Week 1.25: BLixTape #5 playlist, travel planning

Happy new year!

I was looking through my archives to see what happened this time last year and found that I did a fun “music awards” post in late December, which I don’t have the energy for this time around. However, I can pick three personal favorites.

Song of the year: Not Like Us — Watching the Kendrick and Drake beef unfold in real time while on vacation in Hong Kong, waking up each morning to hear yet another song released while we slept, and then having this incredible, perfect banger drop at the end? It was a great time to be alive.

Album of the year: It’s a tie between Audrey Nuna’s TRENCH and Maggie Rogers’ Don’t Forget Me. Audrey stretched the fuck out of her sound in the most creative manner possible, to the point that Apple Music classifies the album not as Hip-Hop, but Indie Pop. Like a great Kanye album, it’s filled with little moments that anyone else would have turned into whole songs — this is an album of sonic riches and solid vibes. In contrast, Maggie’s is a streamlined, quickly recorded distillation of everything that makes her great, without extraneous electronic production or gimmicks. Just ten great songs with a band. I must have played it a dozen times when it came out.

A playlist

While I didn’t get around to making my customary “best of the year” playlist (usually titled Listening Remembering 20xx), I did finish compiling BLixTape #5, which is a bunch of songs I enjoyed between June and December. Taken along with the previous installment, it gives a similar picture, although not strictly made up of songs released in 2024.

You can listen to it here on Apple Music, ideally with crossfading activated (3 seconds is my setting). I won’t be putting it on Spotify, and after everything they’ve been caught doing in the past year, I don’t understand how any music lover could stay with them.

Tracks:

1. Pimp — Bacao Rhythm & Steel Band
2. tv off (feat. Lefty Gunplay) — Kendrick Lamar
3. Big Dawgs — Hanumankind & Kalmi
4. Mamushii (Remix) [feat. TWICE] — Megan Thee Stallion
5. NOBODY KNOWS — Killer Mike & Anthony Hamilton
6. Suckin Up — AUDREY NUNA
7. NISSAN ALTIMA — Doechii
8. Outta Da Blue — Snoop Dogg, Dr. Dre & Alus
9. IYKYK — XG
10. Timing Desho (feat. Awich) — STUTS
11. Just Me — Old Man Saxon
12. ten — Fred again.., Jozzy & Jim Legxacy
13. Girl, so confusing featuring lorde — Charli xcx & Lorde
14. Eusexua — FKA twigs
15. We Are Making Out — Mura Masa & yeule
16. Scumbag — ROLE MODEL
17. Creatures in Heaven — Glass Animals
18. Petco — Cassandra Jenkins
19. In The Living Room — Maggie Rogers
20. Beaches — beabadoobee
21. So Glad You Made It — Fantastic Cat
22. Empty Spaces — Eliot Bronson
23. Our Town — Iris DeMent
24. Lately — Fiona Apple
25. Kaze Wo Atsumete — Happy End
26. Fear When You Fly — Cleo Sol
27. Wildfires — Sault
28. Darlin’ — Jean Dawson
29. This Is Who I Am (From “The Day of Tomorrow”) — Celeste
30. Free Fallin’ (feat. Kina Grannis) — Imaginary Future

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Japan, again

We got back from Langkawi on Monday and immediately started to stress about our upcoming trip to Japan, which has only been a foggy plan to hang out in Tokyo and eat a lot of curry rice, at least on my part. We’ve at least confirmed where we’re going to stay: a sort of serviced apartment unit that’s twice the size of a regular hotel room, for less money. How’s that possible? There’ll be no housekeeping, and the location isn’t as convenient as the hotel we were considering (but still within core Tokyo and walking distance to bus and train stations).

Since I don’t have any pressing need to return when Kim does, I plan on staying on a little longer on my own. Maybe another 10 days, which should be enough time to crawl every floor of Yodobashi Camera and drink my weight in highballs. Who am I kidding? It’ll be the middle of winter and I’ll probably stay in bed with my Switch and watch Japanese daytime TV.

People sometimes say it feels like I go to Japan a lot, but honestly it’s only every three years or so, on average. This will be the longest vacation of my life, and I’ll finally be like one of those people I’m always meeting who say unbelievable, envy-inducing things like, “I visit Tokyo three or four times a year, just to shop and eat”, and that casually tossed-out favorite: “Oh, I was just in Tokyo for a month”.

I’m looking forward to visiting the Tokyo Photographic Art Museum in Meguro, among many others. We gave it a miss the last time around, so it’s been at least six years since we visited. The same goes for the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum in Ueno, and the National Art Center, Tokyo.

Pure photographic exhibitions seem like a rarity here, so when we heard one was on now at the National Museum of Singapore, it became the plan for the second day of the new year. Amazônia, by Sebastião Salgado, is one of the best uses I’ve seen of the basement gallery space at the National Museum (usually turned into a linear maze with temporary walls). This time, it’s an open space with loose walls created by the photographs themselves. The show is a mix of these large, suspended landscape prints and smaller, intimate portraits of Amazonian tribes, some of them still living by their ancient ways and getting odd facial piercings that most modern-world deviants wouldn’t emulate.

Media Activity

• We finished the second season of Shrinking, the lovable Apple TV+ series that probably does therapy more of a disservice than it intends to. Harrison Ford actually gives a shit here (unlike his other cash grabs), and it’s some of his best work. Recommended.
• I saw two films involving (false?) choices behind doors.
• Sliding Doors (1998) is a film I bought on a pirated VCD like 25 years ago and never got around to watching. I imagined it to be a slick 90s rom-com, but it comes in with slightly low-budget vibes. Maybe Gwyneth wasn’t a big star yet? There’s some slightly clumsy editing, and some shots don’t work. But you can feel the writer/director’s passion for this story coming through, and it’s an alright weekend film. 3 stars.
• Heretic (2024) is the latest installment of Hugh Grant playing against rom-com type, and it seems to be an immensely popular career move. I largely enjoyed the film, which is part-horror, part-media history and religious lecture. That is, up until the ending. 2.5 stars.