Interlude: Putting Together a Playlist

So I am currently listening to a selection of songs and tunes from across my library. I have cobbled together a playlist to try to build the right kind of atmosphere for the Albion game that I will be commencing on Wednesday.

Playlists like this are odd things. Curating for effect is much harder than curating for enjoyment and that goes double when trying to call to mind what would be possible to play in a future without today's recording technology but wanting to carry through some more modern songs along with traditional material. I also wanted to shy away from too much over-reliance on squeezeboxes, since they are probably slightly beyond the tech in the post apocalyptic Celtic future, or from simply populating the soundtrack with dance tunes, jigs, etc. In the end, there is plenty of accordion in there anyway, and a smattering of tune sets, along with the odd tune that is simply too voluminous to imagine being performed in Albion, but there are also a plethora of acoustic songs that work nicely without sounding too modern. It is not particularly coherent, but it is meant primarily as background so that may not matter too much.

One problem I ran into was that I did not like enough of the songs that would have fit best, or was avoiding them because they focused too tightly on certain styles. In the end I have not got much real Celtic themed music in there (though I have to say it was not my aim to). It is a shame not to have more identifiably Welsh material though given the location that forms the base for my idea is on the border between Shropshire and Wales. I almost went for an acoustic cover of the Manic's A Design for Life but left it out in the end because it relies on keyboards that would be vanishingly rare in setting. A shame, because acoustic covers of modern classics is pretty much one ideal I was shooting for. I have a few more things to trawl - from the late Charlotte Greig, mainly - which might yield a genuine Welsh presence but I am not going to throw it in for the sake of it.

Truth be told, I probably have more than enough as it is; 105 tracks from around the UK and Ireland (and a sneaky couple from beyond) coming in at almost 8 hours, yet it felt like I was not finding a lot to add as I went through - and I did not even attempt to vet Jon Boden's Folk Song a Day project (which I have in full - 365 songs). Next job, tomorrow morning, is to get the starting point down to go with the cast cooked up today. Then we shall see how things are received in the week.

Here's hoping that the playlist serves as a point of inspiration, which was part of the reasoning.