The Compost Playlist: A Simple Ritual for Rediscovering Lost Songs

Because every unfinished track might still have something to say.

Hey friends,

Let me tell you a little secret about my hard drive: it's haunted.

Buried in its folders are hundreds of song fragments—some with names like “bridge idea lol” or “maybe this one?”—sketches I once believed in, even if only for a moment. And then, like so many things in life, I got distracted. The energy moved on.

For a long time, I looked at those abandoned tracks with a kind of shame. I thought of them as a graveyard of creative failure. Dead ends. Missed shots.

But lately, thanks to a younger (and surprisingly wise) mentor of mine, I’ve started to think about them differently.

Not as garbage.
Not as ghosts.
But as compost.

Why Compost?

Because in gardens, compost is the messy, broken-down stuff—scraps, rot, even literal crap—that turns into the richest soil. And creativity works the same way. The things we weren’t ready to finish might still have nutrients in them. Maybe we just needed time. Or distance. Or both.

So here’s a ritual I started doing. It’s simple. It’s low-pressure. And it’s changed how I relate to my “old ideas” forever.

🌱 Step One: Create a Compost Playlist

Pick an hour and bounce a bunch of unfinished songs, loops, or voice memos into MP3s. No judgment. No cleaning up. Just export the raw ideas and dump them into a private playlist.

Give the playlist a name that feels kind—something like Future Album Seeds (I recently used Idaho Nights for mine). Something that invites you back in.

🚶‍♂️ Step Two: Leave the Studio

Put the playlist on your phone and go anywhere else. Drive. Walk. Wander a thrift store. Whatever feels like the opposite of “working on a song.”

Don’t edit. Don’t critique. Just listen.

Let the world blur your focus enough that something new can emerge. Your inner critic gets quieter when it’s not being asked to perform.

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✍️ Step Three: Carry a Notebook

Write down anything that sparks. A timestamp. A lyric. A memory. Maybe a weird feeling you can’t explain. Some tracks will still be crap. But some?

Some will whisper:

“Hey... I’m not done yet.”

💥 A Song Born from the Compost
My recent track Zombie Lover started out as a throwaway. Just a live drum loop I ran through a guitar pedal, no click, no plan.

Weeks later, I rediscovered it while listening to one of these playlists. That loop? It felt electric. I chopped it up, layered a vocal about doomscrolling and alienation… and suddenly, a song was alive.

It almost never happened.

🎲 Shuffle, Serendipity, and Brian Eno

In a class I took with Brian Eno (yes, that Brian Eno), he discussed the importance of maintaining a personal archive extensively. His assistant, Peter Chilvers, later shared in a letter tothat Brian has playlists tagged with names like Crowd Pleasers, Songs Without Lyrics, and even Atonal Funk Bluegrass.

One of Brian’s favorite creative tools?
Shuffle. Total random playback.

Because sometimes we need to be surprised by ourselves.

Want to try it?
Make your own Compost Playlist this weekend.
Don’t think too hard. Don’t polish.
Just listen—somewhere new.
And bring a notebook.

Let me know what you find.

There’s gold in your garbage.

—Dave