new month! new blog! regular delays! not to fear!

playlist

somewhere in between - leyline hex

between this and dusqk's album last month, i am doing amazingly with finding random atmospheric drum and bass albums and subsequently playing it to death for the full length of the subsequent month. i've somewhat gone off of pure ambient music recently, but this new niche has been filling that same spot really well, giving the same calming and quiet vibes but also a nice beat to keep my stupid adhd ass from drifting away. i would normally call the mmorpg ai voiceover soundbites cheesy, but they do a pretty solid job of simply tying together an ep that is otherwise quite varied in terms of tone and general style.

desire, i want to turn into you - caroline polachek

i've listened to quite a bit of caroline polachek in the past and yet i haven't talked about her before. she's getting a mention here partly because i think her music is really good and i listened to quite a bit of it this month, but also as a bit of a protest vote against charli xcx and chappell roan. both of polachek's albums are incredible artistic works, pulling in inspiration from all kinds of strange genres and musical experimentation to make pop music that really does feel unique. i particularly love the south american vibes of Sunset and the instrumentation of Billions which sounds like it could be out of a galen tipton or giant claw album.

elis & tom - elis regina and antonio jobin

i originally found out about elis & tom from the famous omelette animation, but was delighted to find that the entire album is actually very lovely! the first half or so is quite upbeat and cheery bossa nova, dips into something a bit more somber in tracks 10 through 12, before jumping back to something light and pleasant to wrap the whole thing up. elis is an absolutely insanely skilled singer but i do wish there was more antonio on the album; the conversational back-and-forth feel of águas de março in particular is so playful and fun, easily making it the best track on the album.

brat and the rise and fall of a midwest princess

two albums i listened to quite a bit that did not end up on the list are brat, charli xcx's most recent release, and the rise and fall of a midwest princess by chappell roan. both are absolutely gigantic in queer circles, but i had a bit more of a mixed experience with them. brat has some absolutely killer tracks on it; von dutch has mass appeal that i apparently appear to be susceptible to, talk talk is catchy in a way that i think doesnt make me angry, and i think b2b is a bit of a sleeper hit. unfortunately, i think a lot of the tracks near the middle don't have the same level of care put into them, and im a little confused at the amount of people calling it a perfect album.

the rise and fall of a midwest princess, on the other hand, didnt interest me in the slightest. chappell roan appears to basically just be bisexual taylor swift, to the point that i think you could take one of taylors albums, replace half of the references to a boyfriend with a girlfriend and ship it directly to the chappell roan fans. the track 'after midnight' literally repeats the same line in the chorus but swaps back and forth between boyfriend and girlfriend each time. confusing. anyway, if you're just sitting in the car and enjoying it they are pretty good albums! they just didnt grab me that much.

crash landing studio

keeping up the trend of short animation in my blogposts, i stumbled onto these guys this month! these videos are all unequivocally 3d animation, but they use a bunch of cute little effects, low framerate and harsh lighting to really effectively emulate the look of stop motion animation. their approach to blocking and shot composition is also stellar, which is easy to see from my example video, but i implore you to check out the rest of their library!

sub marine cable map

submarinecablemap.com/

this site is just really nifty! it's an interactive view of all the submarine cables used to transmit internet connections along the ocean floor.