Humor
- Aquilus - Bellum I: black metal, neo-folk
- Boys Noize - +/-: techno, industrial
- clipping. - Wriggle (Expanded): hip-hop, industrial hip-hop, horror
- Dave Quam - Greasemania Vol 3: experimental, electronic
- Dawn of Ashes - Blood of Titans (Remixes): industrial, aggrotech
- Drumcorps - For the Living: breakcore, experimental
- Faderhead - Years of the Serpent: industrial, ebm
- Gelassenheit - Gelassenheit: black metal, christian
- Gelassenheit - …Don Thyself in the Armor ov God: black metal, christian
- Hollywood Burns - The Age of Saucers: soundtrack (to nothing), synth
- Heliocentric - Ishmael: metalcore, djent
- Keygen Church - ░█░█░░█░█░█░: electronic, black metal
- Noise Unit - Deviator: ebm
- Spiritbox - Eternal Blue: metalcore, djent
- TesseracT - Portals: progressive metal, prog rock
- Thou - Hightower: sludge, doom
- Violence - Opus I: industrial, metal, crossover
- Virtual Terrorist - Gutter Mixes Vol 2: industrial, noise
- Between the Buried and Me - Colors II: progressive metal, jazz metal
- Note: some of their music is on bandcamp, but not this album, yet. Likely a problem with their current label
- Bo Burnham - Inside: humor, satire
- Note: I also referenced the special in my 2021 Watching Recommendations
- Demon Hunter - Songs of Death and Resurrection: non-metal-versions-of-their-metal-tracks
- For King & Country - Burn the Ships Deluxe Edition: gospel, pop
- Silent Planet - Iridescent: metalcore, homework core
- The Ezra Klein Show: deep conversations on topics of the political economy
- Just Plain Wrong: hilarious reviews of Amish fiction, from 3 Mennonite librarians
- The Peter Attia Drive: health science interviews and deep dives, I am a paid subscriber
- Risky Business: cybersecurity news
- Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me!: a comedic game show about the week’s news
- Your local theater - enjoyed (even via streaming) renditions of Tuesdays with Morrie, Cyrano, and A Christmas Carol
- See Season 1 - terrifying, mesmerizing, and incredible
- Rememory - contemplative and crushing
- Dear White People Season 2 - very well done
- Resident Alien Season 1 - Alan Tudyk is great in this mishmash of all the genres into a single show
- John Oliver on Raids - Raids are devastating and almost never necessary.
- John Oliver on Sponsored Content - All ad-driven news creates perverse incentives, but sponsored content is particularly bad
- Canadians rescue the USA national anthem - brilliant use of harmony
- The Sinner Season 3 - more terribly haunting than the first two seasons, combined
- The Commute: Walking 90km to Work - another incredibly documentary from Beau Miles
- Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Season 1 - in release order of Trek shows, this is my favorite, so far
- Kim’s Convenience Seasons 1–2 - fun sitcom, though it got a little formulaic by season 3 and we got tired of the “people didn’t communicate” trope as the main plot driver
- Endeavour Season 5 - I love the attention to atmosphere in this series. It feels like a (modern) history lesson every time, too. Warning: every episode of this show seems to end on a melancholy note, literally and figuratively.
- I Am Mother - I’d love to discuss this sci-fi suspense!
- The Falcon and the Winter Soldier Season 1 - This felt like the most “comic book” of the MCU so far, due to the everybody having to fight everybody, etc. Great preaching from Sam at the end of the season.
- Venom - utterly ridiculous and a lot of fun
- Blade - rewatched this; interesting to hear Blade will be coming into the MCU
- Fantastic Planet - totally original french animated scifi from 1973
- Mr. Show Seasons 1–3 - some of this didn’t age well, but I love sketch comedy and their take on the Python-esque surreal sketch transitions
- Tenet - this was an instant purchase
- Line of Duty Season 1 - What a wild ride! I had to space these out because they were so provocative, complex, and intense. Season 2 not recommended.
- A Black Lady Sketch Show Season 2 - Not as good as season 1, but still good sketch comedy
- Love, Death & Robots Season 2 - Not as mind-altering as Season 1, but still full of incredible experiments
- Self/less - Good, interesting. Would have been even better with more of a Christopher Nolan treatment and less of a Product Placement treatment.
- 🎶 Welcome to the Internet - “could I interest you in everything all of the time?“ Lots of good critique in this hilarious self-produced music video. Full special here.
- Primal Fear - Very late to the party on this one. Surprised I didn’t see this back when it came out, as it was definitely my kind of movie. A little dated and a little predictable, but still very enjoyable and worth a discussion.
- 🎶 Tiny Desk Concert: clipping. - this is the first actual tiny desk concert, and the start of my obsession with clipping. (Stay tuned for Listening Recommendations)
- The Suicide Squad - Ludicrous, gory, and hilarious. I’m not much of a DC guy, but this was some wicked fun.
- 🎶 Marc Rebillet and Madison McFerrin - incredible looping and improv chemistry
- Middleditch & Schwartz - long-form improv comedy
- Ted Lasso Season 2 - not as good as season 1, but still challenging, human, and funny
- Foundation Season 1 - Unnecessarily brutal at at times (and I mean the storytelling, not the content…some details don’t need to be on the screen), but otherwise very good
- Soul - Heartbreaking at times, but a beautiful movie
- 2021 Recommended Products & Services (incl. those related to watching)
- See last year’s writeup here.
“You shall go out with gor”
Security birb
🔎 Gotta darken this up and then use it to release a symphonic folk black metal album. 🎶
Malcolm Gladwell came to our executive meeting today and it was a neat conversation with our leaders.
Note: I did not play the Mennonite Game with him.
We were talking to the youth group about how most of tonight’s performers are from our era.
A youth, totally serious: “Snoop Dogg is in his 80s”
Us: 😆
Still serious: “Yeah, and he’s like dating Martha Stewart!”
2021 Recommendations - Listening 🎶🎙
As I mentioned in my 2021 Product & Service Recommendations, I primarily use Plex + Plexamp for listening to music (and Marvis Pro on the go), and track listens in Last.fm. I listen to podcasts in Overcast.fm.
I’ll cover a little bit about my listening habits, then share top albums and top podcasts.
Music Overview
Here’s a rough map of my top genres over the year:
If none of those genres are of interest to you, you may just want to skip down to podcasts, otherwise you’re going to be scratching your head (or even recoiling) at a bunch of “weird music”.
And here were the top 20 artists:
Thanks to last.fm and tuneR, I can see that three bands were new to my top 20 this year: clipping., Silent Planet, and Joyhauser.
I got tuned in to clipping. via a friend on Bandcamp, but as I mentioned in my 2021 Watching recommendations, became a fan after watching their NPR (actually!) Tiny Desk Concert. If you start to watch the video and are like “wait, I know him”, then you’re probably right. Hamilton, Snowpiercer, and Central Park are just a few of Daveed Diggs’s major credits.
Silent Planet has been a fave of mine for a while, so I’m surprised this was the first time they broke the top 20. In addition to making great music, frontman Garrett Russell is a brilliant lyricist, delving passionately and intelligently into political and spiritual themes. (You may remember I’m slowly working on a readthrough of all the books referenced in just one of their tracks.)
Joyhauser is simply great thumping beats for when you need to focus or keep moving.
Albums
Unlike my other reviews, I restricted my specific album recommendations to ones that were released this year, so as to not have an overwhelming list.
On Bandcamp
Honorable Mentions that are not on Bandcamp (boo!)
Podcasts
Just thinking about how American it is to advertise sweets for three months, gyms for a month, and then sweets again in February.
It’s a shame they didn’t make any sequels to The Matrix. It was such a good movie.
Also a shame I keep having to make this joke.
Also, I find the lack of Juno Reactor just insulting.
2021 Recommendations - Watching 📺
Further Reading:
Comment during sharing, today:
“I’ve been on the prayer list since Menno Simons was a little boy. Thank you!”
😆🕊
It’s pretty ok this morning I guess
🎶 I think it might be a Bandcamp Friday? 🤣
You can see where anime comes from, once you’ve seen red pandas.
Ok, you know about raking leaves in the fall, but have you ever raked pond leaves? 😆
Quake II is still a great album 🎶
Still think I’ll get a Steam Deck and Play.Date before I can find a PS5
🤞 maybe Facebook can just stay down? 🤞
Ok, so they may reboot Babylon 5, but on the CW?
Yay for more B5…but not sure how they will make it work as a “teens with powers” series?
Maybe it’s all about the psi-corps now?