Weekend Playlist: Songs of The Mind (Inception/Dollhouse)

Welcome back to the Weekend Playlist!

Last week, we looked at music inspired by William Gibson, and it seems only logical to jump to a couple of other modern cyberpunk-ish shows and movies. Coming most readily to mind is Joss Whedon’s fantastic show Dollhouse, and Christopher Nolan’s film, Inception. Both look at the brain and its potential for stories.

It’s nice to see a soundtrack fit right into the plot of the film, as is the case with this track from Edith Piaf. This song is used to help syncronize the sleepers in Inception, allowing them to coordinate their actions across multiple timelines.

There’s no way to embed this track, but it’s worth a click over to the website of Adam WarRock, one of my favorite nerdcore artists out there at the moment, and this song is a great listen on the film Inception.

This song isn’t related to either Inception or Dollhouse, but the title alone feels like it fits nicely with this theme.

This song is the theme song for the opening credits of Dollhouse. As is to be expected with a song crafted for a specific purpose, this song has quite a bit of double meanings that relate to the show. Despite that, it’s a good, solid song, one that fits as equally well for an opening credits montage and a pop-rock song.

One of the things that I liked the most about Dollhouse was the songs that they use throughout the show, usually in the last act of the episode. “Lonely Ghosts” comes readily to mind, fitting perfectly with the episode’s theme.

This was another song that fit with the show perfectly, and has the extra bonus of coming off of Jed Whedon’s fantastic album History of Forgotten Things. “Drones” comes on one of the more emotionally charged episodes, “Belonging”, and serves as a fantastic counter point to some fairly violent and dark material.

This song is another quiet, thoughtful track, one that’s notable for not only the music and it’s relevancy towards the show, but also for it’s outstanding music video, one that features Dollhouse actors and a plot that has some striking similarities to the show.

Bats for Lashes provided a stunning song, also in the episode “Belonging” (with “Drones”), used in the closing act. It’s a beautiful piece of music in its own right.

This song plays at the end of the episode “The Attic”. The title of the song and the lyrics fit exceptionally well with the premise of the show, and serves as another outstanding pick for the show’s soundtrack.

Lissie is a fantastic singer/songwriter in her own right: her album Catching A Tiger is well worth picking up. This song ends the entire series, playing in the episode “Epitath II”. It’s a great way to close out a fantastic story.

This song isn’t related to either Dollhouse or Inception, but the title bears some relevancy to Dollhouse‘s main point: people who’s memories could be erased at will. It’s a fun song with it’s own geeky roots: it’s based off of Neil Gaiman’s American Gods.

Symphony of Science provides the last track this week. We’ve been talking about shows that deal so much about the human brain and it’s potential, and what better way to end on one of their fantastic remixes dealing entirely with the brain?