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Patricia Taxxon - Bicycle

Furry, Boys, Big Wheel, I Do

In her "ethics of boinking animal people", Patricia says Bicycle was meant to create the same "furry species euphoria through textural sound design" that Alexander Panos's accidentally did in his album "Nascent". Needless to say, she succeeded! I am not therian myself, but I went into the album with that in mind and did get some degree of that almost-tactile feeling of being a lil deer.

Good shit! Super strong start to the year. This album feels amazing to listen to and will definitely be one of my most listened this year.

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TAS 1000 - A Message For Martha

I've Been Delayed, Protein Shoes, I Am Truly Fully Licensed Hairstylist

Found this album through a youtube recommendation about Club Penguin's music. I was particularly drawn to the "found footage" concept; I think it's fascinating how *palpable* the caller's excitement was in "I Am Truly Fully Licensed Hairstylist" in particular. I thought it was interesting how the album immortalized her excitement at that particular moment of her life, idk. I felt happy for her all the way from over 20 years into the future, and I think that's cool.

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Car Seat Headrest - Faces From The Masquerade

Bodys, Something Soon

My Car Seat Headrest hyperfixation phase is long gone, but they remain a very important band for me. I listened to Twin Fantasy on loop around the time I started HRT in 2020, when I was finally starting to have some hope for the future for the first time in many, many years.

I usually don't listen to live albums, but CSH gets special treatment. It... It was a live album, I guess? I had fun listening to it, but I don't think I have much to say about it apart from that.

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CJ The X - Overgrowth

Carousel

I admittedly know very little about rap/hip-hop, but this album's emotional content hit for me, and I've been told that's what these genres are supposed to be about?

I don't have many distilled thoughts about this album, just that I've listened to each of its tracks multiple times just the day after first listening to them, so at least that shows how much I enjoyed it.

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Pent Up Pup - Pent Up Pup

edge_play

I have no fucking idea how this album got to my music backlog, but I'm glad it did lmao. The basslines are funky as shit and the lyrics are catchy, so I'll probably end up coming back to it when I randomly get them stuck in my head months from now.

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Cixin Liu - Of Ants And Dinosaurs

When I got handed this book I was told it was "a political allegory about workers overthrowing their opressors", so I got excited and essentially expected it to be a more modern Animal Farm. Sadly, the book did not deliver.

It suffers from an issue worryingly common in xenofiction stories with thinly-veiled allegories for a worker class: that one fucking trope where, while the workers can organize together and overthrow their oppressors, they eventually self-destruct because they are incompetent or biologically incapable of creative/independent thought. These stories, then, often go one of three ways: they give an anti-revolutionary message by framing overthrowing the ruling class as a fatal mistake with ramifications too complex for the oppressed's inferior minds to understand; they serve as colonialist propaganda by having the protagonist (often an outsider) step up as a natural leader with their superior creativity and/or intellect; or they frame ecocidal oppressors as the "lesser evil" at best or misunderstood good guys at worst by eventually returning to a marginally less oppressive status quo, usually with taken-down-a-peg oppressors still holding most (if not all) of the power.

Needless to say, I fucking hate this trope, and was left extremely disappointed with the book. My instinct is to assume Liu's cultural context of growing up in Great Cultural Revolution-era China musthave painted his decision to include this trope in the book, he openly supported the country's government's antidemocratic mass control/surveillance policies and the Uyghur genocide during a The New Yorker interview in 2019, after all... But I admittedly don't know enough Chinese history to be fully sure this assumption doesn't come from internalized sinophobia, so don't quote me on this hot take I guess; I'm fully ready to drop it if I'm wrong.

Anyways. What I'm trying to say here is that Pixar's A Bug's Life did the ants-as-workers concept better.

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Hundred Rabbits - Busy Doing Nothing

I found Hundred Rabbits' website a couple days ago. I spent a good chunk of today going through the huge amount of tabs from their website I had accumulated, leaving the open-source version of this book for last.

I find Rekka and Devine's situation extremely interesting. Their interests and thoughts mirror my own in many ways, so since I found out about them I've spent an embarassing amount of time thinking about what it would be like to live on a sailboat myself; to figure things out to a point where I could leave my deeply unsatisfying job behind and spend my energy and resources doing something more satisfying and closer to what I would like than, well, whatever the fuck it is I'm doing now.

I'm a bit sleepy right now, so I can't express my thoughts too coherently. The point is that I found the book extremely interesting and I'll probably be rotating it in my head for the next couple days.

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Andreas Malm - How To Blow Up A Pipeline

It's more about the why, really.

I enjoyed this book a lot. I was a bit tired of reading more fatalist texts, and it was nice to finally find a full book advocating against non-violence in the climate space specifically.

The third chapter felt particularly important to me. Like, fuck Desert and all that primitivist "let's just give up" bullshit. We should at least try.

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Alice Oseman - Heartstopper: Volume Five

I feel like I can't talk about this book fairly. It's blatantly obvious to me that I am way past its target audience, and I stray further away from it every year; however, this shit would've changed my life if it had come out 12 years ago, and it apparently has been extremely formative to lots of young queer people, so I respect it for that.

This volume starts bridging the gap between Volume 4 and the "Nick and Charlie" novella. It spends a lot of time doing what feels like just setting up that book's themes and conflict, but it writes itself into a corner where it tries to give those themes some degree of closure without making the novella redundant. Ultimately, I don't think Volume 5 achieves that balance, and its overall quality dearly suffers from it.

It was a cozy, quick read that felt like what my experience growing up as the only openly queer kid in my environment could have been like in a better world. I can't deny I enjoyed that, but my issues with the "we have to eventually get to the novella" narrative sadly made that wish fulfillment the only part I actually liked... It was fine, I guess?

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Chelsea Manning - README.txt

Oooooh boy this one was a heavy read.

This fills the exact same "book that makes you feel bad but is imossible to put down" niche as "I'm glad my mom died" for me, except I feel more strongly about all the trauma I've faced because of my queerness than my family-related one, so it hit significantly harder. Like, fuck, if I had been in her position I would've done the same and much, much worse.

idk, man. I really fucking feel for her. Chelsea deserved so so so much better and I really hope she's doing alright now.

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The Boy and the Heron

I... Didn't really get this movie?

It was absolutely gorgeous visually! Hell, at many points I basically felt like I was right there in the movie's rural setting, but the pacing felt a bit odd? Which is okay! But it took me out of the movie (to its detriment) a couple times. My thoughts will probably change on a rewatch, though.

After looking it up, it seems to be a very personal movie for Miyazaki, and I can kind of see why. I can draw the connections/parallels and I see how this movie had a certain air of "finality" to it: I think there is more of a chance of this one actually being his last movie, in a way? Not just because of his age, it just felt like a clearer and better farewell to his career than The Wind Rises was over 10 years ago... I just couldn't connect with it at all, so it ended up being my least favorite Miyazaki movie for no fault of its own :c

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Lemonectric - The Dissolution of Albedo Säure

Maintaining Megachene Microbiome Equilibrium

I don't have much to say about this album apart than I really enjoy the mix of chiptune-y sounds and piano.

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WangleLine - Disaster Field

Curse of the Sun, Disaster Field

Desightful textures and mood through the entire album. Sadly, I still don't have much of a vocabulary to share my thoughts on this sort of IDM-y sound design-heavy music, so I can't properly articulate my enjoyment of it beyond that :c

I intended to listen to it as I worked on the website and it ended up holding my attention hostage for the entirety of its runtime. Good shit.

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Ana Frango Elétrico - Me Chama De Gato Que Eu Sou Sua

Dela

Listened to this while fixing my wife's laptop.

Man, I fucking love Bossa. I should try to listen to more brazilian music, dude.

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nobonoko - Gato

Puzzle, Werewolf With Pants

REALLY enjoying nobonoko's music. Finally listened to this after getting "Music For Animal Cafés" recommended to me last year and holy shit I can't wait to listen to more of nobonoko's stuff. Great energy all throughout.

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Soda Stereo - Dynamo

Toma La Ruta, Remolinos, Ameba, Texturas

As a Latin American, I have obviously been exposed to Soda a LOT, so they've wormed their way into my list of "bands I always enjoy when they come on" without (but not necessarily against) my will. I like them! They're chill, I have vague nostalgia of hearing them in the radio when I was a child and such... But I admittedly had only paid attention to their most overplayed albums, so I somehow got myself into a situation where I have been on this Earth for 26 whole years and yet I just learned they made a shoegaze-y album. Naturally, I had to go listen to it.

Dynamo was fun! It was initially a bit jarring to hear Cerati's voice along the textures I usually associate with, like, MBV or Cocteau Twins, but it led to a super pleasant listening experience. I'm not sure I'll revisit it too often in the future (not that into shoegaze these days, that's angsty 2020 Lena's genre), but I definitely had fun with it today~

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Vylet Pony - CUTIEMARKS (And the Things That Bind Us)

CUTIEMARKS, BONINE, ANTONYMPH, I DON'T NEED TO BE FIXED, 37.6486° N, 122.4296° W (ft. Sylver Stripe)

hOLY SHIT??????

uH, I had my MLP phase through the first 2 years of highschool, so it was obviously an extremely formative period for me. This album really encapsulates the experience of growing up and finding yourself in the 2010s, idk.

It hits GREAT musically too. The production quality took me by surprise a ton of times, and it somehow manages to do a good job at all the genres it goes through (including fucking CUMBIA??????).

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Remusuki - SCORCH

They Crunch Skulls of Little Kids, Down Bad

What the fuck do you mean this was made on a phone

I don't really remember how this album got on my backlog and it's been a weird day energy-wise so I don't think I have much to say about this album atm :c It was a fun listen for sure, though!

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Knife Girl - CUM

Share Your Love, Knots, Estrogen, GUN = KISS + LOVE, Beautiful

Patricia Taxxon recommended this album on her Tumblr. SO FUCKING GLAD I put it in my backlog bc holy shit. Its name 100% did NOT prepare me for how much it would slap.

Wonderful energy, lyrics, and production. It just kept getting better??? This hits the hyper-specific niche of hyperpop that makes me go fucking wild, and I'm v glad Patty recommended it.

...Fuck, am I in my hyperpop era?

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My Bunny Valentine - LVLSS

tenemos que dormir mañana, solo dije sola, pronto

This is, like, the 7th Loveless cover album in my library lmao.

This album comes as some sort of response to a mashup between MBV's "When You Sleep" and Bad Bunny's "Tenemos Que Hablar" YouTube user @JokoPlayBass posted in early 2019. It was WAY better than it had any right to, so people went fucking nuts over it until someone finally did mashups for the entire album.

It's good! Like, its premise is inherently funny, but lots of the mashups are actually pretty enjoyable~ I'll probably end up listening to it every now and then?

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Edward Snowden - Permanent Record

I originally got this book the day it released, but a lot of shit got in the way and I never got around to reading it until today. README.TXT left me in the mood for books about whistleblowers, I guess.

I enjoyed it a bunch, and it kinda reminded me to tie up a couple opsec loose ends I had been neglecting for a while (deleting unused accounts and such, for the most part). I have been thinking about how my interest in these topics has probably made me a "person of interest" since I was around 12 y/o (hi to the intelligence agents reading this! go whisteblow, quit your job, or fucking die! also plz tell me if id be denied entry to the us itd be so funny) and, like, how that means I prrrrrrobably should take encryption and security a bit more seriously? I already take a non-negligible amount of measures, but they are DEFINITELY not enough lmfao... Just couldn't be assed to set up full disk encryption when I installed my OS, and I need my main storage drive to be compatible with my Windows partition anyways (not for long!), so ugh.

I think it's fascinating how a lot of the stuff mentioned in this book is slightly outdated as of me writing this, with the electronic privacy/freedom landscape looking progressively more and more grim in ways one couldn't have even predicted in 2013. It remains relevant, of course, it just was very clearly written before the NFT and LLM/"AI" bubbles... It doesn't take away from the book's content, it just felt weirdly similar to reading something written "pre-Snowden", ironically!

I recommend it. 10/10 would get tracked again. Abolish the US.

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Masami Akita - One Bird Two Bird

One Bird

Adorable cover art! Can't believe I didn't know this was Merzbow, like, of course it was lmfao.

Listened to this to distract myself from today's incredibly hot temperatures. It worked! Though it was a bit harsher than the noise I usually listen to? My wife said, and I quote, "this sounds exactly like [her] anxiety while [she's] at uni".

It has an interesting "acoustic" sound to it. I wonder how its recording process went, like, there are some parts where it straight-up sounds like a recording of someone dropping a bunch of cymbals in an empty storeroom. It's great lmao.

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Too Percent Milk - November Dog

Burning Eyes

Early Car Seat Headrest energy.

It's a bit too lo-fi for my current interests, but I enjoyed listening to it overall. I can't find any information about the artist, so I wonder if it'll be their only album or if they will keep doing music?

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F0x3r - Define Love

Deserve Someone

Found this while browsing Bandcamp's "Furry Music" tag. I saw a couple genres I'm interested in, so I gave it a quick listen.

It's pretty chill and comfortable to listen to, but at the end of the day I don't think I enjoy vaporwave too much (if at all), so it didn't really resonate much with me. It's good! Just not my vibe.

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LINE - Sleepwalkers in a Cold Circus

A Pillar of Salt

Listened to this while high and the neighbors started moving around some furniture; it was a weirdly terrifying listening experience.

Delightful textures!

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SPRINTS - Letter To Self

Ticking, Heavy, Adore Adore Adore

Outing myself as a Bandcamp Daily reader.

I was a bit distracted due to a national news event that broke midway through the album, but I had fun listening to it! Great energy all throughout~

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GOJII - BLISS IN THE MIDST OF UNCERTAIN TIMES

ALL THE TIME, BLISS IN THE MIDST OF UNCERTAIN TIMES, VVVV

First time listening to Gojii! They had been on my radar for a while, I just hadn't gotten around to it.

Every single time I listen to a breakbeat album I remember I really like the genre and decide to listen to it more often. I hope it doesn't happen yet again with this one? I really liked it.

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Jeremy Blake - Determinism

WATCH IT BURN, DYING SOUNDS BETTER WITH U, OUT OF CONTROL, DETERMINISM, U CANT BREAK ME, POISON LULLABY

A random lucky find that turned into probably my most listened album of March.

Great vibes all around, and a fun listen through the entirety of its runtime! A fun pass through many forms of electronic music that I'll prob keep listening to a lot in the foreseeable future

The album art is very pretty also???

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Keygen Church - Nel Nome Del Codice

La Chiave Del Mio Amor, Lode Al Disco Sacro, Il Paradiso Dell'Anima

Maybe I was confusing Keygen Church with MASTER BOOT RECORD, but I came into this album expecting it to be way more "chiptune-y" for some reason. I was surprised, but it was thankfully a very pleasant surprise!

God fuck I love Keygen Church, like, conceptually and aesthetically. This was a very fun listen, and if this album does have an ARG I miiiiiiight actually end up looking into it?

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Tristan Perich - 1-Bit Symphony

Movement 3, Movement 5

Found this album while reading about interesting/nontraditional physical releases. I'm absolutely IN LOVE with the concept, and it was generally a very fun listen.

Sadly, a physical copy would be prohibitively expensive for me, but I would really love to learn more about how it works and how it was made. Absolutely fascinating concept.

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Balatro

Honestly, it's probably hard to say something about Balatro that hasn't been said in the past couple weeks since its launch. It's an extremely fun and rewarding to learn deckbuilder game with simple mechanics, and everything about its progression feels perfectly tuned to make it enjoyable for my lil' deer brain.

I haven't beaten it yet, but I've been doing super well in my last couple runs so I probably should get to that point in the next couple days. I'm not sure for how long I'll keep playing after finishing at least one successful run, but so far it's been a great game I can recommend to pretty much anyone.

As a funny little side-note, I got Inscryption'd by it at the start. Like, I was fully expecting my first run to end with some sort of fucked up tone/genre shift into analog horror, but... Nope! Just a delightful little game. Hope someone makes a Vita or HTML5 port soon, bc I'd love to be able to play this while on the subway and stuff.

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Loser Company - Blueberry Skies

9th Life

Overall a nice, chill listen. Not exactly what I have been into lately, but I know 2008 me would've gone fucking wild for these grunge-y vibes

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Autechre - EP7

Rpeg, Ccec, Liccflii, Zeiss Contarex

I've been trying to "get into" Autechre. I know they fall squarely within a bunch of genre intersections I really enjoy, and they influenced some of my favorite musicians, so I decided to gradually listen to their entire discography. However, it took a while for their stuff to hit strongly enough that I actually sat through an entire album without getting distracted or switching it off for one or another reason.

EP7 is the first of their albums I can happily, earnestly say I enjoyed. I don't know if I just happened to be in the right mood for it or if Autechre's style changed in any way when this album released, but it hit and it hit HARD. Good shit. I'm much more excited to listen to the rest of their discography now~

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Black Magic M-66

Decided to watch this on a whim after seeing a gifset on Tumblr.

It clearly shows its age, but I personally enjoy old anime significantly more than new ones, so it wasn't too much of an issue. The plot isn't too big of a deal, at times it feels more like an excuse to move the animation project forwards, but honestly that's fine for how short it is.

What took me by surprise was how good this was at maintaining a high level of tension for most of its duration. It excels where many, many others have failed, and it comes out the other side as a very fun worthwhile watch. I do recommend it!

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Weezer - Teal Album

Africa, Mr. Blue Sky, No Scrubs

I recently got informed Weezer has a covers album. It was fun.

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Madvillain - Madvillainy

Finally listened to this, my first MF DOOM, on a friend's recommendation.

I'm borderline ashamed to say I didn't enjoy it much, at least on an aesthetic level. This is not a comment on the album's quality, of course, but on how little I know/understand about this genre and how that affects my enjoyment of it. I could tell it was a good album technically and artistically, I was just unable to connect much to it despite my best efforts/attempts at giving it a proper critical listen.

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netcat - Cycles Per Instruction

Actually bothered listening to this album by building and loading the kernel module.

Like, look, I'm not going to pretend a good chunk of my enjoyment of this album came from its novel presentation, but I still do think it's a fascinating, very creative piece of experimental ambient music. I originally expected it to be completely live-synthesized on the spot, so the acoustic and improvisational (I was originally going to say "non-generative", but what is improvisation but generative music ig) elements came as a delightful surprise.

I'm relistening to a couple tracks via the album's Bandcamp page as I type this short review almost two months after first listening to it through the "proper" medium, and my enjoyment of it stayed the same, so I guess that's testament that it's worth listening to even if you're not into the concept of fucking building your albums from source.

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Switch To Black - Switch To Black

Stalker's Civil Rights, The Dog Goes Woo

I don't quite remember how I found myself listening to this album? Just found it on my "writing" folder now, completely divorced from whatever drove me to it. It was a fun listen, and I would be the third person to buy it on Bandcamp if I wasn't completely fucking broke atm.

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Ceschi / Pat The Bunny - Ceschi / Pat The Bunny Split

Prison Sporks, Black and White and Red All Over, Teenage Anarchist, Club Hits Of Today Will Be The Show Tunes Of Tomorrow, This City Is Killing Me

Found this album because I thought "Teenage Anarchist" would be an Against Me! cover. I was clearly wrong, and holy fuck I'm glad I listened to it? I had never heard of either Ceschi or Pat The Bunny before, and I loved getting to read about them and listen to their music. Instant fan.

I don't quite have the words to completely articulate the effect these two's music had on me during mid-May, but it was 100% a good one. Very fucking good album.

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Wingut Dishwashers Union - Burn The Earth Leave It Behind

Fuck Shit Up!, Fuck Every Cop, Urine Speaks Louder than Words

A punk rock song will never change the world but holy fuck I can tell you that this album changed me.

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K² - Unrealistic Project Roadmap

A Place Kind of Like a Home, Battle Against a Fucked Up Opponent, Another Exhibit, Battle Against a Common Guy, Battle Against Laughing Satellite, Battle Against I So PO'd

I did NOT expect K² to come back!

My chiptune experience is woefully limited beyond "game music", so this album expanded my perception of the genre's emotional/stylistic potential way more than I should probably feel comfortable admitting. Lots of variety!

I'm not sure if I've stated it here before, but Emma's creative ethos is very inspiring to me, and this album (like all her others) did make me want to make more computer art, so hey, ty Em.

Actually laughed out loud at the obvious Metroid vibes in track 10 lmao

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Laura Jane Grace - Hole In My Head

Hole In My Head, Punk Rock In Basements

As a transfem punk, I am legally obligated to be into Laura Jane Grace.

Being fully honest, I aesthetically prefer her work as Against Me!, but I still enjoyed this album on an emotional level though I probably won't come back to it too often.

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Autechre - Confield

Cfern, Parhelic Triangle, Lentic Catachresis

The moment Autechre's discography truly "clicked" for me. Amazing fucking textures.

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Alison Bechdel - Are You My Mother?

The psychoanalysis bullshit almost made me unable to finish this book, which makes it borderline insulting how relatable it was at points.

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Alison Bechdel - The Essential Dykes To Watch Out For

Hoo boy. This was an interesting one.

I am very aware of these strips' importance to queer history, and I really value that. It was fascinating seeing how many of the issues we had in the mid 80s are still relevant today, and how timeless a good chunk of the strips were! Despite the extremely obvious generational gap between Alison Bechdel and me, I did greatly enjoy reading through these.

However, I did feel like they suffered a lot just from being newspaper strips. I have to wonder how this would have worked as visual novels or another medium less limited by page sizes and publication schedules, and I do feel weird about how unceremoniously the entire project ended. I wonder how that one Audio Drama version worked out?

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Alison Bechdel - The Secret To Superhuman Strength

Yyyyup. Three Alison Bechdel books in a row. I just figured I finish reading her entire bibliography relatively fast, y'know? So I just fucking went for it. My wife calls her my blorbo now.

I feel like this book kinda redeemed her for me after the fucking trainwreck that was Are You My Mother. If Fun Home was about her father and the second memoir was about her mother, this one was about her; and it greatly benefitted from it.

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Jonathan Gilmour - Kids on Bikes

Hey, a TTRPG rulebook counts as a book.

I've been very into dropout.tv recently, and I read this book to learn more about the system they're going to use for Dimension 20's next season. I liked it a lot! It's very simple and fun, and it looks like a very good way to introduce TTRPGs to people with little gaming experience.

I do think it's a bit too loose with rules, however, and it's clearly more suited for oneshots or short campaigns rather than years-long epics. I think that's fine, but 5e combat is a guilty pleasure of mine, so I did find it a tiny bit lacking on the combat front... Which is fine, like, it's clearly not its main focus, but still!

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Rain World

I've been playing this game on coop with my wife for the past couple weeks. Two or three hours every weekend. It completely took over my brain and I have fallen deep in love with it though we still understand very little about it and its world

Rain World has some of the most satisfying movement I have ever played with on a videogame, but it makes you work for it. It feels a little bit like Session in that, like, you can tell that the game's controls have an incredibly high skill ceiling that will eventually become achievable to you even as you're stumbling with it and struggling to do the most basic moves. It fucks.

Tumblr has given me some very very vague spoilers on the game's lore and plot, but they have all been so devoid of context I still know absolutely fucking nothing about it apart from the fact that we're probably going at this in an extremely wrong way that will soon bite us in the ass when we realize we could've started the plot if we had taken a different turn early on lmao.

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Patricia Taxxon - Ten Skies

wildfire, la douceur, smokestacks, hurried visitors, nightfall

A delightful piece intended to be listened alongside James Benning's "Ten Skies" (2004). In my opinion it stands well enough on its own, but it's clearly intended to be experienced alongside the film, and that's the way I did.

I enjoy ambient/drone music, so this wasn't a particularly difficult album for me, like, I have been fucking EATING with Patricia's output lately, and this one was as delightful as usual.

I hadn't watched Ten Skies prior to this, so my impressions of both Ten Skies (2004) and Ten Skies (2024) are inextricably linked forever now. This is fine, obviously, but I have to wonder if I would've enjoyed the album more if I had already watched it in isolation. I don't think I could watch it without Patricia's score anymore, with how perfectly tuned to the visuals it is.

To answer the question at the end of track 10 (which jumpscared me, by the way): I have recently been kind of into clouds/meteorology, and that obviously painted my listening experience, so I spent most of the album's duration looking at the clouds and thinking about how fast/slow they moved, what that meant about temperature and relative humidity, and how that translated into the music I was listening to.

I had other thoughts, of course, but they relate more to the movie than the album, so they will go on that review instead

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Ten Skies

I watched this movie alongside Patricia Taxxon's 2024 score, so my impressions of both pieces of art are inextricably linked forever now. This is fine, obviously, but I have to wonder if I would've enjoyed the movie as much if I had watched it in isolation. I don't think I could watch it without Patricia's score anymore anyways, with how perfectly tuned to the visuals it is.

I enjoyed the movie. I've been into meteorology recently, so I spent most of it looking at the clouds and thinking about the sorts of conditions that would lead to their formation. I thought about the process of setting a camera up to film the sky, and how I would handle it if I were to ty recording something in this "found footage" kind of sky, which naturally segued into appreciating the way the camera is actually pointed up at the sky with absolutely no geographical landmarks suggesting when or where each of the titular skies were recorded: it's "the same sky" everywhere, and it feels nice to sit and look at that shared sky for 90 minutes in a context where most movies are filmed inside random green rooms in a Hollywood studio... Until you get gutpunched with the accidentally hilarious realization that it was all shot in fucking California anyways.

I'd like to read Erika Balsom's essay about the film, but I don't have the first world disposable income to pay almost 25EUR to get a single essay shipped to me and I still haven't been able to find it scanned anywhere. I'll keep trying to download it every now and then, but it'll sadly have to wait for now.

It's kinda funny that I'll have to wait to read the book, though. Like, soon enough I will have experienced and reviewed Ten Skies (2004), Ten Skies (2021) and Ten Skies (2024). Great fucking bit right there.

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Game Changer - Season 6

Sam Says 3, Bingo, Deja Vu, Beat the Buzzer

I got into Dropout stuff this year, and it just happened to line perfectly with Season 6's release.

I think this season had some of the most high-concept episodes so far and, even though I was a bit disappointed about the "lore baiting", I enjoyed all of them. I'm super fucking excited for Season 7, and as I write this I can't wait for the hopefully upcoming "cut for time" episode.

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mr. projectile - Sinking

You Need, Resistance is Fertile, Acting Right, The Inevitable Haunting

Trying to get back into critical listening despite my server being dead.

The mixing is absolutely fucking sublime. There's a moment around 1/3 into track 3 where I legitimately thought I was hearing parts of the track IRL instead of through my closed back headphones. I have no idea how mr. projectile did it, but this album singlehandedly defies my headphones' soundstage's physical limitations.

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Hakushi Hasegawa - Mah​ō​gakkō

Gone, Mouth Flash, Boy's Texture

Didn't like this album too much :c

Maybe it's just that I was on the wrong mood for it or whatever, but I felt kind of disappointed listening to the entire album on release day after having had the singles on repeat, y'know? Kinda similar to what happened to me with Porter Robinson's Nurture. Was excited for the album and somehow instantly lost all interest the second it released

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Gafacci & Sam Interface - Public Information

4-4-2, Day 1

Delightful percussion! I am typing this as I re-listen to the album with my new headphones and it's amazing how dynamic every single percussion hit is. I'll definitely come back to this album many times in the future omfg

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Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind

Believe it or not, I had never watched this movie before!

INSTANT favorite from Ghibli's catalog. It's absolutely gorgeous, it's incredible that it was all animated traditionally, like, digital animation is great and traditional is not "inherently superior" or anything, but it's hard not to appreciate the amount of work put into it, y'know?

Really enjoyed both the worldbuilding and the visual design all throughout. I was very immersed all throughout, and it simultaneously felt much shorter and much longer than it actually was (in a good way!) ^^;

I'm really tempted to rewatch it now that I'm typing this, dang.

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Patricia Taxxon - Necrosphere64

Kidney Crayons, Spiral Whip, Sprint, Necrosphere64

Surprise album drop!

The game's control scheme would've sadly made me unable to enjoy it, so I can't speak for how well the album fits it :c I do think the acid techno "parallel nostalgiabait" was an inspired genre choice, though.

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SCHIM

Very cute concept! Played it in a single sitting with my wife and we enjoyed it a lot, though we felt it dragged on a little bit at times. Maybe we would've enjoyed it more if we had separated it into multiple sittings, but it felt like a single sitting kinda game, y'know?

We experienced a very weird bug in the supermarket level where our objective stopped moving JUST out of our reach. We thought it was going to be the last level of the game and spent like 30 minutes wondering if it somehow had a weird anticlimactic ending, but it just worked fine upon relaunching it lol

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Perko - NV Auto

Sky Host, Rounded

Incredibly spatious and tight-sounding. Found this album via related YouTube vids and I'm very very very glad I did.

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Very Important People - Season 1

Tommy Shriggly, Leighanna-Jean Gruthers, Pig 2, Augbert

Interesting concept with a delightful presentation. I am absolutely obsessed with Vic's character and can't wait to see what the hell Season 2 turns into after that finale.

Tommy Shriggly changed my brain chemistry.

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Nicola Cruz - Siku

Arka, Siku, Criançada, Señor de las Piedras

Very fun mix of various traditional Latin American instruments with electronic music production. I had already listened to Nicola's work in El Origen, his collaboration with Rodrigo Gallardo, and I'm glad I tried dipping into the rest of his body of work.

It annoys me a bit how this is tagged "exotica" on Bandcamp. Gringos de mierda.

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The Prodigy - The Day Is My Enemy

The Day Is My Enemy, Rebel Radio, Roadblox

Found this album via Watch Dogs 2.

Usually not the kind of music I listen to, but I found myself listening to it a lot over most of October.

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saddyowner - Minewest Emo

Wet Hands, Cat, Dry Hands, Subwoofer Lullaby

God damn this was a fun album. Found it via Youtube recommendations expecting it to be a shitty noteblocks rendition of Never Meant, so I was super pleasantly surprised when it turned out to be an actual midwest emo reimagining of Volume Alpha.

I, of course, am sad Sweden didn't make the cut.

Something kinda personally funny about this album is that this was one of the first projects I thought about doing when I first started learning how to play guitar, but mental health kept delaying the project until someone else obviously did it first.

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Hayao Miyazaki - Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind

Started reading this manga shortly after watching the movie.

I enjoyed it a lot. I really like Nausicaä as a character, and I enjoyed seeing her world be developed further than it was in the movie! The characters are interesting, the art is gorgeous and the world design is absolutely on point.

I didn't enjoy the ending too much, but I'm writing this around two months after reading it and I don't feel like I can make a fair statement about it without rereading the entire thing. Good thing the manga is generally good, though! I'll probably end up rereading it and updating this entry eventually.

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Thousandaires - Season 1

More from my Dropout Era.

I have mixed feelings about Thousandaires. I feel like it really relies on your own parasocial engagement with the Dropout cast, and it was a bit too free-form in a way that made its episode quality inconsistent and hit-or-miss. Specifically, I feel like there was a clear divide between activities that are fun for the cast members and activities that make for a good entertaining show: I did like seeing them have a good time! It was just weird how the show's format didn't really allow some activities to shine (I liked Grant's idea a lot! But there wasn't enough screentime to edit it in a satisfying way, I guess.)

I do think it's a good concept, though! I do really hope there's a second season eventually. I need to see what the fuck Brennan, Ally or Izzy would do here.

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Smartypants - Season 1

Birthdays, Vegetables, Bodies, Groundhog Day, WNBA, The Ocean, Honorary Degrees, Zzyzx, Night Owls, Charcuterie

PowerPoint Night: The Show

I really liked this show. I do think most good presentations ended up getting bunched together in just a couple episodes, but that just comes with the format of the show, really. It was interesting seeing how some cast members did comedy, some tried to present in an informative way, and some had clearly opinionated presentations! Super fun variety, in my opinion, though there was a weird amount of "yay US army" ones.

I REALLY hope there's a new season. I would love to see presentations by the cast members that weren't available for this season, or from more people outside Dropout's usual cast. God fucking damn we need to see what deranged shit Brennan would make a presentation about.

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Scavengers Reign

The Signal, The Wall, The Fall, The Return, The Reunion

I feel like there is absolutely nothing I could say about this show that would actually do it justice. Please do yourselves a favor and go watch it, holy fuck.

The speculative biology in this show is fucking INCREDIBLE. Absolutely breathtaking animation and creature designs followed by the world's most awful body horror. 10/10. No notes.

I am a bit sad that we will probably never get a second season, but I think Season 1 tells a finished, well rounded story, and a new season would be unnecessary in the grand scheme of things. I'll follow the creators' other projects from now on!

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The Wild Robot

I have mixed feelings about this movie.

I really enjoyed the animation itself, and I'm very excited to eventually see this animation style shift more into the mainstream. Yes, Spiderverse and The Last Wish had already been widely praised for it, but they were patrs of the already very lucrative Spider-Man and Shrek franchises respectively, so they were likely going to succeed anyways, y'know? This was Dreamworks, yes, but it's an original IP, and I'm glad they went with this style instead of a "safer" more photorealistic approach. It paid off for sure.

Sadly, I did not really care much for the plot. Pacing in the first third of the movie was absolutely atrocious. It felt like cocomelon-esque key-jingling to desperately keep the audience's attention, as if they did not trust the movie's themes to carry themselves. Action scene leading into chase scene leading into tense scene over and over until it suddenly shifted into a more controlled pace for the second and third arcs.

Overall, it was a very pretty movie with pacing issues so bad they made me dissociate. Not amazing, but I do see why it's being so successful.

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Watch Dogs 2

Didn't expect to enjoy this nearly as much as I did! I had even tried it already sometime around March or April! I'm glad I tried it again.

I think when I first tried this game I expected it to be more Mr. Robot than Hackers (1995). I was annoyed at the ludonarrative dissonance of a hacktivist group using lethal force on random civilians to gain their support, and that ruined the game for me. This time, I took the stick out of my ass and ended up just having fun and enjoying the game for what it is.

I tried WD1 after finishing this one, but I didn't enjoy its hacking gameplay too much/at all. I kinda want to try Legion, but I'm not sure how well it'll run on Proton?

I'm so fucking normal about Wrench.

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Mean Girls

Yes, I had somehow never fucking watched Mean Girls. I had NO IDEA so many memes came from there, like, holy shit.

It's honestly incredibly good??? I expected it to be a generic teen movie™, but it handles its themes beautifully while still being entertaining and not coming off as preachy. I really should learn more about its production process, because I'm genuinely super impressed.

I really want to watch the Broadway musical now, but I sadly haven't been able to find any bootlegs. Heard the musical movie wasn't too good?

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Legally Blonde

Yet another movie I had never actually properly watched. It was much better and smarter than I expected, which I think is pretty fitting with the movie's themes, if you think about it?

Been quoting it pretty much daily at home. I kinda want to watch the sequel, but it's proooooooooobably not gonna be too good? Remains to be seen.

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Quino - Toda Mafalda

Almost forgot to add this one to the medialog! I technically had already read this once as a 7 year old, but most of it naturally flew right over my head at the time. Mafalda is... Interesting to get back to, to say the very least.

See, Mafalda is clearly a product of its age. As a Latin American, I completely understand why it's sometimes a bit ideologically backwards in concepts that we are honestly just now beginning to unpack, and I "forgive" it for it, but as a product of early 2010s queer online spaces I still couldn't help but be surprised by the couple sudden sinophobia/misogyny/homophobia/transphobia jumpscares, y'know?

I think Mafalda naturally draws the eye to comparisons with Calvin & Hobbes. Both feature precocious children talking about topics way above their age range and have a cast of well-written adults, as opposed to other comics where all the adults are perpetually offscreen (if they're even present). They're both really good, but C&H's worldview is necessarily limited by its imperial core suburban setting. I really like it, and I mean to read all of it in 2025, but despite still featuring adults who hint at having adult lifes and adult problems, its anxieties and philosophical teses feel a bit less hard-hitting when compared to Mafalda's family and friends living in Cold War Era Latin America.

One of the book's forewords (or was it an afterword?) mentioned that once someone asked Quino where he thought Mafalda would be or what she would be doing now, X years after the comic's setting, and after sitting in silence for a couple seconds he responded that she probably would've been killed during the Dirty War. I think about that a lot.

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qntm - There Is No Antimemetics Division

█ ████ █████ ████ ███ ████ SCP ███████, ███ █ really ██████ ██████ ███████ Antimemetics █ █████'█ ███████ thinking █████ ███ ideas █████████ ██ ██ █████ █ ████ ██. █ loved ██!. █ █████ ████ ██ ████ more █████ ████ ████████ "█████", ███ █ ███'█ ████ ██ ███ ██ ███ ██████. Marion ███ █ █████ █████████, █ ████ her

██████ ██████████████ ███ qntm's ███████ ██████ █████ ██████ █████ Jesse █████. CONTROL ███████ █████ █ ███ ██ inspiration ████ ███ ███ ███████, ███ ██ ███ ████ ██████ ████ ███ side ██ ████.

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Watch Dogs

Ended up playing it anyways despite having a bit of trouble getting used to the gameplay coming from WD2.

I don't really understand why people were so aggressively against this game when it came out, like, sure, the E3 "slice" gameplay trailer looked better than the finished product, but that's honestly to be expected with this sorta stuff? The game is GOOD, dude! I'm super glad it at least did well enough (or they liked the world enough) to do WD2 and Legion after. There were some super fucking good setpieces, much better than 2's, even! Not being de-incentivized from using guns somehow made combat much more fun and interesting.

I'm not too thrilled about the game's treatment of women, but it could've also done much, MUCH worse, so I'll take what I can get. At least they really got me to care about Clara!!! I didn't feel anything when Horatio died, but I'm still sad abt her :c

Also: Jordi's great but, like, he's not the pizza guy Wrench. Which is... Kinda surprising? Everyone's more wacky in the sequel, so I expected Jordi's humor to hit a lot harder, but he fell a bit flat for me apart from a couple specific scenes? Maybe he was just underutilized, though.

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Watch Dogs: Bad Blood

I somehow enjoyed it more than the main campaign, though it was obviously much shorter.

All the setpieces felt better planned and staged than in the main game. T-Bone's design felt even better than Aiden's, he was much more likeable than him, and Tobias was a fucking great deuteragonist.

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Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas

100%ing this game was my middle school white whale. Finally did it!

I have a lot of thoughts about it, the state of San Andreas, and the GTA series as a whole, so I'll eventually write a more in-depth post about it than I could put here.

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Mamma Mia

Great for a juebox musical. It's extremely fucking campy, the plot is kinda messy and some actors can't sing too well, yes, but it's just straight-up fun, and I appreciate that a lot.

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Our Little Secret

Watched as a part of the "Lindsay Lohan Completionist" project I'm doing with my wife.

We enjoyed it a lot for a christmas movie! like, it's obviously not high cinema, but it's pretty enjoyable when you go in knowing what to expect~

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The Gay And Wondrous Life Of Caleb Gallo

Watched it because of the one scene with "Sometimes, things that are expensive are worse". You know the one.

Freckle was this show's highlight BY FAR. I fucking love her and need to see more.

I think someone in this show (Caleb?) was recently revealed to be super shitty? Didn't look too much into it, though.

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Wine Country

Frankly we only watched this movie for Freckle's cameo. It's not a waste of time, but it's also not amazing, y'know?

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Just My Luck

Watched as a part of the "Lindsay Lohan Completionist" project I'm doing with my wife.

Fun enough as a rom-com. Though it's annoying how writers never do "luck as a superpower" justice. Like, here it's just money and privilege, innit?

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Bridget Jones's Diary

Yet another classic I had never watched.

It was fun and Bridget was a pretty charming character, but the amatonormativity really fucking got to me. Like, holy fucking shit I know the movie came out 24 years ago and the early 00s were a different time, but still.

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MF Ghost

Finally got around to watching the anime's first two seasons. Third one will start releasing this year, I think?

I did enjoy it, sure, it's hard not to fall for the fanservice as an Initial D die-hard fan, but it's also very easy to compare MF Ghost with its predecessor, and it really suffers from that process. For starters, I think it completely fails to understand that the human factor (rather than the sport itself) is often the most interesting part of a sports anime. MF Ghost's character-driven plotlines are painfully superficial to leave more screentime for the racing, which, while it is indeed the best car racing in any recent anime, is almost completely disconnected from the character-driven storylines themselves until the racing screeches to a halt for one or two awkward lines about the character's issues, almost completely failing to use the racing itself as a metaphor for what the characters are going through. The anime ends up feeling like more of a "highlight reel" of Kanata's racing career rather than his actual story, kind of what Initial D's "Battle Stage" OVAs did, in a roundabout way.

Kanata's character isn't particularly amazing either. I understand that the more "complete" underdog story was already executed in Initial D, and Kanata is meant to come pre-loaded with all the skills Takumi taught him in England, but the relative lack of real-time development of his driving skills leaves a lot to be desired; it's kind of similar to what happens to sequel anime like, say, Boruto, if you think about it. I watched Initial D and Overtake! both for the stories and the racing, but so far I'm only watching MFG for the racing, which feels like such a waste after knowing what this writer can do.

I am, however, enjoying the message the show is clearly trying to say about wealth in motorsports and car culture in general. It's more fun to drive a slow car fast than a fast car slow, and it is an absolute waste that performance-driven beasts like the ultracars driven by most of the show's drivers are wasted on rich motherfuckers' displays of wealth. "The best camera is the one in your pocket", and the best car is whatever the fuck Toyota has out, I guess.

While I'm a bit disappointed with MFG, I am excited about the 3rd season, and I plan to follow this anime until it reaches its conclusion, but it's kinda sad that it's just the driving part that excites me.

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Overtake!

Watched this right after finishing MF Ghost. I liked it MUCH more in some ways, and much less in others.

I hate to describe this anime in terms of its "competition", but Overtake! is what MF Ghost didn't: the most interesting part of a sports anime is the human component, and the sport itself is meant to be a vehicle for those human storylines to move forward rather than being the central focus for its own sake. While the racing in Overtake! was kinda mid, I did not care at all because, while a bit sloppy and cheesy, the emotional arcs landed well enough for me to carry the entire show.

Bonus points for being a well-rounded 12 episode long story. There was barely any filler, if any at all, and everything was nicely resolved by the end; no need for sequel-bait or anything, just a nice show that I'll probably revisit at some point in the future.

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Nobody Wants This

Watched this show with my wife because it had Kristen Bell in it. Enjoyed it way more than expected (I am so thoroughly charmed by both her character and the Hot Rabbi, lmao), and while I did not expect a second season AT ALL I'm cautiously excited to watch it whenever (if ever) it comes out.

That said, I watched this as a semi-uninformed non-jewish person, and I have no idea how the show actually handled itself from an actually Jewish pov? Should probably look into that, actually.

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Fabulous Beasts

Watched this on Patricia Taxxon's recommendation. It instantly burrowed its way deep into my brain, and now I'm up to date with the webcomic while desperately waiting for Season 5.

Look, it's fucking great. The animation is DELIGHTFULLY smooth and tactile and adorable and,,, Jesus fucking christ do yourself a favor and go watch it on BiliBili's YouTube channel right the fuck now omg.

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BOCCHI THE ROCK!

I am Bocchi, she is me. (Also she's surprisingly trans-coded???)

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Chris Dixon - Read Write Own

Read this on my roommate's recommendation.

It's... Not great. I think Molly White's review conveys my thoughts much more cogently than I could right now, but even if you get past the density of blatant lies and undisclosed conflicts of interest, this book completely fails at what Dixon thought he was setting out to do. It's a borderline masturbatory ego piece written just so he could manipulate NYT ratings into being a best-seller and forcing people to talk about it, the way I am right now, so I am cutting this here.

One of the few books I have ever read that I consider an actual waste of time. Not worth reading; you won't get anything of substance out of it.

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You Shou Yan

Ran to read this as soon as I realized how hooked the donghua had me.

Given it's an extremely long webcomic I don't know where to even begin. It's good and definitely worth reading! It's genuinely funny, the more plot-driven sections are great, and the "mystery" driving most of them remains interesting even as I'm writing this. The ensemble cast is lovely (I don't think there are any characters I dislike so far?), the character designs are great, and my brain chemistry has been permanently altered. Go read it.

Also: it's surprisingly queer???? Like, did NOT expect that at all but I'm very happy to see it.

I would kill and die for Bixie, Sibuxiang and Tuye in that order.

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Colin Jones - The 21st Century Card Counter

This book doesn't have anything you can't find for free on Blackjack Apprenticeship's website. It was a light read that helped boost my "books read this year" stat, at least.

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games - Quarter Tone Sub
sizgud, noiseplay

Nicely bassy IDM. I feel like I've gravitated a bit more towards "headphone music" since I got decent open-backs, and it's been a pretty fun adventure tbh.

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acloudyskye - What Do You Want!
Curses, Dive, Thief!

Massive sounding, also extremely fucking loud. There's a review on the album's Bandcamp page saying it's "on the wrong side of the loudness war, but everything else is so amazing that [they] don't care", and I completely agree.

This feels, in some ways, like the music I would like to make. I'll definitely listen a bit more to it trying to find what makes me like it so much

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acloudyskye - This Won't Be The Last Time
Float, Home

Listened to this one after "What Do You Want!". Honestly, to me they kind of feel like the same album? On a relisten I seem to like this one a bit more, though.

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Jumping Back Slash - Confuse Yrself
Confuse Yrself

Good shit. God fucking damn I should listen to more music from Africa.

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Confío En Tus Amigos - Rápida Comida
Kill el presidente, Bomba, Paco y ladrón, Fobia

I think I found this one through a Bandcamp Daily article? It was nice, it reminded me of music I used to hear on the radio/etc when I was little. lofi garage punk shit is my guilty pleasure.

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Estoy Bien - Apoyo Emocional
Frente a Frente, Ahora

I just really fucking like Chilean indie, something about its sound feels like "home", idk.

"Ahora" rewrote my brain chemistry for like a month when I first listened to it, lol.

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Second Woman - S/W
/, ///, ////, ////\\\

I love it when an album with inscrutable song names just makes noises at me. (Second) girl why u so textures.

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GABUISLOST - all these faces
smile, SOLO SO LONG!, PUNCTURE WOUND, DAMAGE

Doesn't feel like an album I would usually listen to, but for some reason I had this on repeat for like a week upon finding it. "smile" makes me feel similar to when I first listened to Porter Robinson's Nurture or Jeremy Blake's Determinism, for some reason; probably the synths + that voice at the start?

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Woodworm

Found this little game through Aliensrock's video on it. Had a LOT of fun figuring out the little worm's mechanics, and now that I'm writing this I realized there's a Steam version coming out eventually, so I'm super excited for that!

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Replicat

Balatro but with memory game mechanics.

Turns out I suck at memory game???? Much much much deeper (and harder!) than I expected. Had a lot of fun with it for a couple days, but I couldn't keep up with how much constant attention it demands of you ^^;

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Shoujo Kakumei Utena

Holy shit.

Finally watched this with my wife. AMAZING anime, like, by far my favorite I have ever watched. Like, it's absolutely fucking incredible. We didn't stop talking about it (and reading what people thought about it) for the entirety of June, and we're already considering doing a more careful rewatch where we actually consider all the themes from the start.

Utena fucking,,, elevates what anime can be on an artistic level. It's fucking insane to me that this anime is almost as old as me and nothing since can even hope to come to its level. Absolutely incredible. No notes. I feel like I became better at both experiencing and creating Art™ just from watching it.

Holy shit.

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#DRIVE Rally

Mid.

I like the game's aesthetics, and I really appreciate what they were trying to do with the "open world with courses placed on it" approach to map design, but it started getting old extremely fast. That, coupled with the floaty physics and weirdly timed (and kinda obnoxious) co-drivers sadly made me drop the game after around two hours.

I am well aware that this is probably like 90% nostalgia, but I'm still waiting for a rally game that feels as good to me as Colin McRae Rally 2.0 for the Playstation. It came out over 20 years ago, come on!

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Adolescence of Utena

This movie is fucking DRIPPING with themes.

I'm personally of the idea that it's both a sequel and a retelling at the same time. It's Utena coming back to an Ohtori that's falling apart after Akio's death, but it's also Anthy's internal struggle while she's deciding to leave and look for Utena at the end of the anime, y'know? Kind of how End of Evangelion's episodes 25' and 26' are often interpreted as what's going on in the real world during the anime's more abstract episodes 25 and 26.

I really like the car scene as a microcosm for Utena and Anthy's entire relationship and arc, like, holy fucking shit I'm grabbing this movie between my jaws and shaking it vigorously. It's so good.

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K-Pop Demon Hunters

Enjoyed it way more than I thought I would!

I do think the ending kinda goes back on a couple of the movie's themes. If Jinu could "get his soul back" and be redeemed, then all the demons theoretically could! But nope, they just keep killing them and seal them in the underworld to suffer forever (: yaaaaaaaaaay (:

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The Truman Show

FINALLY got around to watching this for the first time.

Fascinating premise for an amazing movie. I did watch it multiple months ago as of writing this so sadly I don't have many thoughts to write about just now, though :c

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Free!

...So that was it?

Pacing is kinda all over the place, many characters are one-dimensional and underutilized, and it's extremely inconsistent about whether conflicts take 10 minutes or multiple episodes to get unsatisfyingly solved.

It's super blatant how a lot of it was made as fujo bait tho, and that was super funny. LOTS of close shots of feet also??? Like, it's super fine, I just couldn't help but notice, y'know?

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Haikyuu!

Some friends had been telling me to watch this since 2019, lmao.

Super good. I don't usually like sports anime too much, but I guess this one proved to be the exception. I do think quality goes down a lot on the last season, though, and I wish the game against Nekoma had gotten a full season like the Shiratorizawa one.

Excitedly waiting for the next movie!

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jesu - Never

Because of You, Never There For You

Listened to this on a whim and it got me right back into shoegaze. Great album, I've found myself returning to it a bunch of times since the first listen, and I'm super glad something finally got me interested in shoegaze again after years completely burned out on the genre.

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Magogaio - Forty Thousand Years

Bleached, Houses

I don't usually listen to metal-related genres, but I'm super glad I listened to this. The noisier parts feel weirdly cozy, especially with the extra smaller synth sounds sprinkled between them.

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Magogaio, Sadness - Magogaio / Sadness

New Skin, 8.00 PM On A Thursday

Listened to this one straight after Forty Thousand Years. Expected to only like Magogaio's part, but I was super pleasantly surprised to enjoy the entire album.

8.00 PM On A Thursday makes me feel nice and comfy in a way I can't quite explain (?)

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Sadness - Rain Chamber

a capture and pink dream moment spike

Dark and noisy but also bright and optimistic.

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Laura Jane Grace - Adventure Club

Active Trauma, Your God, Free Cigarettes

Finally listened to this after the absolute fucking mess that took place around its release. I have (had?) tickets for Laura's show in my country and I was super excited about it, but now I'm not sure if it's actually gonna happen so... Yeah.

As for the album itself, I enjoyed it overall (less than Hole In My Head, though), but it's kinda awkward hearing Paris's voice in it, y'know? Kinda takes me out of it a little. I didn't mind her at all in live performances, and I think all the hate she got from some of Laura's fans was super silly, but now it's just a reminder of that entire mess and... Yeah.

Ironically, this album mostly just got me more into Hole In My Head, which I was just lukewarm about before lol

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Pent Up Pup - FURFAG

CUDDLY, FURFAG

It sounds better than PUP's debut album, like, the production feels better quality than the previous one; it sounds better... But somehow I enjoyed it much less?

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Patricia Taxxon - Ignition

I'm Trying My Best, Maritime, Ice Team, Conspicuous Easement

Delightful album. It feels comforting and, like, optimistic, in a way?

Feels like a nice mix of Patty's more recent IDM music with her older pop-y music. Comfortable and confident in what it is and what it can do, in a way? Like, when she announced it on her YouTube channel she called it a depression recovery album, so I didn't expect it to be bright-sounding, but it makes a lot of sense in a way? It makes me feel like stuff is gonna be okay. idk.

I rly like Patty's singing voice. Conspicuous Easement is a fucking treat to listen to; been humming it since it came out lmao.

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Tokyo Shoegazer - Crystallize

299 Addiction, Bright

More kitty album art for my collection.

I love this album's sound layering. Been listening to it almost on repeat this week.

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Dino Sort

I'm not completely sure how I found this game, but I'm glad I did. Fun little PICO-8 puzzle game. Enjoyed it a lot

Fucking SCREAMED when I saw the level clear animation lol

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Pizza Possum

Played through this in one sitting with my wife. It was fun~

I have some issues with its progression, like, I kinda wish it stopped the game for a second to unlock items mid-run instead of waiting for you to lose before doing so. If you're playing on multiplayer, it's much harder for both of you to get caught at the same time, so it puts you in an awkward position where you are super late into the game before you unlock even the first item

LOVED the splitscreen system. It always felt like it was using the screen in the best possible way for both players to have a good sense of their surroundings, and my wife (who usually can't play splitscreen games) didn't get motion sick with it, so hey, shoutouts!

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I Care A Lot

It's a fun enough movie, though it falls a bit into a generic #girlboss vibe that gets dangerously close to fumbling its themes.

I did spend a huge chunk of the movie yelling at the screen because it fucking looked like everyone was trying to get caught doing stupid shit, though, so there's that.

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