Playlist of the Week (2018/51)

Playlist of the Week No 51, 2018: Stoneygate's Alternative ChristmasYou can’t get to this point in the year in a series like this without having a Christmas playlist. It’s becoming a tradition of mine to put Christmas music on whilst I wrap the presents, mainly to try to persuade myself it is that time of year and I need to get a move on otherwise I’ll run out of time.

I enjoy some of the golden oldies, but they do get, well, old. So, a couple of years back or three, I started to compile a YouTube playlist of various lesser known Christmas songs, the ones that you don’t hear over and over again in the shops all the way from about September. It became more than a little obsessive and the list got extremely long, because just about everyone has done a Christmas song.

So this week’s POTW is a bit of a cheat, but it’s my collection of some more obscure Christmas songs, some secular, some sacred, some just plain daft and some serious. It’s got a wide variety of styles, from punk to an African childrens’ choir. There are a whopping 320+ songs included, so it will keep you busy for hours on end whether you’re hanging up the decorations, making the mince pies or preparing the Christmas dinner.  The mood of the songs is mainly grouped together, so if you want more variety, hit the shuffle button.

Savannah

If you’re really eagle-eyed, you may have spotted that I’ve had a new video, Savannah, up on YouTube for a few months, but I haven’t mentioned it in this blog yet*.
This video was coded in Processing 3 (Java), again, similarly to some of my earlier videos, but I tried to design some rather basic animations that were more descriptive of the video’s theme this time around as well as messing around with some other visual ideas.
I’ve been more than a little distracted with my Dad’s ill-health the last few months. (That’s my best excuse for not posting something here about the Savannah video, and I’m sticking with it!). Dad’s still in hospital, but is doing a bit better now – most days, anyway – and I’ve been trying to catch up on Things I Started or Forgot About – this post is one of those. Soon I’ll be making more progress on some actual music, but I’ve got a tax return to sort first, and not a lot of time to do it.

Silver Bird

I made various video backgrounds from animations that I worked on in Processing in preparation for a gig I played at the start of January. In the event, the venue’s projector wasn’t available, so they weren’t used. But the preparation work isn’t wasted, I have some videos in hand for future live performances. Plus, I took some of the footage generated for Silver Bird and edited it into this video.

In fact, the timing could not have been more perfect. No sooner had I finished the video than I got an email from BBC Introducing (Lincolnshire) to say they had used Silver Bird in their show the previous Saturday. This was an exciting end to what has been a brilliant month for me, where I’ve made a lot of new contacts and felt like I’d scratched the surface of whatever this music thing is.