Likes
Things I'm into right now. Updated occasionally.
Music
Magdalena Bay – Imaginal Disk (2024)
Synth Pop. Neo-Psychedelia.
Imaginal Disk builds a fictive universe across its songs, music videos and web map. Unlike classic concept albums, there’s no overarching narrative or cast of characters though. It is worldbuilding for its own sake, anchored by great synth-pop.
Susanne Sundfør – Ten Love Songs (2015)
Art Pop. Synth Pop.
The Magnetic Fields wrote 69 love songs; Susanne Sundfør just wrote ten. But those ten are among the most creative pop songs of the 2010s, woven into a coherent album.
Oklou – Galore (2020)
Alt-Pop. Ambient Pop. Electronic.
Galore is aptly labeled a mixtape rather than an album. It is a set of modern nocturnes that build on lush synths and lightly auto-tuned vocals.
Tim Hecker - Ravedeath, 1972 (2011)
Ambient. Drone.
A dark, prismatic ambient album. Many of the tracks build on Organ recordings from a large Scandinavian church that are then distorted and deconstructed into drony sound scapes.
Tori Amos – Boys for Pele (1996)
Art Pop. Baroque Pop.
Boys for Pele is, in the best sense of the word, unhinged. In it, a generational piano talent plugs a harpsichord into an amplifier and wrestles with the demons in her past.
Movies
La Jetée
Chris Marker, 1962.
A 30 minute photo montage that tells the story of a man looking for an image from his childhood. One of the best short films I’ve ever had the pleasure of seeing.
The Florida Project
Sean Baker, 2017.
Follows the summer break of a group of young kids in Florida. A very moving portrayal of a childhood that reminded me of what it felt like to be a child.
Coherence
James Ward Byrkit , 2014.
Very fun, low-budget Sci-Fi movie set at a dinner party. Don’t read anything about it, go in blind.
Train Dreams
Clint Bentley, 2025.
Train Dreams is a gentle, emotional portray of a wood worker’s life in the Pacific Northwest. The old-growth forests serve as both the setting as well as the heartbeat of the movie that, at its core, is about the passage of time.
Games
Slay the Spire 2
Roguelike. Deck-Builder.
I am a big fan of the first Slay the Spire and the second iteration improves on the formula in a lot of ways. The added Coop mode which was pioneered by the board game is a nice addition to the game, as are the act variations and the compression of ascension levels.
Deadlock
Hero Shooter. Moba.
I’m grateful that I never ventured into MOBAs until fairly recently. A game like Deadlock would have been dangerous to a younger version of me with fewer responsibilities and more free time on hand.
Deadlock is the most exciting online multiplayer game you can play right now, even though it’s still an invite-only alpha that changes constantly. The mix of movement shooter and MOBAs feels genuinely new.
Hollow Knight: Silksong
Metroidvania.
I bounced off Hollow Knight the first time I played and quickly forgot all about it. But then the game kept popping up in my circles enough that I finally tried it a second time and fell completely in love with it. Few games have hooked me as hard as Hollow Knight has.
Silksong is Hollow Knight x2: more of everything, including the occasional frustration. Still, it is a great sequel with a fantastic soundtrack and I’m looking forward to where they take it in the expansions.
TV Shows
The Good Place
2016-2020
There is not much I can say about The Good Place without spoiling it:
- it’s a series about a flawed woman’s afterlife.
- it’s very funny at times.
- it builds on an interesting philosophical foundation.
- it truly stuck the landing with a fantastic ending.
Arcane
2021-2024
Arcane is a series about bonds forged early in life. It tells the story of two sisters and their neighbours that grow up together and continue to orbit one another as a larger plot unfolds around them. I never played League of Legends, so I could not connect with it on that level, but the series and its beautiful animation style stand firmly on their own.
Arrested Development
2003-2006
The “reboot” seasons (4 & 5) do not exist. The rest is the funniest sitcom I watched. There’s always money in the banana stand.
The Pitt
2025-
Each season of The Pitt portrays one shift in the emergency department of a hospital in Pittsburgh. Even though the series anchors around the day-to-day work done in the ER, what makes it click are the little glimpses of personal lifes that happen between cases.
The Wire
2002-2008
The Wire is my longest standing recommendation on this list. There is something about the way it portrays its protagonists and the city of Baltimore it plays in that make this show stand out from similar crime shows. Season 4 is a masterpiece.