teeth before sleep. It activates an association in your brain, iterateing that, "yeah, it's time to sit down, focus, and imagine."

Good writing music is something that you ignore until you don't. It invites focus. If you drift  away from the creative process, it the music re-activate the focus, helping you think or study or plough through a spreadsheet at work. It shows you things unimaginable thoughts and block wandering throughts, especially if you have a good set of headphones.

So, let's get down to it:

9 Great Albums For Writing And Working (And Spacing-Out):

  1. Second Coming, by The Stone Roses.
    This album is near-flawless in its own right. It commands sublime paced with winding hard-rock segueing into ballads that you aren't embarrassed to listen to. If you put a gun to my head, the best tracks for writing are Breaking Into Heaven (and it's 5-minute intro-riff), Driving South, Your Star Will Shine, and Tightrope, all providing a good range of moods.
  2. Ghosts I-IV, by Nine Inch Nails.
    A while ago, when digital distribution was a really en-vogue thing to talk about, Trent Reznor released a few hours of himself noodling with his style of indstrial rock, yielding a cool instrumental album of songs with no real names. Out of the bunch, Ghosts I - 02, Ghosts II - 04 (which he used later in his score for the Social Network), Ghosts III - 06, Ghosts IV - 04 (the angriest song on the album) are the real standouts. The rest is an electronic daydream and a fantastic oddity from beginning.
  3. Origin Of Symmetry, by Muse.
    Before they created Queen-infused apocalyptic prog-rock albums in The Resistance and Black Holes & Revelations, Muse cut a messier path with Origin Of Symmetry, where every track felt textured and full of experimentation. It's variation is inspiring, most notably, Micro Cuts, Citizen Erased, and great cover of Nina Simone's Feeling Good.
  4. Battlestar Galactica OST, by Bear McCreary.
    The soundtrack was the clutch BSG used to shift gears. It's beautiful, thanks to Bear McCreary, who let the show's tone guide the soundtrack from harder military sci-fi to something more theological in the later seasons. Regardless of whether or not you liked how it end (guess what? I couldn't have ended any other way), McCreary's All Along The Watchtower Sequence is the best part of four seasons of endlessly-varied music, blending sitar, guitar, tyco drums, and vocals to create something aggressive and theological.
  5. Hanna OST, by The Chemical Brothers.
    I listened to this soundtrack over and over before ever seeing the movie itself. The movie is pretty alright. Saorise Ronan is such waifish banshee. Nevertheless, The Chemical Brothers made movie's soundtrack soundtrack, and you can tell it was important to the movie's DNA. On the soundtrack itself, the best tracks are Escape 700, The Devil Is In The Beats, and Escape Wavefold. Find it, and enjoy some Moroccan trance-hop.
  6. Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcey EP, by Jim Guthrie.
    This it the soundtrack for an iPad game (I know, right?!) that is more album than game. The designers described it as "an album you can hang out with," which is an apt description. It landed on Steam earlier this week, and it was a steal getting the game and the soundtrack in one go. Listen to The Prittiest Weed, Under A Tree, and The Ballad Of The Space Babies, which blend into a jazz-funk-ambient gravy that goes well on anything.
  7. Animals, by Pink Floyd.
    Notably: All Of It. This is a 5-track album that is technically only 3 because the two Pigs On A Wing tracks amount to roughly 3 minutes. However, Sheep and Dogs are noteworthy in how they turn rambling space-rock into something that has, you know, a point.
  8. Low, "Heroes," and Lodger (The Berlin Trilogy), by David Bowie (and Brian Eno).
    Notably: All Of It. Alright, fine, start with Heroes, Warszawa, Subterraneans, and DJ.
  9. Tron: Legacy OST, by Daft Punk.
    Wow, Tron: Legacy can go sleep forever in a dumpster. Fortunately, the soundtrack is the best Daft Punk you can find these days. It's a synthetic symphony from the grandfathers of techno that makes a point and never is repetitive, a notable win for this kind of music that can be inaccessible to certain people. Off-hand, check out Rinzler, The Game Has Changed, End Of Line, and Derezzed. All solid.

These are some great picks to get you going. It varies from person to person though, I had a friend that worked really well when listening to trashy Swedish euro-beat songs. Again, it's about finding your zone-out niche and giving yourself some sounds to bring you into the right state of mind for creativity.

-- @Alex Crumb (originally published 4/18/12)

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