29 Dec 2023
The year 2023 was a return to big events. I attended GenCon and PAX Unplugged (as well as returning to PAX West), all as a normal attendee not trying to exhibit or pitch prototypes. As such I had time to try new games and play with friends at conventions. The following are games I played this year that warranted mentioning.
This game claimed the 2023 Spiel des Jahres (essentially the Game of the Year for board games). What if I told you there was no winning in this game? It’s a solo experience of relaxing and laying down hexes. You can play it with other people (and exclusively, I have), but mechanically the game is no different. Play a hex one at a time, try to score the most points. However, when you beat your score target, or you accomplish something quirky in the game… there are achievements. And those unlock new game components, new ways to score… and fundamentally that’s the drive that will bring you back time and time again. I’ve had a great time sitting down to a game of chill hexes with a loved one. Do recommend.
1-3 players, 30 minutes
This was a delightful GenCon find. A small box of cards with numbers and colors, that’s it. You assemble these cards into a triangle of plumage, where the first (and largest row) is negative points… but every row after is positive points. But you can only use colors that appeared in the previous row. And you can only hold six cards in your hand at once. Inevitably, imperfection and compromise creep in as you race against other players. This game is elegant and portable.
2-6 players, 30 minutes
Quinns was pretty darn excited about Hostage Negotiator, but it sounded like a hard thing to get into. Then I heard that Final Girl is a retheme of that same concept, and it was coming to Kickstarter. Mind you, this a solo game. I’m not so sure about solo games (the main draw of the hobby is playing with friends). But we’re crawling out of the pandemic here, and I went to some weird places. So I pledged for Season 2 of Final Girl. The key to amplifying the experience of this game has been pairing it with the horror movies that inspired each box. It’s a lot more fun to play the Panic from Station 2891 box right after watching The Thing. So Final Girl has turned into a “movie and a game” date night co-op experience; watch the movie, play the movie. The game itself is tense. You’re probably going to fail. But when you succeed and smash the killer… oh yeah it feels good. Suffice to say, I’m in for Season 3’s Kickstarter too, and looking forward to more of this.
1-2 players, 45 minutes
I’ve played so much Clank. The classic, every expansion board for that, the space version, the beginning of the legacy version (really need to get an opportunity to delve back into that…). Obviously I like Clank. Build a deck, don’t be too greedy, don’t be not greedy enough. This latest version, Catacombs, brings a new sense of exploration. Instead of a fixed board, you build it as you go. This means you don’t quite get the sense of place as when holding your breath underwater to get sunken treasure. But running off into the darkness is fun too. And this far into Clank’s evolution… they really have tuned the cards to be fun. I’ve had an above-average amount of fun with this particular brand of Clank.
2-4 players, 60 minutes
This game was so hard to get for so long (Thanks Tom Brewster :/. But it’s great. Make pairs or straights to get cards out of your hand. Empty your hand first and win. But empty your hand too aggressively and you may find yourself unable to play. It feels like a classic timeless card game, and comes in that delightful Oink box size. Portable, easy to teach, satisfying.
2-5 players, 15 minutes
I became wise to this game via the SUSD podcast. It’s a silly thing. A deck of cards with a variety of images on a theme. Try to get people to guess one card in a grid of 16 using only other cards as a clue. Is Poseidon more similar to Athena or Artemis? Is that a comment on the art, or the lore, or… whatever whim of the clue master? Things get extra spicy when you start mixing decks (Is Hagrid similar to a chicken?). This is a great game to pack with you and bust out when you’re waiting for food at a pub. You can play exactly one round in the time it takes the ferry to get from Whidbey to Seattle. Ask me how I know.
2+ players, 10 minutes
I’ve known that this game was a simple delight for a long time. But I resisted buying a copy. The Amigo production is… ugly. I contemplated making my own printing. It’s just a set of 32 cards with numbers on them. There are so many examples of alternate card designs out there. But that time spent pouting over the production was also time not playing it. So I bought an ugly copy. And I’m happy to have it in my collection. Watching players agonize over whether they should take that card (they probably shouldn’t). The hubris of thinking you’ll be able to complete a run and turn the whole thing around. Social strategy emerges from this simple game. I just wish it were a little smaller and a little easier on the eyes.
3-7 players, 20 minutes
This was the year I finally got a Klask board. I’ve played Klask plenty, primarily on a yearly camping trip with friends. This year the Klask board’s owner didn’t bring it, so when later there were stacks of them for purchase at Pax West… and I finally had a home that could handle owning Crokinole and Klask… it was time for my very own. This game is electric. Your pawn is controlled by a magnet underneath the board, and you need to “kick” a ball into the opponent’s goal to score. But the special ingredient is the three “biscuits”; have two of them magnetically attach to your pawn and your opponent scores a point. Thus the game is a balance between trying to score with the ball and trying to not be so frantic that you lose to the biscuits.
2 players, 10 minutes
This game continues to be a favorite for large groups. If you have enough people and the right stable window of time… it’s magic. On the surface it’s just Taboo or Charades or something like that, by having three different rounds of guessing really turns into its own thing. Over those ~40 minutes you will all develop a shared secret language. And you will all laugh. Reliably. Monikers has never failed to pull off its magic trick.
4-16 players, 45 minutes
What a charming game. You roll dice, and you match the pips on the dice with the spots on dogs. Fail to match too many, and you bust. You choose different “tricks” to determine how your roll the dice. It’s simple and the presentation is stinking adorable.
1-4 players, 30 minutes
There’s nothing new about Skull for me in 2023. Well, technically they did have a new pink box release and it allowed me to refresh my copy that was visibly marked in a way that kept it from being playable with six players… but really, this game is old to me. I’ve literally played it 100 times (I keep track of these things). But once again, this was one of my top played games for the year. It’s a perfect game. Bluffing, hubris, laughter with friends.
3-6 players, 15 minutes
I like maps. I like drawing. I like board games. This is a board game about drawing maps. It plays simultaneously, so it scales to any player count. It’s also compact enough to be able to play at a very small table. This is a new addition to my collection, but I’m eager to play more and eager to try out the expansions.
1+ players, 30 minutes
And the Rest
Here are some other games that are still occupying some of my brain space and are worth a little mention. Some may turn into stronger recommendations, but it’s too early to say.
Curiosities
- Dro Polter: In this game you hold a set of varied small objects in your hand (a ring, a shell, a cube, etc.). A card is flipped that shows some number of those objects, and the first person to (without looking) drop exactly those objects scores a point. Each point is bell you have to also hold in your hand… but if you drop a bell you lose it. First to five bells wins. It’s simple giggly fun.
- Rafter Five: Essentially this game is Jenga in an Oink sized box. It’s different of course, with thin cardstock planks holding wooden meeples and treasure chests. Making it more like Men at Work, actually. Regardless, it’s tense silly fun in a small box.
- Trash Talk: In this game you try to map weird dollar store items to a set of words. Does this tiny slinky map to “level” and the little racecar to “happy”, or the other way around? Each time you’re correct, add one weird little item to make the next round more challenging. It’s very much a game of getting into the head of the clue-giver.
- Lacuna: Some games are so simple that they feel like they came from an older time. Place your metal tokens to capture flowers, working towards claiming the majority in each flower suit. It’s a spatial head to head pub game… minus the fact that I wouldn’t want to lay the pretty playmat on a sticky pub table. I was persuaded by Matt Lees’ review to pick this up before playing it (a rarity for me these days), and I think it will work well as an accessible curio for a broad audience.
Let’s Color
- Sagrada Artisans: Sagrada is a game of drafting dice and filling out your stained glass window with them following certain placement rules. Artisans turns that into a coloring book legacy game. When it’s not your turn, you’re coloring your page. It completely takes the sting out of anyone’s turn running long. We’re only a few games into the campaign, but I’m really enjoying the relaxed mutual activity vibe of it.
- Blueprints of Mad King Ludwig: In the theme of “games that let you color and draw” (like Cartographers and Sagrada Artisans), this one is more complicated. Each turn your draft a new room to your growing palace, tracing it onto your piece of velum with colored pencils. The complexity is in the different per-room-type special abilities and scoring criteria. We’ll see with more plays how that holds up (and smooths out), but is undeniable that drawing a palace floorplan is fun.
Good for Kids and Adults
- Castles by the Sea: Build sandcastles with wooden blocks, populate them with your little meeples, and then watch the whole thing get knocked over by a bouncing beach ball. It’s a great theme, and a lovely rendering of that theme in 3D space. The puzzle is in playing off of existing sand blocks to efficiently score shapes. Given that mental spatial manipulation isn’t for everyone, that puzzle may short-circuit some brains. But playing it quick and casual had this one feeling good.
- Wandering Towers: Wizards are racing around a circuit getting lost in towers on their way to the constantly-moving finish line. The theme is weird. The stacking cardboard towers are great. I had more fun playing this with kids and adults than I expected.
- Penny Black: Collect stamps and add them to your collector book in patterns matching your scoring criteria. There’s nothing ground-breaking about how this game plays. But the production will leave a smile on your face. The stamp books are adorable, the tiles are clack-y, and the turn tracker is a rubber stamp. It all feels great, even if the experience is a little on the thin side.
Small Boxes
- Inheritors: In this small box card game you play ascending numbers in colored suits, and your score is the sum of the largest number in each suit. Simple, effective. But then there’s just enough interest in the cycling of cards (discards go into a center market; no number card ever leaves circulation) and some power cards to make it juicy. It has a little bit too much extra fluff, but the core is solid.
- Splendor Duel: Splendor is a modern classic. The Duel version focuses it in on two players and adds a little board to make the gem drafting more interesting. It totally works, and the result is a tuned version of the larger game.
- Radlands: Mad Max as a two player card game. Perhaps your wastelanders are bit too fragile, as the board state can be very dynamic. I’d like to spend more time with this one, more than partially influenced by the absolutely incredible art on these cards.
Main Events
- Art Society: Hang paintings on your wall, matching their frame style but not clashing their contents. Each round the paintings are allocated based on a simultaneous bid (with little paddles!). The presentation is absolutely impeccable. A gorgeous game.
- Meadow: Draft cards and play them in a natural progression, for example from mud fields to worm to bird to wolf. The art is delightful and watching your cards layer is satisfying. If I had to share a complaint it’d be that the point values are maybe too tight, where getting a 2 value instead of 3 value card just twice in the game is probably going to sink you.
- HEAT: Pedal to the Metal: I was told this was the best racing board game… and I can’t really refute that. More than anything I’ve played it captured a sense of speed and risk. Push your deck to its limits and hope that it pays out. I very much enjoyed it, and if I decide to open a slot for a racing game it may replace my critically-beloved-but-no-one-wants-to-play Flamme Rouge.
- Décorum: It’s hard to beat the provided tagline: “a game of passive aggressive cohabitation.” Work together to meet both of your shared goals for home decoration… but without communicating directly. It’s a cute little puzzle that so far lives in the space of enjoyable confusion.
Maybes
- The Hunger: You’re a vampire. Venture out into the forest, feast upon the townsfolk, and get back before sunrise. But if you feast too hard, your engorged vampire might not be able to roll itself back into bed in time. It felt like similar to Clank but with vampires. I’d give it another play.
- Wormholes: I like this game of making wormholes and making planetary deliveries. But after more plays of it it’s become clear that it has a strong runaway leader problem. If someone cracks the code, they’re going to be one or two turns ahead of you and you will never catch up. The number of moves per turn is too tight, and the game is rather short. So I guess I need to only play it with people who suck as much as I do at the puzzle?
28 Dec 2023
Here in 2023, my video game playing has been heavily influenced by two things. The first is playing with my ten-year-old daughter, choosing games that are content-appropriate and within her interests. The second is having an engaged group of friends that are interested in playing games together or apart, but then discussing them afterwards. These both have kept my playing dynamic and social in a way that really has worked for me. The following is a list of video games I played in 2023 (potentially released earlier) that warranted a mention.
This is a classic RPG that feels like it came out of the SNES era, but far more beautiful than those games could ever be. The story managed to keep me on my toes with some unexpected mid-game twists. The turn-based combat with real-time button presses (similar to Paper Mario games) kept things engaging (although by the end I was ready for more mix up in abilities). This game thoroughly captivated me and my ten-year-old daughter until we both separately completed it. Definitely recommended if you have a soft spot for beautiful pixel art RPGs. Good music too.
Played on Xbox GamePass, Switch
This game is not what it seems. The best simplification I can give is that it’s Slay the Spire meets Frog Fractions. As in it’s a digital card game… that does unexpected things that I would never dream of spoiling for you. When I first “beat” the game I then realized I had only completed the first act and that what followed was a big departure from the game I’d been playing to that point. It was… truly a great journey. The game is rated Mature due to some light body horror and language… but also the first act is decidedly creepy. If that’s not your thing, I wouldn’t tell you to power through regardless… but know that this game has many different tones. The creators of this game clearly didn’t give one lick about commercial viability, and I love what they created.
Played on Xbox
I gather this game can be played by yourself, but I haven’t. To me it is a game about exploring an adorable black and white environment alongside my ten-year-old daughter and slathering paint over everything. You solve puzzles with those paint brushes too. They start simple and get increasingly clever. The “boss battles” are particularly varied and creative. In fact, overall the game has quite the build; don’t assume that the early game simplicity holds. This one really grew on me. But the real charm is the way it encourages you to leave your mark on every screen.
Played on Xbox GamePass
Half of this game is running a village sim, managing your growing set of cult followers to ensure they are housed, happy, and being exploited for your cause. The other half is an action game of exploring a dungeon to grow in power before facing a final boss. The first half, the sim, is far more charming and unique. You create your own religion, from doctrines to decorations. Combine that with a disturbingly adorable presentation, and this game leaves an impression.
Played on Xbox
Who needs buttons? All you need to do to play this game is steer. Which makes it playable… anywhere. This is the only game that got any play on my phone. The gameplay is simple: walk around with automatic attacks, collect experience, add or improve weapons, repeat until the screen is pure madness. It’s a simple but very effective formula. I liked it enough to stake out the extremely derivative Extremely Powerful Capybaras at PAX West to get a capybara stuffy (TLDR it’s a cute and capable multiplayer-focused version of the same idea).
Played on Xbox GamePass, Switch, iOS
This story murder mystery adventure sure loves itself some typography. I highly recommend finding the accessibility slider for text size and cranking it to max, just so you can see more of the beautiful script. The game itself is a classic “talk to people and make irreversible decisions via dialog” adventure game, set in a monastic medieval setting. Great artistic style and difficult choices. This game had me setting the controller down so I could take a walk to think through how my murder accusations.
Played on Xbox GamePass
This environmental puzzle game is beautiful, mind-bending, and short. I completed it in only a few sittings, but the entire experience was delightful. Also it has oddly engaging door animations.
Played on Xbox
A classic 2D side-scrolling Mario in the vein of the SNES’ Super Mario world. Instead of the Mushroom Kingdom you’re exploring the Flower Kingdom, and with that comes new environments and enemies. Each level contains a hidden “wonder” effect that changes the rules in unexpected and often hilarious ways. The end result is an inspired but classic feeling Mario adventure.
Played on Switch
The first Diablo was unlike anything I’d ever seen, and I went hard. I played Diablo II a ton between high school and college, this time with friends. I played Diablo III (switching from PC to console too), but it never gripped me. This year Diablo IV managed to bring back a lot of the classic enjoyment of this series (and not just because I could play a necromancer again). This time I went deep with friendly multiplayer, which was a blast. The loot perhaps came too fast, but the fun of hacking alongside friends was undeniable. Many good long evenings… until the grind set in, the level differences became harder, and it all began to feel aimless. I’ll hop in again if the seasonal content calls to me and I can play along with friends, but overall I feel like I had a complete experience.
Played on Xbox
I feel like I should have more to say about this game. It’s more Breath of the Wild. Which is a game beloved by many. I like it plenty. I gather not as much as other folks do… but that’s still quite a bit. For this round, the puzzle powers are much more interesting than in Breath of the Wild. And the game is even bigger, which I didn’t really need but is not unwelcome. As of writing, I haven’t completed Tears of the Kingdom, and it’ll probably take me a long time at this rate. It’s good, it’s big, there’s also a lot of other great stuff to play too.
Played on Switch
And the Rest
Here are some other games that are worth a little mention.
- Beacon Pines: This was an interesting family-friendly diversion. It’s a story adventure game where you learn words that let you go back and fork the timeline to explore alternate outcomes. The interactivity is light. But if you frame it more as an interactive book, it feels better.
- Valheim: All I really want to do is build my Viking house. You can create interesting structures with the building system. But I need to go out into the wilderness and fell more trees and mine more ore… and there are trolls and worse out there. In the end, the loss upon random death and the grind were too harsh. I enjoyed the Viking dollhouse game for a bit but I needed a game that respected my time a bit more.
- Dead Cells: I took a crack at Dead Cells years ago. I’ve heard many sing its praises. This year I took a new and more serious attempt, and I got much deeper. When you hit a state of flow this game’s controls really shine. However too often you’ll have a glorious run turn to ash in mere moments. It turns on a dime, often after you’ve burned a lot of time getting there. The sense of progression is so weak (you unlock more toys… but not anything that literally levels you up) that it feels like you’re spending a lot of time to get nowhere. This game just yells “git gud”, and asks you to try again, but it didn’t feel as worth it as other games where I’ve decided to rise to the challenge.
- Rogue Legacy 2: I only just jumped into this rogue-lite a few days ago. And at first glance, it feels like Dead Cells but with a much more clear sense of progression. It’s obvious to me that I’m making progress. It’s clear to me what I can do and what I will get out of it. It’s an early take, but I’m really enjoying it.
- Monster Sanctuary: Metroidvania Pokémon. Collect creatures, use their powers to traverse to new areas, level them up to win turn-based battles. This game is not short, and never really hits high highs. But it worked as a low-key activity and helped open up my daughter to more turn-based gameplay.
02 Jan 2013
We often bemoan the encroaching invasiveness of the modern digital age. Services like Facebook and Google are pretty notorious for collecting all kinds of data on us. The amount of information that they know about a single person can be a bit creepy. There’s a fair amount of faith required to trust that they will respect our privacy, and it’s clear that some are better at this than others. But there are times when I really appreciate my digital footprint. I like being able to explore my memory with the aid of some automatic stenographer in the cloud. It’s with this help that with a quick run through of Xbox and BoardGameGeek that I can tell you exactly what I played in 2012.
So, if you didn’t already know it, I’m a gamer. Hello. It’s pretty irrefutable when you look at these lists below. I enjoy games at some fundamental level. I love learning. I love skill mastery. I love interactive narrative. I love the breath of experiences that games can often.
As various publications out there are putting together “game of the year” lists I feel like this is a good time to reflect back on my year of gaming. Outside of Bastion I didn’t make any game-related posts in 2012 (finishing the Music Made Me project took at the words out of me). I’m not going to be able to comment on this entire backlog, or cough up some grandiose meta-editorial last minute. But I can list them; that seems like a thing I can do.
So here you are: the games that I played in 2012, analog and digital, arranged by platform, then in reverse chronological order.
Xbox
- FEZ
- Guardians of Middle-Earth
- Rock Band 3
- Borderlands 2
- Dead Space 2
- Rock Band Blitz
- Darksiders II
- Magic 2013
- Trine 2
- The Walking Dead
- Halo 4
- Mark of the Ninja
- XCOM: Enemy Unknown
- Dance Central 3
- Minecraft
- Awesomenauts
- Spelunky
- Dance Central 2
- Deus Ex: Human Revolution
- Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater HD
- Geometry Wars Evolved 2
- Left 4 Dead 2
- Rayman Origins
- Assassin’s Creed Revelations
- Mass Effect 3
- Alan Wake
- Brutal Legend
- L.A. Noire
- Lara Croft: Guardian of Light
- Dungeon Defenders
- Clash of Heroes
- Half-Minute Hero
- Renegade Ops
- Orcs Must Die!
- Bastion
- Gears of War 3
- Halo: CE Anniversary
- Insanely Twisted: Shadow Planet
- Epic Dungeon
Windows Phone
- Wordament
- Feed Me Oil
- Carcassone
- BulletAsylum
- Mush
- de Blob Revolution
- Parachute Panic
- Fragger
- Bug Village
- Revolution
- Katamaridamacy
- Breeze
- Tanks
Windows RT
- Jetpack Joyride
- Wordament
- Fruit Ninja
Windows
- FTL
- Guild Wars 2
- Artemis
- Lord of the Rings Online
(no automatic tracking here, so these are by memory)
Web
- Frog Fractions
- Highgrounds
(I don’t have any ability to track these automatically, so what you have here are a couple that I remembered)
Board Game
- Escape: The Curse of the Temple
- Seasons
- Cards Against Humanity
- Go Away Monster!
- Survive: Escape from Atlantis!
- Epic Spell Wars of the Battle Wizards: Duel at Mt. Skullzfyre
- Small World
- Ascension
- Infiltration
- Tsuro of the Seas
- King of Tokyo
- Super Dungeon Explore
- FITS
- Elder Sign
- Race for the Galaxy
- Castle Panic
- Penny Arcade: The Game - Rumble in R’lyeh
- Sheepland
- Power Grid: the First Sparks
- Incan Gold
- Dungeon Command
- Zpocalypse
- 3012
- The Adventurers: The Pyramid of Horus
- Nuns on the Run
- Carcassonne
- Small World Underground
- Zombie Dice
- Sentinels of the Multiverse
- 7 Wonders
- Cargo Noir
- The Red Dragon Inn
- Conquest of Planet Earth: The Space Alien Game
- Betrayal at House on the Hill
- Pandemic
(I manually log all my board game plays at BoardGameGeek, because I’m crazy like that)
27 Apr 2012
September - Earth, Wind & Fire
We celebrated Jessica’s thirtieth birthday with a disco house party. We’d warmed up with a number of excellent New Years Eve events, but this disco party was where the house dance floor really hit solid gold. People dressed up and really got into it. Of course, disco is genetically engineered to speak directly to the booty, so there’s no denying it.
1901 - Phoenix
There was this song on the radio that kept getting stuck in Jessica’s head. She would try to sing it to me, but I had no idea what she was talking about. What the hell is “Lisztomania”?
She found the album on Zune and downloaded it in time for our trip down to Portland for my friend Carlos’ wedding. So at last I was able to hear this catchy tune. But wait, what’s this next song… “1901”?
This is… perfection. I don’t even know where to start. This song just drives the whole way through, taking you on an expertly crafted journey. I have no words for it. I’m completely in love with this song.
Later we’re at the wedding venue, but it’s the day before. We’re hanging out in the pool outdoors, and another wedding is going down nearby in the place where Carlos will be married the next night. I remember them playing another song off that Phoenix album we’d listened to on the ride down: “Girlfriend”.
Okay, it was settled. I had to explore this band for real. Upon returning from the trip I completely absorbed myself in Phoenix’s discography. Was. Not. Disappointed.
Intro - The XX
This is one of my all time favorite album intros. It’s exactly how you should prepare someone for the musical journey that follows. Simple, building, ear catching, but not overwhelming.
And what a solid album it is. A distinct point of view, and a refined sound. Generally super relaxed, but also completely capable of getting things moving in its own way. My only complaint with this album is that it’s the only one. I demand more.
Underneath the Sycamore - Death Cab For Cutie
I find that I paint best when I have music on. So when I sat down for the crazy task of painting every day for thirty days, I needed a lot of music. Which made it a great time for a new Death Cab album. I don’t think I would have listened to this album so much in immediate repeat if it hadn’t been for the fact that I was spending hours painting every single evening. Not because it isn’t excellent, because it is. I just generally try to space out my album listening more.
And at last we have caught up with the present. Thirty of years of my life, defined by the music I was listening to. 140 tracks in total.
It seems odd to just trail off here. But that’s the thing, isn’t it? Now that I’ve started this… it won’t be done until I’m dead. Who knows what music the next thirty years will bring?
25 Apr 2012
Yes - Morphine
After nine years of courtship, I finally married Jessica. We had met so early in life, neither of us expected to find such perfection by then. So we felt no need to rush. Maybe we overshot a bit, but I’m much happier that we made our own decision on our own schedule, and walked into our wedding more confident and loving than ever.
We walked down the aisle to “The Nearness Of You” by Norah Jones. And we walked out to “Yes” by Morphine. Not a typical choice, I know. But a song by a band we both loved that chanted “yes, yes, yes” seemed like the perfect song to start our marriage.
Moondance - Michael Bublé
We’d been ballroom dancing for a number of years by this point. There was zero interest in half-assing our first dance. So months before the wedding we started working on our performance. The final number had foxtrot, swing, balboa, lindyhop… seriously, we went all out. I had a spreadsheet to block the whole thing out. It was probably the only thing I was nervous about on our wedding day. I mean, that whole wedding ceremony was obviously going to be fine… but could we pull off the dance?
The dip and kiss happens at 3:30, in case it isn’t obvious.
Slow Dance - John Legend
Before the wedding Jessica’s aunt Donna gifted her greatest piece of wisdom: play this song. I don’t think I had ever heard it before. Which is a shame, because that’s too many years without this absolute treat of a song in my life.
We played it immediately after “Moondance”. The idea that was that people would join us and start the dance floor. We’d even seeded certain people in advance to set up the whole transition. But in that moment far too many of them lost their nerve. Apparently dropping a dance number like that wasn’t good for convincing the general crowd that it was time for them to dance too. Oh well, their loss. Great song.
Our love is…
Our love is…
Our love is… slow dancing together.
Loud Pipes - Ratatat
Oh hell yes, Ratatat. This was an introduction from Jevan. One of the awesome things about working on music software is how talking about music is just part of the culture. There was truly a love for music there.
Another Zune Arts video brought me Ratatat earlier, but it was so short I didn’t dig deeper into the music. I didn’t even make the connection that I’d heard the music before until a year later. But seriously, those videos are awesome. I highly recommend watching all of them.
Ratatat filled a void that Daft Punk had left empty. Instrumental, tightly mixed, conceptual but hard hitting and rhythmic. And like Daft Punk, I’m always left wondering why there isn’t more of it.
Your Touch - The Black Keys
I first heard the Black Keys while tooling around on Zune looking for new music. I believe I started with Attack & Release, since it was the new release, but it was when I traveled back in time that I found what I was looking for.
Discovering The Black Keys felt a bit like unearthing one of my dad’s old records. The band just doesn’t sound like something from this era. Clearly this can’t be music from the year 2006? What sorcery is this?
Raw simple blues rock. No tomfoolery. Heartfelt, pure, and oh so good. There are times when I find a new album, and there are times when I find a new artist to delve into completely. This was most definitely the latter.