Music

Music I most enjoyed discovering this quarter:

• I Like to Sleep: Sleeping Beauty (2022)
• Quadratum [Unlucky Morpheus]: “The Dance of Eternity” (2021)
• Mason Bates: Piano Concerto (2022)

Rediscovered or revisited, and really liked:

• Ensemble 4’33”: Hearts of 4’33” (1998), Taxidermy (1999), Happiness, Fame, and Fortune (2002)
• Jim Guthrie: “The Prettiest Weed” (2011)
• Tobias Jesso Jr.: “Hollywood” (2013)
• Kettel & Secede: “Fullmoon” (2012)
• Labrinth: “Jealous” (2014)
• Miracles of Modern Science: “Secret Track” (2011)
• Simeon ten Holt: Canto Ostinato (comp. 1976, rel. 1988)
• Dafnis Prieto: Taking the Soul for a Walk (2008)
• Donny McCaslin: Casting for Gravity (2012)
• Arve Henriksen: “Glacier Descent” (2007)
• Kneebody: Kneebody (2005), Low Electrical Worker (2008), Anti-Hero (2017)
• Partikel: String Theory (2015)
• Elephant9: Silver Mountain (2015)
• Mason Bates: Mothership [album] (2015), Works for Orchestra (2016)
• Anna Meredith: Varmints (2016)
• The Moonlandingz: Interplanetary Class Classics (2017)
• Daniel Herskedal & Marius Neset: Neck of the Woods (2012)
• Fly: Fly (2009)
• Jonathan Finlayson & Sicilian Defense: Moving Still (2016)
• Angles 9: Injuries (2014)
• The Kandinsky Effect: Pax 6 (2017)
• Rubblebucket: Survival Sounds (2014)
• Hammock: Mysterium (2017)
• Vitor Araújo: Levaguiã terê (2016)
• Sunwatchers: II (2018)
• Ex Orkeest: Een rondje Holland (2001)
• Schnellertollermeier: “Rights” (2017)
• Setna: Guerison (2013)
• Inomata, Takeshi: Jazz Rock in Stravinsky (1970)
• Eiliff: Eiliff (1971)
• Sameer Gupta: A Circle Has No Beginning (2018)
• Swollen Monkeys: After the Birth of the Cool (1981)
• Sharon van Etten: “Comeback Kid” (2019)
• Buke & Gase: Riposte (2010)
• Theon Cross: Fyah (2019)
• Alaskalaska: The Dots (2019)
• Joel Ross: KingMaker (2019)
• Echo Collective: Plays Amnesiac (2018)
• Mesadorm: Heterogaster (2018)
• Bad Luck: Four (2018)
• Brandt Brauer Frick: Miami (2013)
• The Dance: Dance for Your Dinner (1980)
• Les McCann: Invitation to Openness (1971)
• Buddy Terry: Pure Dynamite (1972)
• Allison Miller: Glitter Wolf (2019)
• Fieldwork: Simulated Progress (2005)
• Emmanuel Booz: Dans quel etat j’erre (1979)

Movies/TV

Ones I “really liked” (no star), or “loved” (star):

• Dong-hyuk, Squid Game, season 1 (2021)
• Ostlund, Triangle of Sadness (2022)
• Various, Veep, season 1 (2012)
• Various, Maid (2021)
• Various, Bad Sisters, season 1 (2022)
• Various, Veep, seasons 2-7 (2013-2019) ★
• Duplass & Cohen, Somebody Somewhere, season 1 (2022)
• McDonagh, The Banshees of Inisherin (2022) ★
• Reijn, Bodies Bodies Bodies (2022)
• Dominik, Blonde (2022)
• Aronofsky, The Whale (2022) ★
• Glover & Murai, Atlanta, seasons 3-4 (2022)
• Various, Fleishman Is in Trouble (2022)
• Various, The Last of Us (2023) ★
• Iannucci, The Thick of It, seasons 1-3 (2005-2009)
• Various, The Plot Against America (2020)

Games

From now on I’ll just list all games I bothered to finish:

• Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla. A huge game, with several systems improved relative to previous entries. Quests and gameplay get too similar after a while. As always, the parkour system leads to janky movement fairly often. The world is less interesting and memorable than that of e.g. Elden Ring or BotW. I like that you can climb almost any surface like in BotW, but unfortunately there’s no quick safe way down from great heights.
• Outer Wilds. A unique game that deserves its accolades. For some players, its first half may be among their best videogame experiences. I liked much of it, but for me the unforgiving checkpointing system led to too much tedious repetition, needing to replay the same 10 minutes of actions again and again because I missed a single jump. More hardcore gamers will be fine with this but these days I just like to experience all a game has to offer roughly as quickly as I can. Because of the checkpointing I didn’t technically finish Outer Wilds but I came close.
• Hades. I’ve never liked roguelikes because the auto-generated levels aren’t interesting enough and permadeath is so unforgiving, but the gameplay mechanics and progression system in this case were addicting enough that I kept at it until I completed my first run past the final boss. For the first time I’m interested to try other roguelikes, so that’s a win for Hades.

Books

• Reeves, Of Boys and Men.
  • Commits the usual sins of social science / policy books such as presenting correlational evidence as causal and so on, but my guess is that Reeves is at least very roughly on the right track, and I’m happy to see the case made in a relatively balanced, nuanced, and compassionate way rather than by the usual raging misogynists.