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July 9, 2021
Luke Turner's Playlist for His Memoir "Out of the Woods"
In the Book Notes series, authors create and discuss a music playlist that relates in some way to their recently published book.
Previous contributors include Jesmyn Ward, Lauren Groff, Bret Easton Ellis, Celeste Ng, T.C. Boyle, Dana Spiotta, Amy Bloom, Aimee Bender, Roxane Gay, and many others.
Luke Turner's memoir Out of the Woods is as thought-provoking as it is unsettling.
The Guardian wrote of the book:
"This is a book to get lost in. ...A disturbing trauma narrative, it’s also a work of delightfully low, pants-dropping comedy, and a learned meditation, influenced by 17th-century Italian philosopher Giambattista Vico, on the nature of knowledge."
In his words, here is Luke Turner's Book Notes music playlist for his memoir Out of the Woods:
As a child at church, the old Methodist hymns had a power that made my young heart feel connected not only to something greater than myself, but the people around me, singing too. As a teenager, it was music that provided an escape from the conservative, macho culture of my hometown and school, as well as a means of processing the shame I felt over my increasingly complex sexuality. I wrote my memoir Out of the Woods with many of the songs and pieces of music below running through my head – many of them are life-long favourites, and they often worked as channels to take me back to difficult times that I needed to translate from traumatic memory into words. Although Out of the Woods isn’t a ‘music book’ per se, sound runs through it – a forest is never silent, after all.
Hildegard Von Bingen – “Vision One: The Fire Of Creation”
I often have conversations with people of complex or lapsed faith about what religious music means to them – and I mean specifically Christian, rather than loosely spiritual. I’m often told that they can still find a great solace and sense of the metaphysical via sacred music, or by attending choral evensong in some ancient cathedral where voices vibrate through the dust of the ages. I’m similar in a way, though I still find a Wesleyan hymn incredibly powerful, and listened to a lot of Thomas Tallis, Jesualdo and Hildegard Von Bingen while writing Out of the Woods – I’ve chosen an interpretation of the Medieval German mystic here.
Laura Cannell – “Flaxen Fields”
Laura Cannell, a fiddle and recorder player whose work is inspired by Von Bingen, is one of my favourite artists working today. I must admit I’m not into much explicitly landscape-inspired music, as too much contemporary ‘folk’ is far too twee and sentimental, so what I love about Laura’s music is how the melodies take me to fields under a rain-slashed sky, but there’s always an edge to it.
Enya – “Cursum Perficio”
The connection between place and music was sealed for me by Enya’s Watermark being on constant rotation during long car journeys to holidays around the UK during the late '80s and early '90s. I still adore her work and am on a bit of a one-man mission to reclaim her from those who would paint her as a guilty pleasure, or naff new age artist. The true story of Enya – actually a trio – is fascinating, and involves experimental recording techniques, isolated perfectionism, an invented language called Loxian, and Celtic futurism.
Richard Skelton – “Noon Hill Wood”
I listened to Richard Skelton’s music constantly throughout the process of writing Out of the Woods. It was often the one thing that could help me focus and find a sense of peace in my writing as my mind raced away, full of doubt at trying to wrestle together so such disparate and tricky subjects as sexuality, abuse, trauma, mental health, nature, and the history of a small patch of English woodland. Skelton isn’t just a musician, but writes compelling fiction and poetry, all part of a creative practice that is a profound meditation on our relationship to the non-human world.
Suede – “The Wild Ones”
Although Out of the Woods is ostensibly about Epping Forest, it’s also a book about London – it has to be, as the Forest cuts into the City, and was saved as a place of recreation for Londoners in the 19th Century. As a teenager, I dreamed of London as a place of escape from the dull, conservative commuter town I grew up in, and the music of Suede was what took me there. I dreamed of the escapism that they painted such a vivid picture of in songs like this.
Soft Cell – “Where Was Your Heart?”
…but that vision of the capital had a twisted side. Soft Cell’s This Last Night in Sodom sums up the feeling I used to get as a kid visiting London, the furtive glimpses down side streets with neon signs advertising all sorts of salaciousness, the public toilets where men lingered a little too long. It’s a decadent London, but a dangerous one that they sum up in this track, all anxiety, regret, and sordid rage.
Pet Shop Boys – “It’s A Sin”
“When I look back upon my life it’s always with a sense of shame…” For years I saw this as my theme song, and would be moved to tears every time I heard it – tears of self-realisation, tears of rebellious and joyous affirmation, but tears that were still very much of someone held back by toxic experiences many years ago. These days I still consider the Pet Shop Boys to be the finest pop group that have ever trod the earth, but the process of writing the book has changed the meaning of the song for me. The best music stays with us through life, its significance evolving as we do.
Coil – “Red Birds Will Fly Out From The East and Destroy Paris In A Night”
Seeing Throbbing Gristle in my early 20s was a life-changing experience. They taught me the power of independent creativity and determination, of a radicalism based on being true to yourself and your beliefs. Yet I don’t listen to them as much as the work that was made by some of their members after the group split in 1981. I love Peter “Sleazy” Christopherson and John Balance’s Coil for the intensity of their originality, the uncanny splicing of raw queer sexuality with a great feeling for the transcendence that might be found in response to place, be it real or imagined. I ended up living in a house connected to the Coil world, a strange place full of occult art and covered in greenery – it almost became a character in Out of the Woods.
Chris & Cosey – “October Love Song”
For all the supposed transgression of Throbbing Gristle, the story of how Cosey Fanni Tutti and Chris Carter became life partners is one of the most enchanting love stories I’ve ever heard, and is captured in this three minutes and fify-four seconds of perfect electronic pop. Chris and Cosey are two of the most inspiring people I’ve ever met and it meant the world to me that I had a quote from Cosey on the cover of Out of the Woods – to get praise from a member of TG (once branded “wreckers of civilisation” on the front page of a UK newspaper) and a review in the UK establishment Anglican magazine The Church Times summed up what I was trying to do with the book, showing that supposedly incompatible identities might be resolved.
Leonard Cohen – “Anthem”
Pretty much everything stems from dear old Len. After a childhood mocking my dad’s love of his what then seemed to be dreary music, it all clicked to me as a teenager, and has sustained me since, as the truths continue to seep from his words and off-kilter songs. The wonder of “Anthem” in particular is how that line “there is a crack in everything / That’s how the light gets in” teeters on the edge of being trite (another “Imagine,” perhaps) but the inescapable truth of it wins out over any natural cynicism. No matter how deep in a forest you are lost, there’s always a way out.
Luke Turner is a writer, editor, and curator based in London. He co-founded and edits the influential online music publication The Quietus and regularly writes on music, culture, and place for a variety of magazines, websites, and broadcasters. Out of the Woods is his first book.
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