Been doing a lot of editing of what appears to be coalescing into a collection of weird/eerie/uncanny short stories* which appear to be whacking about in woods haunted by the themes of death, doubles, time and after-lives. As ever, my writing and editing has been sound tracked by a variety of ambient and dronecore pieces, some by big names and some from lesser know artists.

Hotel Neon, purveyor of dense ambient, has long played a big role in the writing of some of these stories, not least my recent Leicester Writes prize winner – Dissolution. HN are one of a handful of ambient artists whose new releases are always must buys and whose entire discography’s I own. Their work manages to walk the very fine line between haunting and uplifting, which often makes them my perfect soundtrack for writing.

Vanishing Forms has been receiving particularly heavy rotation during the writing of Dissolution and a couple of other stories I cannot name as they are yet to see the light of the world outside. The eight tracks of this album brim with shifting textures and dense tones that seem particularly effective at propelling this writer out of the real world and of into the fictional. It’s also a pretty great soundtrack for reading dark and unsettling fiction along to.

The entire album can be heard on the attached Youtube playlist, but if you find it’s your kind of drone, the album can be found (along with all the others) on Hotel Neon’s Bandcamp page here and a portion of all Hotel Neon sales on the site go to charity.

*Not sure exactly how to best describe the stories I have been busy writing these last few year, but I hope to rectify that before I submit my thesis. Hopefully reading Mark Fisher’s The Weird and the Eerie will be some help.