sangsara.net

Tag: Music

  • Week 49.24

    Week 49.24

    I’ll try for a shorter bullet point update this week.

    • It’s hard to believe we’re already done with the first week of December. Every year, I say Christmas crept up on me and I don’t feel it coming at all. Now I accept that it’s just the nature of Christmas in the tropics (without winter), and if I don’t surround myself with visual signifiers of the season, the mind forgets what the body doesn’t feel.
    • Nintendo released Animal Crossing Pocket Camp Complete, the offline, self-contained, definitive version of their mobile AC game, and I decided to buy it after all. I played the live service version briefly when it came out, but soon decided I didn’t like the in-app purchase model. This is much better. So much better, in fact, that I have spent several hours this weekend fishing and harvesting fruit.
    • The game was actually mentioned in my first-ever weekly post back in July 2020. After 7 years of iteration, it now feels like a massive game with tons of content (clothing and furniture to buy and craft) and new functionality bolted on. Currently, it’s snowing in the world and the seasonal events have got my campsite decorated with sleighs and piles of gifts and I’m wearing a reindeer hat… and dare I say? It kind of feels like Christmas is coming.
    • If you’re playing too, add me to your world with the Camper Card below! I believe it’s just a one-way thing, and we won’t get to interact for real since there are no servers involved. And don’t forget, the game is half price now and will go up to $20 at the end of January 2025.
    • We collected our Zeiss Optical Inserts for Vision Pro (prescription lenses that click in magnetically), and the setup experience was pretty cool. The device detects that they’re in, and makes you redo the eye setup process. Then it registers the new lenses on your profile by having you look at a QR code printed inside the box. Given that my contact lenses are “weaker” than my regular glasses, I’m now seeing everything in the Vision Pro with even more clarity than I was before.
    • Leica fixed a deal-breaking bug in Leica LUX where your preference of ProRAW or HEIF file format wasn’t remembered between sessions. They also fixed some other small things that bothered me but aren’t worth mentioning. This makes it a viable camera app for everyday use because it gets you HEIF files with the gentler/less sharpened look of shooting in ProRAW. Plus you can choose a “Leica Look” color profile to start from, and non-destructively try others or revert to the underlying original photo afterwards. I like it enough to put a shortcut on my Lock Screen.
    • Our home broadband plan was up for renewal, and I got a call from the company to that effect. They wanted me to give the last 4 digits of my national ID number over the phone for verification before they would even tell me anything. “How do I verify you’re really from the company?”, I asked. “Can you tell me something you know about me?”, I offered, to which they said “We can’t share any customer information”, and agreed when I asked if I was just supposed to trust them. I said that didn’t work for me, and so they could just send me whatever special offers they wanted via email instead.
    • The offer was fine, and I decided to stick with them for another two years because it’s the best price I’ve seen anywhere. And as a bonus, we’ll be getting an upgrade to a 10gbps line. We’ll only be utilizing a maximum of 2.5gbps though, because that’s the maximum supported wired input on the WiFi 6E router I just got a few months ago.
    • Renovation noises at home continued, and someone lodged a complaint with the housing board against our new neighbor’s contractors. It wasn’t us, but I can see how this might not be the warm welcome anyone would hope for. There are also reports from other residents that they’ve been seeing ceiling leaks during the recent storms, and mysteriously, these are people lower down in the building! Fingers crossed this doesn’t grow to affect us, because I can’t take any more drama.
    • One noisy afternoon, I decided to finally pay a visit to my local library branch after talking about it for the last six months, and… it’s not much to write home about. Lots of retirees sitting around playing Pokémon Go and reading magazines. Afterwards I decided to eat at Yakiniku Like, a place that seems well designed for solo diners. I got my own little personal grill, and ate 200g of beef short plate with 300g of rice (and a huge mound of shredded cabbage) for a little over $20 and went home very happy.
    • We went out for a much nicer dinner on Thursday, checking out Hayop on Jose’s recommendation. It’s affiliated with the Manam restaurant in Manila, a fact that only landed as I was looking at the menu — I ate there a couple of times back in 2019 when I was there for work. The prices here have been proportionately raised, but the food is nearly as good as I remembered, so that’s fair. I like Filipino food because it respects the power of pork fat.
    Testing the Leica Lux app with these
    • It turns out that writing bullet points ≠ shorter updates when you’re a typer-yapper like me.
    • I wanted to binge an entire anime series in a week and decided to go with Summertime Rendering. It’s a time loop story that feels like a visual novel game adaptation, but actually started as a manga series. I was hoping more for sci-fi but it’s really a supernatural thing. At 25 episodes, it became a bit of a slog near the end as the multiple timelines became too convoluted to follow. Don’t really recommend.
    • Netflix released a new 6-part spy series called Black Doves, starring Keira Knightley and Ben Whislaw (aka Q in recent James Bond films, and the voice of Paddington). I was optimistic, but while it’s not as bad as most Netflix shows, it still suffers from the Marvel-ization of popular culture where any seriousness or suspense is immediately undercut by comic relief before it can mean anything. That’s not the only problem with it, but the result is a show that feels like background fodder for phone fiddling.
    • Months after the Katseye moment, we watched the Pop Star Academy show that shows their formation and training over two years. It was interesting to see non-Asian idols like Lexie chafe against unethical manipulation in light of HYBE’s recent troubles with NewJeans. I don’t think the industry’s current models will hold up well as talent starts to realize they hold the keys to their fandoms and can stream online on their own. It’s like K-Pop’s In Rainbows moment.
    • I also think HYBE made a strategic error in greenlighting this behind-the-scenes show with Netflix, and it’s translated into Katseye’s failure to take off with an international (beyond K-Pop) audience. Fans of J-Pop and K-Pop aren’t surprised to see the rough training and emotional abuse their idols go through, but people seeing that shit for the first time probably feel terrible about supporting the whole business, especially when adult music execs gleefully admit on camera that they fucked with the teenaged girls’ trust in each other to create more drama.
    • Yiwen shared her Spotify Wrapped on IG and I learnt about the artist known as Night Tempo, a self-proclaimed “retro culture curator” who puts out city pop-inflected music that sounds exactly like how the perfect night drive must feel. Check out his latest album, Connection on Apple Music.
    • For something less weeby and more eclectic, Jean Dawson’s new album Glimmer of God is worth a playthrough. I’m going to be putting the opening song Darlin’ on playlists for quite awhile, I’m sure.
    • ROSÉ’s debut album rosie dropped, and what I’ve heard so far sounds like competent pop with a teenaged guitar girl’s poetry notebook slant. That’s not a knock; it’s as satisfying a sub-genre as a sad man’s whiskey-soaked heartbreak blues. I’m still feeling good about my prediction that she’ll turn out to be the most musically interesting Blackpink alum.
  • Week 48.24

    Week 48.24

    It’s been a minute since I checked the National Gallery out, so I wasn’t sure what Peishan and I would find when we dropped by on Tuesday afternoon. Fortunately, there were some new SE Asian pieces either freshly out on rotation, or that I’d forgotten, and there was enough to see without having to shell out for the special exhibits.

    There’s plenty of time to see them yet, as they don’t refresh things very often. I looked it up online later, and some of the stuff we saw will be on display for 3–4 more years. Apparently only 10% of the total collection (stored somewhere in Jurong) can be on display at any one time, so I don’t know why they rotate so infrequently. Show me more of the stuff before I die, dammit.

    We went by because Peishan took the day off and we’d planned to have lunch nearby. It struck me that I haven’t been appreciating the privilege of my free time enough — I should be doing things like this on my own more often.

    We saw a brilliant video artwork series of Thai farmers and villagers sitting on the ground out in the fields, contemplating large Western paintings set up in front of them, casually discussing what they saw. Just saying things like “The man is sleeping soundly. He looks happy because they’ve harvested so much food”. I wanted to stand there and watch it in its hour-long entirety when it struck me that there’s nothing stopping me from coming back another day to do that. To be one of those people who has a whole hour to spend sitting in front of one painting. So maybe I will!

    ===

    My mother-in-law (who has no stomach for violence or misery) came to stay with us for a couple of days, which meant that I could only watch the family-friendly movies from my collection and MUBI watchlist. We started with Charade (1963), a classic I can’t believe I’d never seen before. Audrey Hepburn was a phenomenon — utterly faultless and impossible to look away from. With Cary Grant we’ve got our modern day version in George Clooney, but I don’t know who could ever be like Audrey.

    We also watched Futura (2021), an Italian docu-feature where young people across the country were interviewed about their hopes and dreams. To me, it only reinforced the idea of Europe in decline, and yet maybe that’s… okay? What’s so bad about living in the shadow of a greater civilization and inhabiting what’s left of their magnificent buildings. Someone’s gotta do it.

    And then a movie that has been so hyped up by everyone who’s seen it that there was little chance it would live up: Paddington (2014). Nicolette, whose cats we also visited this week (see below), was a major promoter and reckons it’s a five-star film. I gave it 3.5 but plan to watch the sequel soon—I think it’ll fare better now that my expectations are properly calibrated.

    I was left to my own questionable watchlist on Thursday and Friday, which meant seeing Festen (1998), the first official ‘Dogme 95’ film (painful in its overall ugliness); Ema (2019), a dance-centric exploration of fucked up families and urban frustration starring Gael García Bernal and Mariana Di Girolamo as two assholes who adopt a kid; and In the Fade (2017), a German revenge story with Diane Kruger avenging her son being blown to bits by modern-day Nazis.

    The absolute standout film of the week was So Long, My Son (2019), a Chinese language film by Wang Xiaoshuai with a three-hour running time. It follows two families over a period of three decades, living with tragedy and being tossed around by the rapid, true-story evolution of Chinese society. I expected the time to pass slowly but everything was handled with such authenticity and emotional power that I hardly noticed.

    On TV, we caught up on season 2 of Netflix’s Rhythm + Flow rap competition reality show, and none of the contestants are really standing out the way Flawless Real Talk and D-Smoke did in the first season. It looks like Netflix decided to cheap out and rush the audition process, basically only holding one in Atlanta whereas S1 held them in three cities. So it never feels like you’re seeing the very best talent the streets have to offer.

    The main effect of watching the show so far has been an increased desire to play Kendrick Lamar’s new GNX album on repeat. It also made look up Old Man Saxon from S1, so was delighted to find that he released a new EP and single recently.

    ===

    It was Thanksgiving week in the US, and trust me I tried to find a Black Friday deal that I wanted to spend on, but the only things I’ve bought for myself on Amazon were cheap alkaline batteries from Japan (the Verbatim brand is alive and well there!) and several boxes of Yorkshire Gold tea.

    It feels weird, spending hours online and hardly finding anything I want to buy. On Sunday we spent a few hours at the Paragon mall for some Christmas shopping and I found myself a new 6L Venture Sling by Bellroy. It was cheaper than the online Black Friday price, but only because they wanted S$16 for shipping.

    I also considered this 4L Everything Sling from Moment, but I think it’s too small to be the Goldilocks bag I need. I have Uniqlo’s round mini shoulder bag like 98% of the world, but need something between that and a laptop messenger/backpack. Just enough to bring around some combination of e-reader, Switch, camera, power bank, umbrella, JisuLife fan, and water bottle.

    The only things left might be digital game purchases that I might have time to play in December, such as Metaphor: ReFantazio, the latest masterpiece from the director of the Persona games, or Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth.

    While the Persona games are undeniable masterpieces, they’re also looooong. Sometimes it’s nice to just sit down and finish a game in one sitting, so that’s what I did with Thank Goodness You’re Here, which is published by Panic Inc. (Untitled Goose Game, Firewatch). It’s a cartoony comedic platformer set in Northern England, filled with authentic accents, dialects, and small-town imagery — what you’d expect from a British company named Coal Supper. I highly recommend it, especially if you can find it on sale during the holiday season.

  • Week 47.24

    Week 47.24

    People sometimes say that I’d make a good teacher if I ever tried it. I think good teachers are probably more patient than I am and love speaking in front of people a lot more than I do. But on reflection, those are both things I’ve gotten a little better at over the last decade, so maybe.

    I got a little taste of it this week when I was given the chance to hear a class of college students make their final presentations for a design thinking course, and provide assistance in the assessment of their assignments. They were asked to identify a group with needs, understand them, and then design games that could be of help. They had to prototype and test their ideas before finalizing a working version. They all did pretty well, creating solutions that were surprisingly polished.

    The general idea about deploying Generative AI tools in the workplace is that they don’t do much to enhance the work of already talented employees. But for the vast majority of average or below-average workers, LLMs elevate their productivity and quality of work to a consistently higher level, which is still a net positive for teams.

    Apple’s current ad campaign for Apple Intelligence seems to take that tack too, resulting in a message that’s so far from the Macintosh’s promise of a “bicycle for the mind” that these ads are rightfully catching some flak. But in the classroom, I saw AI tools give students (with limited time and a lack of traditional design skills) the ability to execute their ideas at high fidelity. Making card games that look and feel almost like professional products, fully illustrated without the help of artists, is not something we could have pulled off when I was their age. I’m partly envious, but also afraid that on a wider scale, execution will be confused with education.

    Earlier in the year, when I sat in on another class being taught by a friend, I was struck by how hard it is to control the chaos of a large room of modern students, and the same thing was true here. When you get over 40 laptop and iPad-equipped young adults in a room, having their attention is not a given. Side conversations are happening all the time, and listening to whoever’s speaking seems like a choice.

    Maybe it was just my experience as an English student, but our class sizes were smaller, and discussions almost always followed a single track, led by a professor pacing around the room rather than anchored to a screen at the front. There were hardly any screens, come to think of it, just books and notepads. Now everyone’s on Figma, Canva, Miro, and a host of other infinite sheets of AI-enabled SaaS paper. I’m not saying we had it better, but I worry that the option to take things slowly and still excel is disappearing. When kids today say they’re stressed, it’s hard not to believe them, having seen the performative polish that’s now standard. We’re getting awfully close to expecting students to pop out fully formed and ready for the mines.

    ===

    Over the weekend, we decided to get our eyes tested at a Zeiss-approved optician’s, to order the official prescription inserts for Apple Vision Pro. This will let me use the device on days when I’m not wearing contact lenses. The need to have them on first has admittedly been only a very minor inconvenience, but now nothing will get in the way of hopping into the uh… spatialverse.

    Of the three eye tests I’ve had this year, this was probably the most thorough one. The key seems to be patience (there’s that word again) on the part of the tester, in the sense that the testee should never feel hurried. They should be allowed to flip between options 1 and 2 as many times as they need to identify the sharpest and most comfortable images. As a result, I have a new prescription that shows my eyesight has slightly, but surely, deteriorated for the first time in over a decade.

    My last test was in 2019, when I got my last pair of glasses from Zoff. Those were so comfortable that I stopped wearing contacts regularly and became a spectacles guy again. Now I wonder if wearing contacts actually helped arrest the decline of my eyes.

    Anyway, armed with a new prescription and an appetite for vision correction, I went to the nearest Zoff outlet and ended up with a new pair of glasses. I learnt afterwards that the frames I chose were “trendy” and “perfectly suited for Gen Z styling”. Along with recent purchases of wide-leg pants and oversized tees, my fashion Bryan Johnsoning is complete.

    Side note on Japanese express optical brands: I stopped considering Owndays because all their frames are small and narrow — they literally don’t have large options. Zoff at least stocks a few, and in general they overindex on “Boston” and “Wellington” shapes, so on both occasions I’ve been able to find something I like with almost no effort.

    ===

    Media activity

    • After taking a break for several months, I returned to Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name on the PS5 and finished it. And this was a short game by Yakuza standards. I expected to feel pretty over the series by this point, but the emotional ending to Kaz’s story has got me quite excited to get started on the next game, Like a Dragon: Infinity Wealth, sooner rather than later.
    • I also returned to Luigi’s Mansion 3 on the Switch, which I started (and stopped) playing when I first got the console back in 2017. This game has just sat there for 6 years waiting for me to get back in, and all credit to Nintendo’s designers, it was stunningly easy to pick up where I left off.
    • There’s a ton of movies on MUBI due to leave in the next two weeks, so I started with Toni Erdmann (2016), which was nominated that year for the Palme d’Or. On the surface, it’s about a jokey dad whose daughter has become a miserable management consultant, and he decides she/they are not doing so well and could use a little cheering up. And yet as a film it was like nothing I’ve ever seen before: I laughed, I cried, I was bewildered. It’s simply art. 4.5 stars.
    • Another film that is leaving is a 2011 documentary by the late Austrian filmmaker Michael Glawogger, Whore’s Glory, which examined the lives of sex workers in Thailand, Bangladesh, and Mexico. The film’s biggest problem is its inappropriately “cool” millennial-era Western music soundtrack featuring Cocorosie, Tricky, and PJ Harvey. My 3.5-star Letterboxd review: “If anyone asks why I look sad, from now on my answer is ‘I saw Whore’s Glory back in 2024’.”
    • I haven’t held space to experience the new suddenly released Kendrick Lamar album, GNX, the way it deserves. Hopefully by next weekend.
    • Kim Deal of the Pixies has a new album out at the age of 63 and I quite like it. It’s called Nobody Loves You More.
    • I discovered a Japanese singer by the name of Kaneko Ayano while looking for artists with a similar sound to Happy End. She has an awesome ‘gimmick’ where every album is recorded and released in two different ways: acoustic and with a full band.
    • But for the song/video of the week, it’s Hanumankind’s Big Dawgs. I was listening to Apple Music 1 when it came on, and had to look it up immediately. He’s an Indian rapper from Kerala by way of Texas, and he’s just broken out now with this song after years of making music. His lyrical game is considerable, and as evidence I offer the existence of a YouTube comment calling him “Lendrick Kumar”.
    • I’m also embedding an older video I like, a freestyle performance, and a recent interview on Apple Music where it’s clear he’s an articulate and very driven young musician who’s going to be huge.
  • Week 42.24

    Week 42.24

    Work progressed on my positive film LUTs — LUTs plural, because I now have four separate versions for different situations: regular iPhone photos, RAW files, ProRAW, and an additional one that’s brighter and punchier. I’m at that stage of the creative process where the original inspiration has been left behind and now I’m making something new (and possibly worse!), just going on vibes.

    At the heart of these is a ‘color science’ recipe that makes the usual digital representations of reality subtly less realistic, without the global color grading that makes some filters instantly recognizable. Alone, it can’t make a photo look the way film does, which is why exposing for highlights, disabling Smart HDR if possible, and saving RAW files is still important. Anyway here are some test shots I made this week, most of them not following those rules.

    ===

    Kim got back from a short trip to Vietnam and (cover your eyes if you’re squeamish about food safety as I usually am) brought me back a banh mi from a famous shop so I could try it — some five or six hours after it was made. She presented it as a “lesbian banh mi”, to which I said “excuse me?”, but it’s literally known to locals as the lesbian banh mi place. It’s run by a lesbian couple that has offered an LGBTQ-friendly work environment since the 1970s.

    It was an insane sandwich, heavier and more packed with meat (and cilantro) than any sub I’ve ever had. I didn’t catch the exact price but I think it was a couple of dollars. The bread had gotten a little tough from the flight, but I can imagine how it’d be even more amazing fresh and hot. I’m afraid that if we ever move to Ho Chi Minh I’ll be eating these on a weekly basis.

    Which, given this tweet, may not be a great idea anyway. Reading through the replies, you’ll learn that terrestrial carbon sinks have effectively stopped reducing CO2 levels, and equatorial areas around the world might become unlivable in the coming decades. The author says you/we should make plans to leave as soon as possible, because it’s better to be a migrant than a refugee. From this map of affected areas, there aren’t many viable options if you consider declining economies and areas of unrest/growing fascism? Becoming a billionaire and moving to New Zealand is looking like the best strategy, so I’d better get started now if I want to make it.

    That’s too bad, because I was really beginning to like Singapore, cultural shortcomings, legal restrictions and all. On Friday night, we went out and saw a local adaptation of an Italian play, Accidental Death of an Activist/Anarchist, at the Wild Rice company’s Funan theater, which included a list of longstanding and mostly valid criticisms about this country dressed as constructive questions, playfully (and inconsistently) set in the faraway lands of Europe and definitely not about Singapore at all. I enjoyed it! It was very funny and the lead actor put in an incredible physical performance over its 2.5-hour running time.

    My friend and ex-colleague Munz wrote a review for the Critics Circle Blog, which goes into more detail. I said to her that I was annoyed by one part where an actor, stepping out of character, comments that “it really won’t” cause society to collapse if certain things were allowed, because theater people just aren’t qualified to understand how delicate some systems are, to casually make promises like that. Just like how they don’t get that “a 5% investment return” is not the W they thought it was when they wrote it into the script as an example of the rewards that Singaporeans receive for tolerating injustices. It’s fine to agitate for something and to dream big, but being naive is the worst.

    But don’t take my opinion for anything, because I’m just a moron who has only just discovered the Labubu craze, which Lisa from Blackpink kicked off earlier this year in April. Jesus Christ these fellas are cute! I’m a sucker for fuzzy things, especially when they have mischievously sharp teeth and deranged grins*. Can you believe some of the 58cm plush figures are going for S$500 now that they’re regularly sold out everywhere? I might start with one of the smaller $50 blind box figurines…

    * There’s a painting that I saw years ago at an art fair and that I’ve wanted ever since, called Out For A Happy Walk. Kim cannot believe that I’m serious, and cannot see it in our home. It depicts a Garfield-like cat walking upright on two legs, with big dazed eyes, holding a flower in one outstretched hand. I tracked it down to a local gallery, and it’s currently about S$1,600. If I do become a billionaire, I won’t tell anyone but there will be adorable signs.

    Media activity

    Speaking of Blackpink, I asked in an IG Story post a few weeks ago which of the members people thought would have the most successful global solo career, and the winner by a mile was Lisa (65%). Jennie was in second place (22%), with Rosé and Jisoo getting nearly no votes. I didn’t weigh in myself, because I’m not sure any of them will have long-lasting solo careers. What’s would be the motivation in an industry that prizes youth and novelty? They peaked as one of the biggest groups of their generation, they’re all presumably filthy rich (and dating filthy rich, in Lisa’s case), and making music isn’t something I believe they’re passionate about (although am moron, as stated). Except maybe Rosé. I think she actually wants to make it as a singer/songwriter, and her upcoming album in December is the one I’m actually excited to hear.

    The three of them have put out new singles within weeks of each other, and I can’t remember Lisa’s at all, Jennie’s Mantra is just a short chant repeated long enough to cut some flashy visuals to, and I haven’t been able to get Rosé’s APT out of my head for the last few days. Yeah it’s like a cosplay of a pop-rock anthem, sampling Toni Basil’s Mickey and seemingly interpolating Lady Gaga’s Bad Romance (although uncredited), but it still works. There’s an army of writers attached, including Amy Allen who’s behind some of Sabrina Carpenter and Selena Gomez’s biggest songs, as well as Rosé’s first single, On The Ground, which I also liked.

    But you know who’s really killing it and only has 3M views after a month to Rosé’s 68M in three days? FKA twigs. I sat down to watch her 8-minute video for Eusexua, the title track of the album due next January (I’d been putting it off; wasn’t ready), and she’s landed an absolute moonshot with it. Don’t watch it at work, but make time for it. This is her reaching her artistic and physical peak and it’s beautiful to see. Like this exhausting-to-watch live set for the fitness brand ‘On’ where she seems to just be warming up. And just out this week, the video for second single Perfect Stranger is more of the same indescribable, nuclear-level visual impact.

    Not in the same neighborhood but equally worth adding to your libraries are the new albums from Audrey Nuna and Brett Dennen.

    We’ve been watching the new Apple TV+ show written and directed by Alfonso Cuarón, Disclaimer, starring Cate Blanchett, Kevin Kline, and Sacha Baron Cohen. It coincidentally features a book titled “The Perfect Stranger”. It’s seven parts, and four are out now. You should also not watch this at work or in public. But make time for it. I was somehow misled to believe it was science fiction or at least involved the bending of reality, and so was massively thrown (disappointed, even) when it turned out to be a character-driven drama. But it’s very very good.

    I managed to get some sci-fi in anyway, by way of Naomi Alderman’s book, The Future. I enjoyed her last book, The Power, and gave that four stars. But this one, set in a recognizably tech-besmirched world much like ours, is way better. I gave it five stars.

  • Week 38.24

    Week 38.24

    I didn’t fall ill after all, but Kim’s flu evolved into what looks like a chest infection, leading to coughs all night and poor sleep for both of us. I bought a pair of Loop Quiet 2 earplugs in anticipation of a neighbor’s renovation, and they were somewhat useful under these circumstances too. She finally saw a doctor after several days of nagging, and is now on antibiotics and there’s been some improvement in the last day.

    On Tuesday, I opened the front door to discover a swarm of mosquitoes hovering over my black sneakers — later on I discovered they love hiding on black objects, as a form of camouflage — and took to them with an insecticide spray. In the process, quite a few made it into the apartment. I clapped a dozen to death and confirmed from their squashed bodies that they were Aedes mosquitoes: the species that spreads malaria and dengue fever.

    The red light came on in my head: a new crisis just dropped! Why were there so many? How the heck was I supposed to hunt down all the ones that came in? Fortunately, a neighbor happened by, and when I mentioned them to him, he assured me that they were infertile male mosquitoes (males don’t bite or spread diseases) intentionally released as part of a national anti-dengue campaign called “Project Wolbachia”. They’re meant to breed with females and decrease mosquito numbers by wasting their time, because the eggs don’t ever hatch.

    I’d heard of this program over the years, but didn’t share his confidence that MY mosquitoes could be explained by this. He said “oh yeah, they (the government) release them here all the time”, which led me to check the official website in disbelief. It was true. According to a published schedule, officers of the National Environment Agency release these genetically engineered mosquitoes twice a week, probably by the thousands, around public housing blocks in my district. I waited to see if I would be bitten, and sure enough, I never was. The males only live about a week, but it’s still insane to me that someone is deliberately releasing a ton of insects that look exactly like the ones we know can be dangerous. What am I supposed to do, ask their pronouns before trying to kill them?

    ===

    My new old iPhone arrived, and I ran into some issues during the phone-to-phone transfer process. It failed a couple of times, and I finally gave up and went the ‘restore from iCloud backup’ route. It took several hours, and then I had to check every app to see if I’d gotten logged out. It was the same frustrating dance I do every year I upgrade iPhones, but without the reward of actually upgrading.

    Happily, iOS 18 looks visually fresh and brings a bunch of welcome features. It’s the first OS update in awhile that actually makes your phone feel new. I’m using the new Home Screen mode that lets you have big icons without text labels, and there’s a new dynamic background that shifts colors throughout the day. You can also use a dynamic rainbow gradient on the Lock Screen’s clock, which looks great against black when the always-on display is set to sleep without showing your wallpaper.

    The customization that’s possible with the new Control Center shortcuts and resizable widgets is pretty deep, and something I would not have expected Apple to provide if you’d asked me a couple of years ago. I’ve mapped the Lock Screen camera shortcut to launch Halide, and my Action Button to launch a Google shortcut that does a visual lookup of whatever is showing on your screen. I’ve also put a new button in Control Center that starts my personal radio station on Apple Music.

    Apple Music has also received a significant, if not immediately apparent, change in iOS 18. The “Browse” page has been renamed “New”, and where every user would previously see the same curated selection of new releases, popular songs, and recommended playlists, this content is now personalized based on your listening behavior. The initial impression is positive: I’m no longer being pushed Thai music, or Mandopop, or the local bands I don’t care about. But longer term, I’m worried about the lack of serendipity that might result from this. I discovered some of my favorite music through accidents and unexpected tangents, as I’m sure is the same for anyone reading this.

    <Smooth segue into Media Activity>

    I don’t recall when I first heard the qawwali music of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, for example, but boy did it make an impact on me some 30 years ago. I never understood a single word, but you don’t have to in order to feel touched by something divine in his voice. So I was super pleased this week to see in the New York Times that an unreleased album had been discovered in the vaults of Peter Gabriel’s record label. They even produced a making-of video to tell the story of its discovery and restoration.

    The new old album, Chain of Light, is more in the traditional style so each of the four songs runs about 10 minutes. It may not be an ideal starting point for most; so I still recommend beginning with Mustt Mustt or Night Song, two ‘Westernized’ albums he made with Michael Brook to be more globally accessible.

    The Jesse Malin tribute album, Silver Patron Saints, is now out too, with covers by Bruce Springsteen, Counting Crows, The Wallflowers, Elvis Costello, and many more greats. Back when you had to buy CDs on faith in a physical store, I liked getting these tribute albums and would decide based on the artists doing the covers, even if I didn’t know the musician being celebrated. If some of my favorite artists were involved, then the odds were pretty good that I was about to discover someone fantastic. Sweet Relief II: Gravity of the Situation — The Songs of Vic Chesnutt was one such album (unfortunately the album is incomplete on Apple Music for me, maybe a regional licensing thing).

    Will algorithms ever be smart enough to replicate that sort of discovery?

    This week in reading, I hit my Goodreads challenge of 12 books by finishing Kyla Scanlon’s In This Economy? How Money & Markets Really Work. It was an admittedly low target, so I’m confident I’ll be able to finish a few more before the year ends.

    We watched Sam Mendes’s 1917 (2019) and it was riveting, beautiful cinema. The single-take gimmick was probably unnecessary but made the action immediate and every movement of the camera threatened to reveal a hidden threat suddenly behind our heroes, which I thought effectively mimicked the tension of real conflict. A deliberately edited film shows you danger on its own schedule, but real time action is real time dread. Someone I follow on Letterboxd also observed that this felt like watching cutscenes in games like Call of Duty, a cinematic style that I think emerged because devs were showing off what their game engines could easily do that Hollywood could not. But the battlefield is pretty flat now, and movies are essentially made with the tools of game development, so we can’t stop these two mediums converging.

    [I didn’t take any shots for the Featured Photo this week, so I’m relying on WordPress’s ability to automatically generate some AI slop based on the post’s content.]

  • Week 37.24

    Week 37.24

    Kim got back from her trip with a flu, thankfully it doesn’t seem like Covid and should pass in a couple of days. Jet lag and illness are terrible partners: she spent about two whole days in bed sleeping it off and missing meals. I’m hoping to avoid it, but you shouldn’t place any bets on my famously weak immune system (putting aside the fact that it can fight off chickenpox).

    It was iPhone launch week again — where did the last year go? As usual, many key details had already leaked thanks to Mark Gurman’s sources. The Pro phones are slightly larger, the 5x zoom length is now across both models, and there’s a new “camera control” area along the right side; both a button and a ‘Touch Bar’. The regular iPhones 16 get all the great colors, while the Pro ones only get dull metallics. One of these years, we’ll get to have some fun too.

    The only things on my wishlist that hit were improved battery life and performance, which aren’t surprising — the real question is how significant are they? Apple says the CPU is 15% faster, the GPU is 20% faster, ray-tracing is 2x faster (though I can’t name a single game dying for it), and the 16 Pro Max gets 4 hours more video playback for a total of 33 hours. That’s a 14% increase over the iPhone 15 Pro Max.

    So to summarize, it’s a 15% better iPhone than the one I have, the AI features will release slowly over the next year, and there’s a camera button that I do want (but only serves to do things you can already do on the touchscreen). Given the fact that I already got a Vision Pro and could use some financial prudence during this sabbatical, pre-order Friday came and went without me buying a new iPhone for the first time in 16 consecutive years. Nobody believed I could do it!

    >> For future reference, my battery health is at 88% and 310+ cycles after a year. Coming off the regular Pro size for my iPhones 12 through 14, moving back up to the Pro Max form factor felt perfectly fine, and I think the lightness of titanium was a big factor. I never felt like I’d chosen the wrong size. Caveat: I did change out all my jeans to have roomier pockets.

    I decided to go caseless for this next year, and was quickly reminded that my iPhone came with an annoying defect: a slight misalignment of back cover glass and titanium frame, leaving a rough, kinda sharp edge that you can feel pressing into your palm. I wanted to get a replacement as soon as I took it out of the box because all the marketing talked about ‘comfortable rounded edges’ on the new design, and I was missing out. But replacement units are hard to come by the first few weeks after a launch, so I decided to wait and just popped it into a case and never got back to it.

    This week, nearly a full year later, I called up Apple Support and tried to explain this admittedly minor issue. They suggested I visit an authorized repair partner who could assess it in person, which gave me a good excuse to get Shake Shack for lunch (after Michael’s recent quest for “hot chips” — just French fries for us outside the UK and Australia — I had a craving that wouldn’t go away).

    All in, I had to sheepishly explain my problem to three different support people, two on the phone and one in person, but everyone was very nice about it? I think acknowledging upfront that you are about to sound like a crazy person (in a friendly, non-crazy way) is generally a good strategy for these situations. I’ve now got a replacement phone on the way, and think I’m happily set up for the harrowing year ahead of Not Having The Best iPhone.

    ===

    My friend and ex-colleague Bert was back in town for a visit, and a bunch of us from the old team met up with him in a configuration that hasn’t been together for maybe six years. It was great to see everyone looking no worse for wear, and arguably with more hair, muscles, and iron (from medical implants and drinking too much Guinness) than ever before.

    One thing he mentioned was how warm it is here these days, and how he’s lost all acclimatization. I’ve personally never felt acclimatized to the heat, and am always looking for solutions — see this recent post where I got the Sony Reon Pocket 5. That gadget has been plenty helpful, and I still use it whenever I’m heading outdoors for any meaningful length of time, but it’s not enough on its own. So now I’ve gone and got myself a portable handheld fan after seeing bts videos of K-pop idols holding them all the time. Edit: on second thought, I might have seen them in an episode of Irma Vep.

    This brand, JisuLife, claims to be the world’s number 1 portable fan manufacturer. Who knows if they are? But they had a bunch of products on sale during the recent 9.9 event on Shopee, so I got one of these clever folding designs that collapses into a cylinder much smaller than the umbrella I carry around in my bag. It even doubles as a flashlight.

    A couple of days later, whilst browsing the shelves at a Harvey Norman, I came upon a shelf of JisuLife products and got instant fomo when I tried another model out. The Life9 is even smaller, and eschews big visible blades for an internal turbine design that works like a hairdryer. The result is a much stronger, albeit narrowly focused and noisier stream of air. So now I have er… two fans.

    Both charge via USB-C, but the former model (Life8) uses some non-standard spec and won’t work with my usual cables, only the USB-A to USB-C one it came with. The Life9 charges normally as expected. They’re both cheaper on Shopee than on the official site, and you might catch them for lower on occasional flash or live sales.

    ===

    Media activity

    • Two current streaming movies over the weekend: The Instigators on Apple TV+ and Rebel Ridge on Netflix. The former is o-k with some amusing moments, a heist movie that subverts the usual joys of a heist: the brilliant plan coming together, the thwarting of smug antagonists. No, these guys are morons, but sorta lovable. Matt Damon is often lovable. 3 stars.
    • The latter film is more entertaining fodder, a Reacher-esque tale of small town corruption and sadism meeting a particularly skilled outsider. They messed with the wrong guy, etc. It drags a little long, however, and doesn’t quite strike the comeuppance note as satisfyingly as a Lee Child joint. 3.5 stars.
    • I know, because I read two of them this week. I finished The Midnight Line (Reacher #22) in a day or two. It’s a pretty chill story as the series goes, with a slight mystery that won’t keep you dying of suspense or anything. Almost no danger for our hero. 3 stars.
    • I immediately went onto Past Tense (Reacher #23) and found that much more entertaining because there are actual stakes involved. Part of the problem with Jack Reacher is that he’s Superman, and you never worry that he’ll make it out okay. This book introduces a few vulnerable characters that you can actually worry about. 4 stars.
    • After that, I read Rebecca F. Kuang’s Yellowface, a book that everyone was raving about a little while ago. I preferred Babel, but this is a fine little bit of meta narrative about the publishing industry, being Asian, and being Asian in the publishing industry, or just pretending to be!
    • Listened to a lot of Waxahatchee for the first time since discovering her back in May. Her latest album Tigers Blood, and 2021’s Saint Cloud, in particular. There’s something I just love about the Alabamian accent.
  • Week 33.24: A close call

    Week 33.24: A close call

    The last update almost became my final one, because I nearly died this week!

    We got the tragic news that a good friend’s dad had passed away (there have been so many cases of this lately), and as Kim is out of town, I was about to go down to the funeral wake for the both of us. I booked a Grab (local Uber-like) ride around a quarter-to-six, and headed down to meet him when it looked like he was close enough.

    As I approached the pick-up point, I saw the car approaching and waved at him, walking continuously down the stairs to the road as I watched him do a three-point turnaround to come at me from the right direction. But suddenly, instead of slowing down for me to get in, the car suddenly lurched forward at full speed. At this point, I was maybe at the very last step down, and the car was coming directly towards me instead of parallel, like you would when picking a passenger up.

    In that moment, my first thought was “is he trying to scare me, as some sort of joke?” This was followed by alarm as he was clearly not slowing down, and then a last-minute instinct to back away. The next thing I saw was the car slamming into the short wall beside the step I was just on, as I fell back on my ass. And then I was covered in debris, missing both shoes, and feeling pain beginning to spread through my legs as shock began setting in.

    I’m quite sure I was hit in the right knee at some point — there’s silver car paint on my jeans to prove it. I recall feeling my left foot being squeezed inside my shoe for just a fraction of a second before it slipped out, as my weight shifted backwards as I fell. Both shoes were later recovered underneath either side of the car. I was there at the point of impact, and then I wasn’t.

    Afterwards, an alternate memory emerged: the car may have hit the wall on the other side first, changing its trajectory towards me, but this initial impact would have dampened its speed. Perhaps my knee was only clipped by a part that was already damaged, explaining how I got a paint transfer without a broken kneecap.

    I remember people nearby running over after hearing the crash, yelling for an ambulance and the police to be called, telling me to stop trying to get up (I backed away from the car on my hands and tried to see if my legs were still unbroken), and to wait for help to arrive. A very kind man took off and came back with a cold can of Pocari Sweat for me; a neighbor I know came and kept me calm by talking things through; and the driver called for help.

    After trying unsuccessfully to call Kim, I took some photos and figured out that my legs were still attached, although moving my left ankle and right knee hurt. The police and paramedics arrived in about 10 minutes and checked me out. I was still shaking from the adrenaline and giving them too much detail, like apologizing that my feet were very sweaty right now as they peeled my socks off. They decided that I might have some fractures and would need to go to the hospital for scans as this was going to be in a police accident report.

    Side note: I don’t really know what happened yet. The driver claims he was trying to brake but the car didn’t respond. I overheard the police interviewing him and asking if there was any chance he mistook the pedals and accelerated instead. I suppose there will be an investigation.

    As I was being loaded into the ambulance, I heard the ominous approach of cars and imagined them crashing into us, and realized that this episode might end with a lasting, debilitating fear of going outside after I’d recovered. I anticipated PTSD, nightmares, and other new items to put in my therapy cart.

    What followed was a couple of hours waiting in the A&E/ER department of a general hospital, trying to joke with the orderlies, and getting x-rayed by about five young people at once who might have never done it before? But no complaints for me, everyone was incredibly nice and got me through it. The verdict, no major fractures (time will tell if there are hairline fractures, specifically two weeks of observation time), and I was lucky to get away with bruises and sprained ligaments.

    A tale of two ankles

    Amusingly, this care even extended to a small nick on my right ankle that was noted by the doctors. Although the pain was concentrated elsewhere, they promised they’d clean that “wound” and dress it for me before leaving. They did so fastidiously, washing it in antiseptic fluid and applying an antibiotic gel and bandage. Then I was also given a supply of said antiseptics and antibiotics to care for it at home. The bandage fell off after my shower and, despite being a delicate hypochondriac, I was happy to just slap a band-aid on it.

    The whole time, from when I was in the ambulance (intrusive thoughts wanting to say “amberlamps” out loud), until the next day, I kept hearing Kanye’s “Through The Wire” in my head, specifically the line “Look at how death missed his ass / Unbreakable, what you thought they’d call me Mr. Glass?” I really want to see M. Night Shyamalan’s Trap (2024), by the way.

    Forty-eight hours later, the reality that I almost didn’t make it still feels surreal. I joked around a bit on Instagram and repeated the story to people who asked, but I don’t know what it means yet. The only nightmare I’ve had was about my malfunctioning air-conditioning unit at home—a small-potato problem in comparison. Part of me expected to emerge like Jeff Bridges in Fearless (1993), recklessly putting myself in risky situations with a newfound sense of invincibility. But then I remembered Final Destination (2000), where death stalks its survivors, biding its time for another strike. That thought put me off from celebrating my good fortune, and I’ve just been sitting on these thoughts since.

    I know that if I had arrived downstairs just a couple of seconds earlier, I would have made it down to the road level and been directly in the car’s path, with no wall beside me to stop it. All I had to do was take another step forward, and both legs and my pelvis would have been crushed between the car and the wall (which stands unscathed today). Bones would have shattered beyond repair, blood would be everywhere, everyone nearby would have passed out from the gore. If I survived that at all, the next few years would still be passed in immeasurable pain and I doubt I’d have the strength or will to keep going.

    What does it really mean to miss that outcome by half a meter? Probably nothing, right? Because we’re surrounded by chaos and death is always just a coin toss away? So I guess it might be back to normal life for me, sans new epiphanies. At least I hope, but when my foot feels better and I finally leave the house, I might find myself paralyzed with fear just trying to cross the street. I guess we’ll see.

    But I have come out of this with some practical advice, which I will now share with you.

    1. Always carry a power bank: When they said I’d have to go to the hospital and might only be discharged the next day, I wasn’t worried because I had my phone and enough power to get through a whole day. I used my phone for so much during this time: updating people, notifying Grab about the accident (1 star), paying the bill. You don’t want to worry about battery life. Bring a power bank with you everywhere. This tiny Anker one has an integrated USB-C port, supports fast charging, and a 5,000mAh capacity.
    2. Wear your shoes loose: It might not help if you’re hanging upside down by your sneakers, but my loose laces might have saved at least one foot from being crushed in the moment. I hope to one day see the dash cam footage of the crash, because how I ended up jumping back and leaving both shoes behind is a bit of a mystery.
    3. Play more video games: Let your kids play them too, because everyone should train their reflexes. When the moment comes, you don’t want to be the person who freezes up. You want jumping, running, dodging, and picking up gold coins to be second nature. Somebody asked me, “Why not sports instead of video games?” Hey, I’m trying to be inclusive here. Not everyone likes sports!
    4. Take more photos: Another thing you want to come naturally at moments like these is taking photos. As evidence, for later reference, or just for sharing a story. You can’t tell yourself to remember this only when something big happens. Just train the muscle so you’re always capturing.
    5. Don’t assume anything about cars: I really got complacent around cars, and you don’t appreciate how heavy and powerful and dangerous they are until one comes at you fast. I’m never jaywalking again with a car “safely in the distance”. Be alert more. You don’t need music in your ears all the time, either.

    ===

    I had some other stuff I wanted to talk about before this happened, but they seem small now so I’ll just mention two things.

    The Halide iPhone camera app got an update that shoots photos without any AI-ish processing. They call it “Process Zero“. The resulting aesthetic is much more in line with regular cameras, and how iPhone photos used to look years ago. We’ve flown too close to the sun now, and everything is too bright, so this nostalgic return to the limits of physical lenses and sensors comes with a welcome, natural look. The above and this post’s Featured Image at the top were taken with this mode, plus editing of the underlying RAW file.

    Our home internet speed was suffering, so I did some troubleshooting and discovered the thin fiber optic cable between modem and wall access point had been coiled too tightly, and was even bent in one spot. After straightening it out, speed tests jumped noticeably. I even got a full gigabit up and down to my iPhone on WiFi 6, not even 6E.

    Stay safe out there. With any luck, I’ll see you next week!

  • Week 32.24

    Week 32.24

    It was Kim’s birthday and to celebrate, we went out for some great yakiniku at a place called Yakiniquest (the name gets points for trying, I guess) where the service was great but the food was incredible. It was probably one of my Top 3 wagyu experiences, along with Matsusaka beef in Kyoto (we walked into an acclaimed, booked-out restaurant and were given a table that had just no-showed), and of course, Kobe beef in the delightful, jazz-adopting city of the same name.

    As an extra surprise, I orchestrated Cameo shoutouts from celebrities on two of the reality shows we unapologetically enjoy bingeing together: Below Deck Down Under, and Gogglebox. I put them on our media server and turned the TV on in the morning, telling her new special episodes had just dropped overnight. She bought it, and it was a fun moment.

    The rest of the week was spent in the tight embrace of the Apple Vision Pro’s dual loop band. One of the things I hoped to get out of being an early adopter of the AVP (both the product and the platform) was a closeness to this new spatial computing form as it germinates, to have a sense of “spatial nativeness” develop in my brain. A sense of its conventions and limits that would help me intuit how to navigate and create new experiences for it, should I ever want to. Which means always being on the lookout for new apps (both programs and applications) and trying them out.

    This week I spent time in a social app called inSpaze, built exclusively for the Vision Pro. As a result of that positioning, and the lack of current competition on the App Store, it’s become the de facto place to hang out and meet other Vision Pro owners to swap stories and recommendations. Try to imagine a cuter, visual Clubhouse, where you spend time in virtual living rooms you can decorate and personalize. In addition to chatting, you can look at photos and 3D models together, listen to music, and play card/board games.

    It’s worth pointing out that you don’t get a normal webcam view of each person, because you’re all wearing Vision Pros. So like all videoconferencing apps on the system, it uses Apple’s Personas: photorealistic avatars based on face scans you do when setting up your Vision Pro, that use its many sensors and cameras to mirror what your real eyes and face are doing.

    If joining a roomful of random strangers from around the world and jumping into whatever conversations they’ve got going on sounds like an introvert’s worst nightmare, that’s because it probably is. I did it anyway, and found it slightly thrilling but also chiller than expected. For one, the use of Personas creates psychological distance; it’s you, but it’s also more a puppet that looks like you. I commented on this and others agreed it made them feel safer.

    What struck me most, though, was how nice and welcoming the community feels, because we’re all early adopter nerds enthused to be sharing this novel experience. It reminds me of the internet when I was a teenager, where the thrill of meeting someone from across the world was pure and untainted by the danger and cynicism that later crept into online spaces. And of course, there’s the fact that a community gated behind a S$5,299 purchase is more likely to be well behaved.

    One nice touch that allows truly cross-border communications is the real-time translation that puts subtitles under each person speaking. In the daytime here, I’ve met a lot of Chinese speakers, and this feature has helped me to follow some conversations I otherwise wouldn’t have.

    It was during one of these afternoon sessions that I met one of the key people behind the app, and we got to talking about their opportunity, business model, and product that got me thinking more about the challenges that smaller developers are facing with this new platform. It’s a well-reported fact by now that AVP sales are low by Apple’s standards. While that’s easily explained by the steep entry price and the challenge of defining a new product category, it still poses a chicken/egg dilemma for creators.

    Solo developers and very small teams doing this on the side can probably justify toying with small apps and selling them for a few dollars, but anyone building something ambitious on the level of a social network or massively multiplayer game, for a total addressable market in the low six-figures — AND having to bankroll it for the next couple of years while Apple works on the cheaper model and second generation Pro — is being asked to take on more risk.

    I have no doubt that Apple will persevere and iterate until this category succeeds, like they always do, so it’s not a question of whether Apple Vision has a future. It just needs to convince developers and their investors to stay faithful, and seed the demand. It’s going to be tricky, and I’d like to see Apple advertising hard for the next 18 months to keep spatial computing visible and galvanize the ecosystem. Even if people can’t find the means to buy the product, they should want to.

    As further proof of the magical, early-internet vibe, I logged into inSpaze early one morning and met a varied group of American users, including a hospital administrator and VR-obsessed truck driver. After many in the room logged off, I found myself speaking with a Canadian man who casually mentioned working with tech podcasting luminary Leo Laporte over a decade ago. As he continued, it dawned on me that he was Ray Maxwell, an 80-year-old polymath whose name I would often hear on Leo’s This Week in Tech (TWiT) network, where he once had his own podcast about aviation and various science topics.

    As a one-time avid listener of TWiT, I can’t overstate how starstruck I felt as Ray told me stories from his expansive career: time spent at McDonnell Aircraft in the 60s, adjacent to where the Gemini space capsules were being built; color science engineering at a company later acquired by Kodak, recommending SF stories by his friend (two-time Hugo award-winning author!?!?) Spider Robinson; and how he’s recently been into capturing spatial video for the Vision Pro.

    I recognize that the early days of any new frontier, team, or relationship are a special thrill that can’t be expected to last, so it’s up to us to maximize and enjoy every moment. Feel free to reach out if you’re getting into spatial computing and want to swap notes!

    ===

    Music

    It must be the peak of the summer release schedule, because so much new music has come out this week.

    The new Glass Animals album is one of those that starts with a banger and keeps the energy going until you’re five songs in and picking up your phone to check the tracklist in disbelief. It’s called I Love You So F*ing Much and it’s soaked through with space beats, vocoders, and addictive melodies.

    I knew they had a cult following before 2020’s Dreamland introduced them to everyone, but I foolishly never got deep into it because the phenomenally successful Heat Waves overshadowed every other song. On hindsight, that tune would have done the same on 99% of albums — it’s the longest charting song in the history of the Billboard Hot 100. Now I’m excited to soon experience their two older albums for the first time, ZABA and How to Be a Human Being.

    ROLE MODEL is back and he’s shed his hipster-emo guise for a cowboy hat after breaking up with Emma Chamberlain (I just found out). Kansas Anymore is filled with the same lite and lovable pop earworms that I enjoyed on his last album, just a lil’ bit twangier.

    beabadoobee’s This Is How Tomorrow Moves is finally out, and I’ll admit that while I’ve liked all her past releases, none of them have ever made it into heavy rotation for me. I think this will be the one that does it. Early singles Ever Seen and Take A Bite were strong songs in her usual nostalgic 90s alt-rock style (with charming videos by her boyfriend, Jake Erland), but the newest one Beaches is perfect! In any of the last three decades, Beaches would have been an instant classic. She made it while working with Rick Rubin at his ‘Shangri-La’ studio in Malibu.

    Rick Rubin continues to fascinate me as a kind of guru or shaman of the music industry, somehow wielding enormous influence without any formal musical ability himself. He’s somehow able to hypnotize or imbue artists with the confidence to create their best work, just by sitting with them and giving feedback. He wrote a book about his creative process that some reviews call an essential bible, while others say it’s a collection of trite cliches. I suppose I’ll have to read it for myself soon.

    I also found myself enthusiastically nodding along to Killer Mike’s new album, entitled Songs For Sinners And Saints by “Michael & The Mighty Midnight Revival”. It’s loaded with funky beats, soulful playing, gospel choirs, and some very sharp rapping.

    It’s safe to come out now. The Smashing Pumpkins have finished releasing their three-part concept rock opera, whatever it was called. They’re now back with a proper album that promises the good old guitar-driven songs they were loved for back in the day. It’s called… er, Aghori Mhori Mei, a title that doesn’t inspire any confidence that Billy Corgan is back on his meds. My god, the edgelordism is only accelerating with age! Here are some lyrics chosen at random: “Milk such blood / To fare thee lost from all but way / And awaken the sea I light / Our slumbers save the sleep / Wherefore we climb…” Kerrang has given it 4/5, at least. I kinda enjoyed it on a musical level but wasn’t listening closely. I’ll keep trying.

    Vultures 2 came out and I didn’t even know. I think I tapped through to Kanye’s artist page in Apple Music just on a whim and was surprised to see it at the top. Nobody wants to support him anymore with all the shit he pulls, but he’s probably better off with no one knowing about this album, if my two playthroughs so far are any indication. It’s a shoddy mess, with some songs having the seeds of greatness in them, but just withered and stunted on the vine. North West features on one song again: the awful “Bomb”, which has her repeating level 1 Duolingo Japanese phrases like “ohaiyo gozaimasu, konnichiwa” over a truly busted beat. According to one recent IG post, he’s still ‘updating it daily’ on streaming platforms so maybe check back in a few months to hear the album’s final form. Or don’t.