Projects
Not that many things going on at the moment. Besides my regular job at Boords, I’m trying to focus my free time on shipping my SaaS Project: an online platform specifically for owners of restaurants, cafes, bars, and similar businesses.
Things I liked a lot recently:
Stardew Valley
I’ve been playing this indie game a lot recently. Your character moves to a small town to start farming, and while you’re growing fruit and vegetables you can get to know the local characters. It has similar mechanics as games like Harvest Moon, Animal Crossing, and Minecraft. In any case, it’s peaceful, relaxing, and sometimes cute. I like it a lot, especially on days that felt a bit more hectic.
The Good Place
For some reason I was hesitant to start this show, but it turned out to be such a wonderful, funny, and well crafted show. It’s one of those shows that can be wonderfully subtle and modest in some moments, and nicely over-the-top absurd in others. It also doesn’t get boring because of the subtle and sometimes not-so-subtle ways the show develops. I’m also rather fond of Ted Danson after seeing him in Bored To Death a few years ago. Keeps on giving :)
Anyway, greatly recommended. It’s by the same “The Office” writers who co-created Parks and Recreation and Brooklyn Nine-Nine (Micheal Schur and Greg Daniels).
Brooklyn Nine-Nine
Sharing creators with The Good Place, this show is also great. In a way, a similar formula as Parks and Recreation, but focusing on the daily activities in a police precinct. I love all of the characters (except maybe two), and the nice way they’ve developed themselves over 5 seasons.
Sufjan Stevens
Yep, it took way too long, but now I’ve finally discovered Sufjan Stevens, so excuse me while I slowly make my way throught his catalog of songs 😉. The reason I finally checked him out is the collaborations leading to the Planetarium project (see below), but besides that I’ve been playing a lot of Carrie & Lowell recently, some of it I even tried to play on guitar to moderate success.
Planetarium by Sufjan Stevens, Bryce Dessner, Nico Muhly & James McAlister
I’m a fan of The National, so it wasn’t a surprise that this album appeared in my recommendations at some point during this year (one of the members is part of this collaboration). I found it one of the most interesting and beautiful music I’ve listened to this year. I found the overall atmosphere, instrumentation and the orchestral bits really nice.
It’s not perfect, but I really appreciate the ambition and the end result of this collaboration. It also introduced me properly to Sufjan Stevens. As a bonus, check out this
Sleep Well Beast by The National
I like the National, and their latest album is great.
The War on Drugs
So, this band has been on this page for about a year now because of their album Lost In The Dream, which I discovered sometime last year, but this year they released a new album: “A Deeper Understanding” which for me might just be album of the year, I love it so much.
Lotta Sea Lice by Courtney Barnett & Kurt Vile
I liked this combination from when it’s leading single “Over Everything” suddenly appeared last year, and the resulting album is also a nice listen. Pitchform recorded a very nice beachside live session of the album, plus one of Courtney Barnett’s solo songs, Depreston, which is also nice, witty favourite of mine.