End of year lists 2021

Another year has flown by; here are some of the things that I enjoyed immensely in 2021.

My favourite music of 2021, like in years prior, was a mixture of music released in 2021 and music released earlier which I only discovered or really got around to listening to this year. While I feel 2020 was primarily a year of songs, 2021 was a year of songs and albums; as such, a list for both the best songs I (re)discovered in 2021 and the albums I enjoyed most this year. Two notes of interest: two Bad Gyal songs (despite my usual and entirely arbitrary rule to feature each artist only once), one a recent official release, one a brilliant older track only to be found on YouTube; somehow, despite certainly having listened to A Promise before, Apistat Commander didn’t really hit home until this year, but then it really, really did, and as such made it to the list as a new discovery (something somewhat similar happened to The Microphones’ II. Solar System). The full list – in a somewhat lazily construed alphabetical order – is below.

Of the albums listed below, some have an album track featured as one of my favourite tracks above; for others, however, my enjoyment of the album has been an immersive experience in which I found a selection of any favourite track impossible – hence not necessarily full overlap between the artists featured on the list of songs and those featured on the list of albums. With some semblance of order imposed, the list is posted below.

Liturgy – H.A.Q.Q. ⏵
Clipping. – Visions Of Bodies Being Burned ⏵
Crying – Beyond The Fleeting Gales ⏵
放射性Hi5 – 9.0水面下Megathrust ⏵
Full Of Hell – Weeping Choir ⏵
Code Orange – Underneath ⏵
Otoboke Beaver – Itekoma Hits ⏵
Utada Hikaru – 初恋 ⏵
Sintel – Top Ten most Epic fish of all time ⏵
DJ Hardvore – Princess Lumina’s Dance Party (Starring Barbie as Princess Lumina) ⏵
Elysia Crampton – American Drift ⏵
Luna Kaguya – ××× ⏵
Giant Claw – Mirror Guide ⏵
Bad Gyal – Warm Up ⏵
Sueuga Kamau – Como El Viento, Vuelo ⏵

Some other musical things of note: Stickerbush Symphony, a track that that garnered fame as a checkpoint on YouTube, really resonated with me this year despite not having any nostalgia for it (I’ve never played the game) and was ambient tapestry for plenty of work days; the Bad Gyal YouTube nightcore rabbit hole is absolutely worth getting lost in; pawning off physicals as soon as they appear on Spotify bit me in the ass, because they can disappear again, too (Palace’s Arise Therefore, specifically, I had sold last year, and so I found myself having to buy it again this year); there wasn’t much in K-pop that excited me, but I found a lot of little gems in J-pop.

For reading, 2021 was definitely a good year, shattering last year’s record 55 books by this year’s neat 100 (I am currently 500 pages into Roberto Bolaño’s 2666 but don’t expect to finish the last 400 pages today) – and a diverse bunch of it, with some hefty tomes being part of those. Needless to say, not everything was equally brilliant, though I managed to drag myself through even those works I found less exciting (even the absolutely soul-crushingly boring The Light Garden of The Angel King by Peter Levi – beautiful title, horrible book) save but one – about halfway through The Book Of Disquiet, I shelved this collection of writings that despite all their supposed brilliance came off as little more than writings one might have encountered mid 00s on some teen’s MySpace. Perhaps, of course, this lack of appreciation is not so much The Book Of Disquiet’s fault but rather my own; equally, the way in which I attempted to read it – cover to cover – was perhaps also not best suited to it. However, I’ve not looked back and am currently not particularly keen to, either.

Fortunately, there was a lot of beauty to be found, too, both among the fiction and non-fiction works I read. The novels that left a most lasting impression this year were David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest, Thomas Pynchon’s Mason & Dixon, Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, Paul Auster’s The Music Of Chance and Sayaka Murata’s two translated novels, Convenience Store Woman and, especially, Earthlings. I also read through the entirety of Matt Haig’s fiction oeuvre and found The Humans and The Midnight Library in particular to be pleasant, enjoyable reads.

The non-fiction I read was diverse, and much of it fantastic. I delved into North-Korea, reading a host of defector’s memoirs, as well as Barbara Demick’s excellent Nothing To Envy, the equally fascinating The Great Successor by Anna Fifield and the great and insightful The Real North Korea by Andrei Lankov.. I also started exploring the oeuvre of Svetlana Alexievich, truly an amazing voice (or, rather, multitude of voices) in her niche. Chernobyl Prayer was perhaps my favourite of her works I’ve read so far; devastatingly beautiful and absolutely harrowing at the same time. I also read more Kapuscinski, whose The Shadow Of The Sun I found especially captivating this year (and whose The Emperor reminded me of Alexievich). Other non-fiction works I found particularly impressive this year were bell hooks’ Ain’t I A Woman, Cathy O’Neil’s Weapons Of Math Destruction, Meredith Broussard’s Artificial Unintelligence, Angela Y. Davis’ Women, Race and Class, Loung Ung’s First They Killed My Father, Christopher McDougall’s Born To Run, David Foster Wallace’s Consider The Lobster, and, last but not least, Michael Pollan’s amazing Cooked, which I found, in addition to a wonderful book about food and cooking, to be inspirational and instructive regarding life in general. Without further ado, the full list:

Finally, here is an overview of the works I released this year, with particular thanks to the people who worked hard to release those beautiful physicals: Petar, K., Thomas and Eric.

• Aisha Kandisha – This Blood Drenched Succubus, She Possesses The Black Waters, Haunts The Shadows, Eats The Skin Of Men (digital, Santuario De Sangre) ⏵
• Demon Cabal – Through The Halls Of Eternity (digital, Santuario De Sangre) ⏵
• Opaque – Black Duvetica Diadema (bizcard, self-released) ⏵
• Opaque – Black Moncler Hudson II (C40, Field Strike) ⏵
• Opaque – Duvetica Heze Yellow Hooded Puffer Jacket (bizcard, self-released) ⏵
• Opaque – Ienki Ienki Michlin Arctic Blue Foil Jacket (C40, Fall Into Void Records) ⏵
• Opaque – Moncler Armoise Volume I (bizcard, self-released) ⏵
• Opaque – Moncler Armoise Volume II (bizcard, self-released) ⏵
• Opaque – Moncler Armoise Volume III (bizcard, self-released) ⏵
• Opaque – Moncler Armoise Volume IV (bizcard, self-released) ⏵
• Opaque – Moncler Doas Iridescent hooded quilted shell down jacket (bizcard, self-released) ⏵
• Opaque – MONCLER WORSHIP VOLUME 29 (digital, self-released) ⏵
• Opaque – Pink Duvetica Diadema Nylon Down Jacket (C45, Veil Tapes) ⏵
• Opaque – Vanessa Hong In Black Moncler (bizcard, self-released) ⏵
• Opaque/Scarlet Diva – Split (C20, Summer Interlude Records) ⏵
• Outerstellar: Music For The Mirror Image Of This Universe (digital, Absent Erratum) ⏵
• Sven Kay – Patricia Taxxon’s Brightest Sunrise Dembow Flip (digital, self-released) ⏵
• Sven Kay – Post-Perreo 5 (digital, self-released) ⏵
• 𝘸𝘢𝘷𝘦𝘴𝘸𝘦𝘱𝘵.𝘸𝘢𝘷 – i’m not alive, i’m an echo (digital, Absent Erratum) ⏵
• 공중부양 – The Humming Of Stones (digital, Absent Erratum) ⏵
• 屋上のスキマ　白いソラ – 003 ⏵ on Various Artists – Red Cheeks (digital, Aquatic Boy Band) ⏵
• 斎藤 裕 · 長澤 まさみ · 西山 清 – Legend Of Ereganzia 「エレガンジアの伝説」 ORIGINAL SOUNDTRACK (digital, Absent Erratum) ⏵

See you next year!