New Year (Menacing) // Music is good
2026 doesn’t seem to be slowing down, and thus I must speed up.
This blog section has been sitting in a limbo of irrelevance since its inception, and I aim to correct that by slowly revealing how annoying I actually am. I’ve done a lot of drawing with my silly little pens this past year and, to fuel that, I’ve listened to a scary amount of music. I feel like if you know what trash I’m listening to, you’ll get a better understanding of why my art looks the way it does. I’m gonna ramble for a little while and intersperse some music that I’ve recently absorbed into my personality. I’m no connoisseur, but these songs are handpicked with the intention of being a somewhat smooth genre-hopping experience. Now, have I succeeded? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
This playlist is a mess of prog, slacker rock, psychedelia, and shoegaze. Hopefully you're into that, if not. Sorry.
I want so badly to be a pessimist, but things are really good, actually!
I’m a professional doomer. It’s in my bones. So imagine my surprise when my year starts off great and I create a ton of art that I feel good about. Odd. Unnerving. Maybe it’s because I’m listening to happier music nowadays (not true, the second half of this playlist is rough). I dunno, it reminds me of that one time when people wouldn’t listen to that one SZA album because they couldn’t relate to being a hot girl who’s still hung up on her ex. I don’t know what’s happening in mainstream music right now.
(Doomer by Ski Club was supposed to be the opener for this playlist, but my better judgement won.)
I’m not very familiar with FORAGER as a band, but their music both slaps and bangs. I found them after everybody dropped Spotify and I realised there were better options. Bandcamp is one of them. Buying music is really fun, actually. I think Pomeranian got a good amount of attention because of the really satisfying time signature changes. I love it, but when Jacob Collier does the same thing I call it soulless technical slop. The moral of the story is to shut up and enjoy the music. Music elitism is boring and tired, and nobody thinks I’m cool.
You still can’t bring Jacob Collier to the function. You will NOT be getting the AUX cord.
I should really start posting more.
I’ve got a decent amount of finished art in my back pocket that I haven’t posted for one unsubstantial reason or another. I get distracted easily. I often say it’s not in my nature to be an active social media user; I don’t know if that’s a cop-out or not. Mandatory phone usage is one of the more stressful parts of modern living. I’d get a dumbphone, but as much as I want to go off the grid and live out my woodland hermit fantasy, my phone helps me make money, and I need money to live. I wish Socrates thought of this before he left us. RIP to one of the greats.
Crumb has been in my rotation since I found them in my SoundCloud days. Their 2019 album Jinx was pretty much my psych rock awakening. I have some really fond memories of that time; there’s a clear cognitive link between my love for psychedelia and my current art style. I was listening to a lot of Superorganism back then too. I think I found them through Vice TV. RIP to another one of the greats - they can’t keep getting away with this.
I exist in multitudes now, cue the celebration.
I spoke at a networking event some weeks ago to announce some upcoming projects and introduce myself to some lovely new people. I’m the type of introvert who spends weeks dreading potential social interactions but truly loves attention. Very incongruent (I like that word). It feels really weird to be talking about projects that are so far at the end of my current agenda, maybe I'm revealing stuff too early. Doesn’t matter, scope creep isn’t real.
At that event, I made an off-the-cuff joke about how you can listen to me ramble about bad indie music here. At that point in time, that was a complete lie. I felt compelled to make good on my word, and here we are. In the past, I had taken a lot of steps to remove myself from whatever I post online. I liked being a faceless artist, but now you can paint a pretty solid picture of who I am as a person just by doing some light research. Scary, but beneficial. I’ve slowly realised that I’m an important part of the things I create (duhhh); it’s all very incongruous (last time, I promise).
Genevieve Artadi is truly one of a kind. I’m not sure if I discovered her solo stuff first, her band KNOWER, or if I maybe saw a Louis Cole video first. Eh. I considered putting her song Visionary here instead, but Plate won in the end. Both masterpieces.
(Semi-related: Sam Gendel’s work in Hades 2 is unbelievably good. This entire band is cracked.)
My online shop is open for business; new stuff is on the way.
I didn’t expect people to like the new stickers as much as they did - that’s a nice confidence boost. This first run was always intended to be limited, but hoo boy, did that limit show itself. I’m gonna go really big for the next one; each of the new illustrations will be getting A4 prints along with some other stuff from the backlog. I’ll keep the shop open while I still have some leftovers to peddle. A big thanks to anyone who’s taken my art home recently. More to come!
I only recently discovered that Water From Your Eyes is partly the work of This Is Lorelei. It’s like when I found out Still Woozy was in Feed Me Jack (one of my favourite bands of all time), or when I found out that Little Big League (underrated as hell) was the precursor to Japanese Breakfast. I consume music so callously.
If you sign up for my newsletter, you get to make prioritised suggestions on what I should tackle next for the shop or just my art in general. Please do the thinking for me; this is hard.
Comic Con on the horizon. Yay me.
I’ve begun making preparations to bring my art to Luton Comic Con! This is the first time my art will be at any sort of fair-like environment, and it’s really exciting! We’re still a ways away from September, so I don’t have anything big to share yet, but I have a really good feeling about it. Updates eventually.
Feeble Little Horse is another one of my favourite bands of all time. I missed their show in London and have been regretting it ever since. Tin Man was my most played song for a very long time; the poppier sound they bring to shoegaze is a lot of fun. I’ve been waiting far too long to get Girl With Fish on vinyl (The words of a person who bought their first LP this very month).
My vinyl collection is doing great, thanks for asking! I now have two LPs instead of one. I’m a regular Fantano, I am.
This would be the part where you flip the LP.
It’s hard to talk about music with people when your favourite band is called something stupid like Jenny Coolbitch and the Entropy Effect. Mannequin Pussy is one such example, an amazing band that is impossible to slip into casual conversation. I don’t really recommend them anymore after they made an AI-generated music video and then doubled down when people called them out. A punk rock band thinking their audience of lefties would love AI slop is really funny in retrospect. Their most recent album is really good though.
Nick Hakim is pretty easy to recommend. Will This Make Me Good was my first vinyl purchase, and I can safely say it’s my favourite album of all time. Has been for a while; maybe that will change eventually. The raw emotion he and his collaborators put into this album is nothing short of immaculate. I think you should listen to the whole album if you’re into neo-soul and psychedelic jazz. Life-changing stuff.
Anyway, here’s Psychedelic Porn Crumpets. They’re another one of my favourite bands, and they only use AI for concert visuals! It’s rough out here, man; I’m just so tired.
This AI stuff is kinda wild, huh.
My opinions on it have changed a bit as I’ve matured. I’m still firmly against generative AI in art, whether it’s audio, visual, or whatever. I think art is intrinsically human, and the easiest, most widespread usage of AI is to remove this human element for a quicker and cheaper alternative. Fuck that. I recognise that there are a number of artists who use AI as a tool to speed up their workflow; power to them and all. I just see how easily it’s already been abused and how much potential there is for it to get so much worse.
None of that stuff here. My art is mine.
Psychedelic Porn Crumpets don’t have a single bad song, and that is crazy considering how big their library is. I can give them a pass for some bad concert visuals.
Shoegaze has infected my mind and soul.
My music taste has leaned emo since 2019 (thank you, Glass Beach and Origami Angel). It’s only in the last couple of years that I’ve gone through weeks where shoegaze is the only genre I’ve been listening to. The curse started with Vitamin Beauty by Her New Knife, and then it spiralled out of control.
I’m glad to say Julie made me worse; they’re another one of those bands that can’t make a bad song. They’re heralded as the new big band who are gonna succeed the genre pioneers, namely My Bloody Valentine. I don’t know if that’s true or not, I’ve barely scratched the surface of MBV’s discography. I’m sure I’ll become a loyalist soon enough, don’t fret.
Emo isn’t all depressing, that’s a tired stereotype, but it is oppressive in a really inspiring way. I like that atmosphere, I want to keep that going. I always promise to do some more happy, lighthearted stuff with my art, but the devil on my shoulder is very convincing and I think even you’d cave if you just heard him out.
I do think there are some lighter aesthetics I could experiment with in the future. I’ve got a small comic called Catastrophic Combustion Kid in the drafting stages. It’s more grungy and punky than it is emo. There’s also Luton at Night on the way which is going in a more gothic direction. You’ll see.
Telling stories in a limited medium is fun and challenging, and everyone should do it.
I’ve been pushing myself as a “narrative artist” for a while. The end goal of whatever I create is to convey a complete story within the limits of what I’m working with. I’ve been getting really serious about this philosophy recently, and I know just how much progress can still be made. I don’t want to rant about how much I hate my old art, but I will say there’s a lot of work to be done, and I’m very excited to do it.
I take a lot of inspiration from the works of Junji Ito, Shinya Kumazaki, and Ari Gibson (Japan and Australia are talent farms. This needs to be studied). I think they’re some of the best when it comes to building worlds in a single frame. I want there to be a fully realised story in all of my art; hidden and unconventional but integral to the piece. I feel like this song does that perfectly. Immersion is a beautiful thing.
They Are Gutting a Body of Water have been a shoegaze obsession of mine for a while now. Similarly, I think they’re kind of unparalleled in the type of atmosphere they create. Pretty much any act in the Julia’s War line-up is guaranteed to be golden.
I just dropped my stylus in a cup of lukewarm green tea.
It’s sitting in a bowl of rice now. Suddenly, I have zero excuses to put off finishing this post. Fate is my mistress and she is not kind. Having beverages by your work station means sometimes you lose a pen in the brew and of course that’s not ideal, but it’s the risk we take as artists. This song is really good.
Everything is underrated, and that word has lost its meaning, but no band deserves it more than Goon. I’m sure no one batted an eye at that name in 2015, but it’s 2026 now, and you’re either part of the goonsquad or you’re a nobody. They’re gonna blow up soon, and I’ll be able to proudly say that I’ve been a gooner since the early days.
Christ.
(Turns out Goon is playing in London next month. I’m buying all the tickets while typing this.)
My obsession with being niche is actively harming my business.
I type this with a smile, and I think that perfectly encapsulates the problem. My plans for the future are very shallow. I have a small list of things I want to create; besides that, I don’t have any financial goals or really a business model at all. ‘Business’ is a dirty word. Devil talk. I’m actually taking a very nuanced anti-capitalist stance, and none of you philistines are enlightened enough to get it. People who go out of their way to be contrarian are annoying nerds, but if you’re hot enough, suddenly we call it ‘counter-culture,’ and all the kids want a part of it.
Can you tell that I’m running out of things to say?
Office Dog has a beautiful sound. Sounds like home, which is funny because they’re Kiwis and I’m not. Dump No Waste, Flows to the Sea was supposed to play here, but I feel like Shade captures the feeling I want better. It’s a type of melancholy that leans closer to happiness than the sadness you’d expect. I really like it.
“It’s experimental,” they said, “That was the intention,” they said.
If you’ve been paying attention, you’ll know that I currently have two LPs in my slowly expanding vinyl collection. Face Down in Meta is the second beauty to which I have welcomed home, and it feels like it always belonged. Experimental music gets a bad rap because it’s either really good or really bad, but I think even the bad stuff deserves some credit for pushing the envelope.
Don’t know why I’m bringing this up now. This record is one of the greats. Like an all-time great. Sucks that I probably won’t ever see them live, but holding this LP in my hands is fulfilling enough. Pet Shimmers played a big part in me finding my footing with my current art style. I got hooked on Mortal Sport Argonaut (listen to the acoustic version, it’s the holy grail) and was suddenly inspired to embrace the weirder side of my creativity. I hope I never stop doing that.
This blog post took a whole day to write. Was this an efficient use of my time? Dunno. I’m gonna keep creating and experimenting and learning and failing and growing. I can do that happily.
Thanks for existing.