RECORD COLLECTION

Space might be deep, but so’s the tune-pile of this award-winning hard sci-fi author. He’ll travel to great lengths to find new sounds – well, Cardiff at least.

Author Alastair Reynolds writes deep in the realm of science fiction, but as he reveals, his record collection is pure prog.

“Iwas totally obsessed with space and science fiction from a very young age – Star Trek, Doctor Who, Gerry Anderson. At six, I was given The London Philharmonic Orchestra’s Stereo Space Odyssey by my parents; it had the theme to 2001 on it and some spacey compositions using synths that bounced from channel to channel with ‘Spacial Stereo’. It was the first record I owned and definitely my first taste of prog.

We lived in Barry, Wales, and the house was full of music as my mother liked gospel and disco. I went to school in Pencoed and by my teens I was friends with a boy called Nigel. His older brother had a great record collection from the previous 10 years so Nigel had a historical knowledge of prog and punk. He would do me tapes and one of the first had A Trick Of The Tail on it. I liked Genesis from the radio hits but I didn’t know anything about them. It’s an accessible album and I always wanted to own the vinyl version as I’d sit round Nigel’s drinking tea and looking at the sleeve notes. It’s got the musical adventurousness of the Gabriel era – complicated structures, obscure references – but because Phil Collins had moved to the front there’s a beginning of a commercial pop sensibility. The song I come back to is Entangled. The atmosphere it conjures is of winter evenings and a Victorian storybook feel.

Nigel did me a King Crimson compilation and almost at the same time my mother gave me In The Court Of The Crimson King and Larks’ Tongues In Aspic for my 17th birthday. I went from never hearing Crimson to being fairly familiar with them in about a week. It took me a while to get my head around them. Some of In The Court… had Greg Lake and it had Mellotron on it, so it’s a little like ELP and Genesis. Then you put Larks’ Tongues… on and I remember the guitars crashing in, woah! Exiles is one of my favourites. That classic 70s KC stuff, there’s a point where each album is one of my favourites.

Another tape compilation started with Yours Is No Disgrace. I really liked it and when I had some pocket money I started buying Yes albums. I bought Relayer in 1983. It’s stayed with me because it’s slightly off the wall. I like that on The Gates Of Delirium you can really hear that Jon Anderson is from Accrington, Lancashire.

Hawklords’ 25 Years On was the first record I bought with a wage packet. One summer I did two weeks’ work experience at a company that designed air conditioning systems. At the end of it they gave me an envelope with some pocket money in it, which was nice. There weren’t many record shops of substance locally so if you wanted to buy an album you’d go to Cardiff for HMV or Virgin, which was quite an involved journey. This time I went to Smiths in Bridgend and saw that this came between Quark, Strangeness and Charm and PXR5 so I thought I’d have that. I took it home and was blown away by it. It was heavy and concise – it got in, did what it needed to do then buggered off. Hawkwind were very different looking from the polite Genesis boys. Dave Brock looked with a wizard that had crawled out of a cave. I saw them a couple of times in the 80s with Nik Turner in Cardiff, they had a great punk energy and anti-establishment edge.

My interest in Talking Heads came via a lad in the sixth form who said, ‘You like King Crimson don’t you? You should listen to this.’ He made me a tape of Speaking In Tongues and I played that incessantly that summer, I loved it. Little Creatures came out then too and I remember the quirkiness of it, the repetition of locking onto a beat and holding it. They were a cool band, making intelligent art rock, who wouldn’t want to get into that?

I always liked Kate Bush. I remember, on my 12th birthday in 1978, being driven to see Star Wars in Swansea and Kate was on the radio with Wuthering Heights. I was completely infatuated with her from that point on. I’ve picked The Dreaming as if you already listened to Genesis or Peter Gabriel solo this is a very easy album to relate to, it fits effortlessly into that sort of scene. I bought it when I was at Newcastle Uni, studying Astronomy. It’s still such a weird album compared to her earlier stuff.

I didn’t know much about the B-52s, but I heard them in the mid 80s on the radio. They played Songs For A Future Generation by B-52s and I thought, ‘Ooh, I like that,’ and I bought this album when it came out. They’re a weird juxtaposition of 50s stuff but they’re forward-looking, inclusive and they used lots of interesting instrumentation, very synthy. What struck me is that they’re upbeat and melancholic at the same time. I like that. They also have that sense of you catching them on that rising curve when the technical ability might not be there but they are compensating with ideas and ambition.

I used to be on social media, with the Twitter handle Aquila

Rift. I talked about music and would exchange tweets with people in bands, it was really exciting. This band Sound Of Ceres put out an album called Nostalgia For Infinity which was named after a spaceship in one of my books. They very kindly sent me a copy, which I loved – they’re a husband and wife from Colorado who do trippy dream pop, think of the Cocteau Twins being locked in a room full of Mellotrons for 1000 years with Jon Anderson lyrics. For the second album The Twin they asked if we could collaborate, and I would write a piece of fiction for the sleeve? It was too much fun to say no to. I thought, ‘I’m doing something like Peter

Gabriel!’ The album was really good. If anyone enjoys analogue synths and the [record label] 4AD sound, they will get into it.

I was on a plane going to and from US and there was a great inflight entertainment system that could keep you occupied for ages. This is where I heard War On Drugs’ Lost In The Dream. When I got off the plane I headed to a record shop to buy it. It’s a phenomenal work of 10-minute long songs and widescreen psychedelic rock. It reminds me of listening to The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway; a harrowing musical journey that sucks you in and you have to listen all the way through to the end where there’s redemption. I’d never taken any notice of them before, but now they had found their voice and I had a catalogue to consume.

That’s what I love about music. When I’m feeling a bit flat, at a creative low-ebb, it’s probably because I haven’t discovered any new music recently. That’s when I have to go into town and look for something interesting. My whole mood just lifts once I’ve got some new music to discover, and if it’s an act with two or more records, even better.”

New novella Permafrost will be out March 2019. Find out more at www.alastairreynolds.com and www.approachingpavonis.blogspot.com.

DAVE BROCK LOOKED LIKE A WIZARD THAT HAD CRAWLED OUT OF A CAVE.