Toadcast #84 - The Playing With the Pastcast

Playing With the Past is an annual (we hope) event at the Edinburgh Film Festival where contemporary bands are invited to write new soundtracks for old films.  Last year was the first of these, when the superb British Sea Power wrote a brilliant score for Man of Aran, a (slightly fake) documentary about the lives of the inhabitants of a remote island off the West Coast of Ireland (extract here).

This was such a success that the band have been performing it all over the place ever since.  This year David Drummond, who put the event together, decided to invite three different bands to work with roughly half an hour or so of footage each, and he started off by inviting eagleowl, who suggested a number of other bands, from which David chose FOUND and Meursault.

We decided not to include more than a few excerpts of the music in this because the bands were a little uncomfortable about listening to too much of their stuff in the absence of the film to which it belongs.  So a big thank you to Tommy, Bart and Neil for coming in to talk about their music, and to David and Theresa from the Filmhouse who came by to chip in at the beginning, before having to rush off.  It may not be the catchiest of podcasts in a musical sense this week, but I think this is easily one of the best podcasts we've done - one of the most interesting, certainly.

Also, although I haven't tracked down all these films on the internet, I have got some bits and pieces for you to give you an idea of what was going on.  Confusingly, they all have the original scores on these clips, but erm... well, hopefully you'll find them instructive.

The Films:
1. eagleowl: Granton Trawler
2. eagleowl: Begone Dull Care
3. Meursault: Stan & Ollie
4. Meursault: Night Mail (Part 1, Part 2 & Part 3)
5. FOUND: Camera Makes Whoopee (Sorry, couldn't find this one anywhere - here's a Google search though if you want to have a go yourself. And a bit more about Norman McLaren, here.)

Toadcast #84 - The Playing With the Pastcast

01. British Sea Power - Oh Larsen B (06.17)
02. eagleowl - Granton Trawler (Excerpt) (17.16)
03. eagleowl - Begone Dull Care (Excerpt) (24.46)
04. Six Organs of Admittance - Eighth Cognition/All You've Left (27.34)
05. Meursault - Night Mail (Excerpt) (35.46)
06. Meursault - Stan & Ollie (Excerpt) (43.24)
07. The Books - All Our Base are Belong to Them (46.25)
08. FOUND - Camera Makes Whoopee (Excerpt 2) (56.43)
09. Marvin Gaye - T Plays it Cool (68.39)
10. FOUND - Camera Makes Whoopee (Excerpt 1) (72.56)