2025 was a year of big life changes. And it feels right to say I felt baseless creatively. Ultimately, I feel positive about change, but I haven’t yet been able to turn that into anything exciting beyond feeling vaguely positive that something is down the road. And for some reason not yet worried that I don’t even see any roads.
Music
There’s not much on my music blog from 2025. Can’t remember how much of that is just because I couldn’t be arsed.
- Got obessso with I’m Talking in April, and that lasted half a year. Faves are Trust Me and especially Someday.
- Also with Learning How To Swim by Eurogliders, the B-side to Absolutely, which would have been in one of my previous summary posts. Oh yeah, Maybe Only I Dream too. Just saw the Bernie Lynch, who wrote all my fave Eurogliders songs, died last week.
- Never actually tried anything more by them, but I like this Monologue song by Parade.
- Love Oily Girls by Period Bomb, but not really anything else of theirs.
- Not new to me, but listened to the album Wrecking Ball by Emmylou Harris a bunch. It was played a bunch when I was a kid, but had never sat down and heard it deliberately.
- Oh yeah, and this local fundraiser comp. came out, which I just feel like mentioning. A bunch of it is kinda meh, and a lot just sounds a bit flat, but this was a funny little song that stood-out: Who’s Hungry by Olivia’s World.
Otherwise it was just stuff I’d listened to a bunch before.
I started going to gigs again. Some bands I like:
- Clit Split [
yt/ bc / ig ] - Whip! [
yt/ bc / ig ] - Kristol Pisstol [ yt / bc / ig ]
- Billiam and the Split Bills [ yt / bc / ig ]
Films
Ahhhh too many.
- The Emperor’s Naked Army Marches On and Extreme Private Eros: Love Song 1974 by Kazuo Hara.
- Tender by Lynette Wallworth. Did I watch the related doco on the ABC that year too?
- Highlights of MIFF were mostly the Chantel Akerman films I saw: Je Tu Il Elle, Saute ma Ville, Portrait of a Lazy Woman, The Day When…, The Man with the Suitcase, From the East, plus rewatching No Home Movie and appreciating it much more. Also loved her book My Mother Laughs.
- Also really liked Youth (Hard Times) by Wang Bing (but not the third part of the trilogy so much, Salt, Saliva, Sperm and Sweat by Philip Brophy, Mistress Dispeller by Elizabeth Lo, and Silvesterchlausen by Andrew Norman Wilson.
- Loved a bunch of Tsai Ming-liang films: The Wayward Cloud, The River, I Don’t Want to Sleep Alone, Goodbye, Dragon Inn, The Hole,
- And a bunch of Aki Kaurismäki: The Man Without a Past, match…, Fallen Leaves,
- You Hide Me by Nii Kwate Owoo.
- Keep meaning to watch more Sergei Parajanov, watched Kyiv Frescoes.
- Same goes for Trịnh T. Minh-hà, watched Shoot for the Contents.
- Watched two different version of Black Lizard (Kinji Fakusaku‘s and Umetsugu Inoue‘s), liked them both for different reasons, especially the Fakusaku one.
- Surprising had a great time watching Freddy Got Fingered by Tom Green.
- A few by Shinji Somai: Typhoon Club and Love Hotel.
- Binged on noir stuff, highlights were The Seventh Victim and The Ghost Ship by Mark Robson, Out of the Past by Jacques Tourneur, and Baby Face by Alfred E. Green.
- Actually liked a South Korean film (the secret is cats–): Dancing Cat by Yoon Gi-Hyung.
- Watched another good cat movie: Nyanko the Movie 2 (no director credit).
- Celia by Ann Turner was neat.
- Hanagatami by Nobuhiko Obayashi.
- Maybe Shoplifters by Hirokazu Kore-eda was the highlight? I think this was the one I gushed to the most people about, at least.
- Had lots of fun with Lam Nai-Choi‘s Her Vengeance, Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky, Men from the Gutter, and The Seventh Curse.
- The Mad Fox by Tomu Uchida.
- Lady Battle Cop by Akihisa Okamoto.
- The Scandalous Adventures of Buraikan and Killers on Parade, by Masahiro Shinoda.
- An Actor’s Revenge by Kon Ichikawa.
- The Sea of Genkai by Juro Kara.
- Samurai Cop by Amir Shervan sure has some hair.
- Guinea Pig: Mermaid in the Manhole by Hideshi Hino.
- Wandering Ginza Butterfly by Kazuhiko Yamaguchi.
- The Demon of Mount Oe by Tokuzō Tanaka.
- Liked another Johnnie To film: Drug War.
- I Am Keiko by Sion Sono was charming.
- Bohachi Bushido: Code of the Forgotten Eight by Teruo Ishii.
Perfume
Calmed down a bit with the perfume exploration. Wore Azemour Les Orangers by Marc-Antoine Corticchiato / Parfum d’Empire, but have gone off it a bit. Really nice orangey opening.
Got some Aesop samples I really like and wear a bunch, especially Karst (warm and spicy, cumin and sandalwood) and Tacit (warm and fresh, yuzu and vetiver).
Also couldn’t be arsed with the perfume blog so can’t remember what else, mostly wore old faves and went through the backlog a bit?