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RNG Party Games Backspace Bouken
Pretty cool little typing dungeon game to play with my cool mechanical keyboard! There's something relaxing and satisfying about mapping a dungeon, it's one of the reasons why I loved the Etrian Odyssey games, I should try and find more sometime
(One gripe about Backspace Bouken is that you can't save whenever you want and can't even return to a previous save point, but the whole thing is pretty short anyway)
▷ Itch.io
▷ Steam
▷ Glitchwave
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Senking Senking
I'd heard other records by Senking but I'd missed this one and it's probably one of his best! The same kind of very minimal and austere beats but in an aquatic half-dark ambience, it's gorgeous.
Thanks to Raevolt for the recommendation!
▷ Discogs
▷ RYM
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Date of Birth Planet Dob
Cool summery futuristic chillout (or “super lounge”) beats from Japan. It's also a strange PS1 video game!
(In a similar vein but poppier: Cymbals Sine, which I already recommended two years ago and is still a great album to my ears but now feels weird to play as I associate it with the time I discovered it, which was basically hell. The album helped me get through it at the time, and I'm doing a lot better now, but… I'm not sure I can hear it as it really is. That's life I guess?)
Thanks to vtvcc for the recommendation!
▷ RYM
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SHXCXCHCXSH ......t
Anxious, beautiful techno beats in short psychedelic patterns; more about atmospheres and effects than anything you could dance to. Exploring surreal, alien territories.
Thanks to Accidia1 for the recommendation!
▷ Bandcamp
▷ RYM
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arai tasuku Sin of Children
Melancholy nightmarish fairy tales with porcelain dolls and music boxes in a dark industrial city. Can be a good recommendation if you like Kikuo!
▷ Bandcamp
▷ RYM
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Hadoque Ultros
Got this because it seemed like an interesting metroidvania with beautiful psychedelic visuals, hoping the time loop mechanic wouldn't be too annoying; it turned out to be more than that and a real gem.
Ultros starts out in a pretty standard way for the genre, only in an intensely colorful, psychedelic organic world centered around a mysterious sleeping entity which starts a new cycle every time the chamber of a sleeping guardian is destroyed. After a few cycles of playing like this though, doubts started to creep in; I learned about the ecosystem of the environment, noticed that destroying everything was seriously annoying one of the inhabitants (who didn't seem to be a bad person) and wasn't sure what to do about it. And then, out of the blue while I was exploring the Sarcophagus, I found something that allowed me to play the game in a completely different way!
From that point on, instead of killing all the creatures who'd hurt me, I could take a pacifist path leading to another ending; and so, instead of fighting, I began gardening. Gathering seeds, feeding animals, splicing plants. A much slower gameplay, but perhaps even more satisfying when I saw the result of my efforts changing the world around it, making it more alive!
A good part of the game has to do with experimenting to understand how the world works; the most important mechanics will be explained directly by one of the characters but many others will be left for you to find out with the tools you get (I did consult a guide at times). Ultros kept me on my toes; I spent most of my playthrough not being sure I would succeed, not knowing if I didn't miss something important or understood all the rules of this strange world. It all worked out in a beautiful way in the end.
Now, this game isn't for everyone; it's not really difficult but requires a lot of patience if you want to take the nonviolent path. That's in part because the very mechanics of the game feel organic, not just the aesthetics (did I mention even the menu sounds are kinda wet? yeah, that was weird at first). I spent a while fiddling with my tools, digging for compost at the other end of the map, trying to find out how to make my plants grow the right way on tricky sections. It was slow-going, trial-and-error, but also rare for me not to make any progress at all at the end of a session. I liked spending time in this world. Losing some of your gained abilites at each new cycle (including the double jump) can also be frustrating; I was mostly okay with these quirks, which became less of an issue as I progressed and didn't seem completely gratuitious either (the game wants you to think about balance and uses for each thing you find, not just accumulate all the power and resources for yourself). Keeping the double jump wouldn't have hurt though. Perhaps my only other real complaint would be the narration, which was mostly abstruse bits scattered here and there; I know I missed some but couldn't really connect the dots to understand the story, and the ending scene felt abrupt. That said, if you're a patient player who loves exploring psychedelic environments and cares more about experimentation than pure thrill, I highly recommend Ultros! It's a special and unusual experience, full of wonder.
▷ Steam
▷ Glitchwave
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Genesis Owusu Redstar Wu & the Worldwide Scourge
Hey, so it is possible to make a good album about the current political shitshow we're living in! Nothing new stylistically for Owusu but it's very good; I think I'd like to see him live sometime.
📺 “Stampede”
▷ Bandcamp
▷ RYM
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ファントムシータ (Phantom Siita) 少女の日の思い出 (Girlhood Memories)
Hanging out and dancing with your group of girl friends, drinking strawberry milk in one of the Castlevania castle rooms where a skeleton is playing jazzy piano and bats are dancing too 🦇
Thanks to Owl for the discovery!
▷ Bandcamp
▷ RYM
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Boards of Canada Inferno
Tomorrow's Harvest felt like a slow, progressive introduction; signs and anxiety before the inevitable cataclysm, solastalgia. (While a favourite of mine soundwise and thematically, I had to admit it lacked the highlights of their best records.) With its title and pre-release posters, I expected Inferno to be a sequel and their darkest album yet — not downtempo with lots of vocals and a Hare Krishna sample!
But this is a great listen, and while mostly chill and more retro than any of their other works (some might say almost cheesy), it has depth. Similar in Geogaddi in a couple of ways, only instead of an initiation to paganic/esoteric rituals, it evokes spirituality/religion, with death and the afterlife as recurring themes and a darker undercurrent. I'm still wondering what a truly dark and pessimistic BoC album could have been, but I don't think we're worse off with this one!
(I just wish they'd asked The Designers Republic to do the cover art, that kerning and cover layout are just not good)
▷ Warp
▷ Bandcamp
▷ RYM
▷ Unofficial Wiki
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Nnedi Okorafor Who Fears Death
One of the worst covers on my bookshelves, but this was a great read! Seamlessly bridges the gaps between folklore, magic and just enough sci-fi to situate the story in the future. A chosen one's adventure in the desert, about womanhood, differences, the weight and power of traditions. (Also takes place in a part of the world which I don't get to read too often about, or at least not in a good way)
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Oscar Jerome The Spoon
Vesperal, chill, seductive and consistently interesting blend of soul, jazz and electronic elements. I like music that sets up an easy, pleasant pattern and then plays over it in unexpected ways like that.
▷ Bandcamp
▷ RYM
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HVL Nonlinear
The overall aesthetic is close to, say, Skee Mask, but with more straightfoward and faster techno beats; some acid and space / futuristic accents too. Quite a bit of variety. Great for reading.
▷ Bandcamp
▷ RYM
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LinLin Disco Inferno
This isn't dark ambient either!
The RYM review by electricity is good, I don't have much to add to it; “BLACC*” is the one that keeps drawing me in with its sense of urgency, but there are plenty of good surprises after that — the synthpop “Cœur de pirate” is another favourite!
📺 “BLACC*”
▷ RYM
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