MUSIC: – Brat - Charli XCX (album) – Submarine - The Marias (album) – NoLand - Reymour (album) – Silence Is Loud - Nia Archives (album) – The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess - Chappell Roan (album) – 2093 - Yeat (album) – GNX - Kendrick Lamar (album) – last liasse - helen island (album)

– nightcore4totalsluts va5 xo - various artists (collection)

GAMES: – Balatro – Season 5 of Deep Rock Galactic

Honestly thats it. I watched like 4 Movies but all of them were not released in 2024. . . . Next Year . . . I guess... Stay tuned!!!!

Visible starts with roaring synths. Great imposing waves lashing into every direction, summoning the image of a primordial chaos crashing down on us. The instrument sounds like it's being played by a mad scientist who has found her test tubes and machinery replaced with an electronic keyboard. The first of four "sound expansive audio experiments" Daedelus released this past year, Visible sees the veteran artist reinvent themself. The second track, "Oft-Kilter", is still using the same sound palette as the intro but enacts a lot more control on each of its components. Here and there you can hear single elements breaking out of formation, like wild sparks off a campfire, but all this does is draw attention to that singular vision driving it forward. The chaos has committed to a form. Scattered over the year Daedelus released three more follow-ups, the first of which was the hopefully romantic Way Out!(I really recommend this one!). The latter two songs of the EP see a sudden evolution taking place. The vocals on "Gait" are mercilessly side-chained and whipped around by an irregular heartbeat. A machine that knows no master. The great beast is moving; its inevitable implosion delayed.

Dragon's Dogma is a game that, in my opinion, was far ahead of its time - it had so many weird, unique and interesting features that made it something truly special. However, the game was also infamously rushed, with many aspects feeling very obviously unfinished. Its highs surpassed that of many other games, but its lows made it a tedious and frustrating experience. I always saw a ton of potential in this game, and I felt that a proper sequel could finally make Dragon's Dogma the game it was meant to be.

This year, we finally received that sequel – to a divisive reception. The game was surrounded by controversy at launch (mainly due to Capcom doing what they always do...), and even within the fanbase many people seemed to dislike Dragon's Dogma 2. HOWEVER, in my personal opinion, this game is almost exactly what I wanted out of a sequel – the things that the original did well are even better in the sequel, and many of the aspects I didn't like were improved by a whole lot. The only thing that really stuck out to me as a negative was the music – while it's not bad, I found it to be rather generic and less exciting than in the first game – who thought that removing the guitars was a good idea? But regardless... While I still think these games have some untapped potential, I immediately knew that DD2 was going to be my personal game of the year. If you like games with unconventional design, Dragon's Dogma 2 (and the first game too!) is a definite must-play.

Safe to say that this was my song of (the) summer. After stumbling over it by the grace of the algorithm – one of the artists had posted a meme video of people dancing to it – I was enchanted in an instant. 一刻的永久，亦是一刻的念頭 (A Glimpse of Forever, also a Glimpse of Thought) mixes pop and electronic music so effortlessly and with such seeming carefreeness. It quickly turned into my go-to soundtrack for breezy spring days. This is music for a time when the evenings aren’t yet filled with the excess heat of the day, but summer is all you can think about. Longing for another coming of age, not noticing in the moment that you are living through it, forever.

Btw, a month after this song, Carson Leung and Ryanleeisgod released 有出口 無盡頭 (There’s an exit, there’s no end), an entire album swimming in the murky waters of summer nostalgia. I especially loved “大 PK”. (Here are the lyrics for the album posted by Leung, http://tumblr.com/exitend)

Here are a few of my favourite things I’ve either found or started to really love this year!

ALBUMS – Skeleton Tree : Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds – Ghosteen : Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds – L’amour : Lewis – How to Rescue Things : Bill Orcutt – Something For Real : Kiefer – Speak To Me : Julian Lage – Masada Live In Sevilla 2000 : John Zorn – Leonard Book of Angels, Vol. 30 : John Zorn / Garth Knox – Love Apple : Love Apple – Ocean Songs : Dirty Three – Wisdom Through Music : Pharao Sanders – The Inner Mounting Flame : Mahavishnu Orchestra – The Complete Savoy Master Takes : Erroll Garner – This Is a Photograph : Kevin Morby

BOOKS – Cuba and its Music: From the First Drums to the Mambo : Ned Sublette – Faith, Hope and Carnage : Nick Cave / Sean O’Hagan – The Songlines : Bruce Chatwin – The Dubliners : James Joyce – Das Jazz Buch : Joachim - Ernst Berendt / Günther Heumann

In her seminal work On the Ethics of Boinking Animal People Patricia Taxxon lays out the groundwork for what can only be called furry philosophy. In her quest to define ‘furry’ (which she does an incredible job at btw, watch the video!) she ends up at the concept of “transcendental furriness”. Bicycle is her conscious attempt at emulating this essence into fractured, textural and thoroughly tactile (THE FUCKING BIKE SOUNDS omfg) 46 minutes of electronic music. It all led up to this: When the ambient swells of “Brotherhood” reach their fuzzy summit, when the interlocking rhythmic loops of “Big Wheel” or “Frat Claws” hit that precise locomotive pocket, when Taxxon’s husky vocal performance on “Cavalry” enters; All lines between the senses blur, haptic or auditory, it all melts into each other. In face of this overwhelming force of sincerity your fur will stand up in awe.

ARTISTS: – Julia Soboleva (Illustrations/Photography) – Elizaveta Porodina (Photography) – Szilvester Mako (Photography) – Alfred Kubin (Drawings) – Joel Peter Witkin (Photographer) – Madame d’Ora (Austrian Photographer)

MUSIC: – Jazz! – Cesária Évora (Genre called Morna) – the song Tom The Model by Beth Gibbons – Crime & the City Solution – Tuxedomoon – Bulgarian folk music but modern covers

MOVIES: – The Double Life of Veronique – The Fall – The Adventures of Priscilla the Desert Queen – Cabaret – Daisies

FOOD: – Flammkuchen – Red Beet with Feta cheese – Ayran! – Sweet potato fries with cinnamon and honey

prblm is looking for the soul inside the machine; Plucking sounds out of the digital ether;

Veire Dawf may appear simple on a first listen, but on closer inspection it is a carefully layered balancing act. The concept: Spoken word over musical poetry. The resulting sound is somewhere between quinn and Ecco2k. prblm has this otherworldly sense where he seems to know exactly what parts he can and can't take away without collapsing the song structure in its entirety, leaving something familiar and alien at the same time. This is what all the best Novagang projects sound like. Deconstruction and reconstruction. Somehow prblm elevates this style while staying utterly loyal to it. To me, Veire Dawf sounds like an intricately designed coffin, a delicate winter rose – shock-frozen, a moment caught in time, the splash of a raindrop on a glassy day. Fog hanging overhead. The wind blowing