Alas, I did not have the time, nor the inclination, to make any mixtapes this year. I’m pretty sure I’ll still do my year-end playlist/mix, but other than that, I just never got around to it. But that’s okay! This isn’t the first time I’ve gone through a musical dry spell. Between 2006 and 2011, I only made eight mixes in total — two of them were for someone else, and the last was when I’d decided to resurrect the year-end mix.
The main reason for not making one? Well, I’d hinted at it late last year when I’d wanted to spend more time listening the albums I downloaded rather than focusing on the discography completism spiral I’d fallen into over the last couple of years. I felt too disconnected from the music in my own library and wanted to change that. So over the course of 2025, I gave my favorites some more repeat listens. Got to know them a bit better. Found a few singles and deep cuts that caught my attention. Not to mention revisited a lot of my favorite albums from recent years, with the occasional deep dive into an oldie but goodie. And I replayed a lot of albums during my writing sessions!
The other reason for not making one is because I just hadn’t had time or the ability to listen to them other than at my desk. There’s also the fact that we’d recently moved and
So, will I be making more of said mixtapes in 2026? We shall see. I’m not going to confirm or deny at this point. If I’m in the mood for it, I’ll do it. If I do, I might try revisiting the style of my oldest mixes by allowing older songs, something I haven’t done in ages. [A lot of my most recent non-writing-soundtrack mixes usually stick to newish releases from the last few months.]
Either way, the point isn’t just to make the mixes, but to enjoy the tunes I put on them. And I think I’m finally on the way back to that point.
It occurred to me the other day that it’s been twenty years since I’d moved away from my hometown in Massachusetts. For some people that might be just another life event, but for me it was something pretty big. Until that day in March 2005 (the 6th, to be exact) I’d always lived in MA, five years of them in Boston, then spending just shy of ten years back at the family house getting my affairs, finances and creativity in some semblance of order. All of that changed near the end of 2004 when I started going out with A. in a long distance relationship, then turning that into frequent road trips down to New Jersey (a little over two hundred miles one way) to spend the weekend. It was a three hour drive but it was totally worth it.
All of that changed in early 2005 when we finally made the decision for me to move down there with her and her roommates. We both felt it was something I’d needed to do, and a long time in coming. I was ready for it, and had been looking to moving on for quite some time. The plan was to move down to NJ and eventually find a place somewhere near her workplace, but that ended up going in an altogether different direction later that summer.
It was a year of a lot of major life changes for me, so I allowed my writing to fall by the wayside for a bit. To wit: moving out of my old hometown, moving away from family, moving in with said girlfriend, springing the question and eventually marrying said girlfriend shortly after, visiting another country (that was not Canada, and which included acquiring a passport and flying on a commercial airline for the first time), doing office work instead of warehouse or retail for the Day Job, and eventually moving to the west coast where we’ve been ever since.
I made the above mixtape the night before I left, even though I dated it to the day I got in the car and drove away. I listened to it a few times on the way down to Jersey along with the other mixes I’d made around that time. The themes of the mix were moving out, moving on, escaping, feeling free, and looking toward the future. Little did I know just how much my life would change in just a few months, but I wasn’t going to complain.
This was definitely an interesting year for music! We had several ‘comeback’ albums from musicians who hadn’t had a studio release in over a decade — not just the Cure, but The The, The Softies and The Wolfgang Press — and we also had several excellent anniversary reissues popping up as well.
While my listening habits pretty much remained the same, I was super excited by the news that my favorite station, KEXP, would start broadcasting here in the Bay Area! We’ve desperately needed a good alternative rock station for years (I’m sorry, Live 105, but you are not cutting it even despite recently rising from the ashes), and they’ve always had a super strong fanbase here. So far they’ve been quite successful!
Musically I found myself leaning towards electronic and shoegaze once again, but that’s not to say I was firmly entrenched; the local label Slumberland has been consistently putting out some brilliant jangle pop and lo-fi gems and I’ve become a loyal fan. Still, a lot of non-KEXP listening was focused primarily on moods and vibes this year, mainly for a need of soundtrack music while working on Theadia, my first space opera.
So! Without further ado, here’s my official end-of-year playlist/mixtape for your listening enjoyment!
This one’s a long playlist/mixtape collection of 129 songs so I’ll spare you the list here. So instead, on with my favorite releases of the year! This time I’m merely listing them in alphabetical order as I tended to enjoy all of these equally, with the bolded title being my top favorite of the year. As I’ve mentioned quite often, these were albums that got a lot of play here in Spare Oom, whether on days off or during writing sessions.
ALBUMS Bastille, “&” (Ampersand) Bibio, Phantom Brickworks (LP II) Coldplay, Moon Music Elbow, AUDIO VERTIGO Four Tet, Three GIFT, Illuminator Hooverphonic, Fake Is the New Dope Kelly Lee Owens, Dreamstate La Luz, News of the Universe Linkin Park, From Zero Ride, Interplay The Cure, Songs of a Lost World The Fauns, How Lost The Reds, Pinks & Purples, Unwishing Well The Softies, The Bed I Made The The, Ensoulment Torres, What an enormous room Underworld, Strawberry Hotel Various Artists, Everyone’s Getting Involved: A Tribute to Talking Heads’ Stop Making Sense Various Artists, Red Hot Org Presents TRAИƧA
SINGLES Bad Bad Hats, “My Heart Your Heart” Corridor, “Jump Cut” deary, “Selene” DIIV, “Brown Paper Bag” Elbow, “Things I’ve Been Telling Myself for Years” English Teacher, “The World’s Biggest Paving Slab” GIFT, “Later” Girl and Girl, “Hello” Kamasi Washington, “Prologue” Kelly Lee Owens, “Love You Got” La Luz, “Strange World” Orcas, “Under the Milky Way” Orville Peck & Beck, “Death Valley High” Ride, “I Came to See the Wreck” RÜFÜS DU SOL, “Music Is Better” The Cure, “And Nothing Is Forever” The Fauns, “Doot Doot” The National, “Heaven” Torres, “Collect”
REISSUES American Football, American Football 25th Anniversary Edition Cocteau Twins & Harold Budd, The Moon and the Melodies Cranes, Collected Works Vol 1 Garbage, Bleed Like Me Deluxe Edition George Harrison, Living in the Material World 50th Anniversary His Name Is Alive, How Ghosts Affect Relationships 1990-1993 Hugo Largo, Huge, Large and Electric: Hugo Largo 1984-1991 Ivy, Long Distance 25th Anniversary Edition John Lennon, Mind Games: The Ultimate Collection and Mind Games: Meditation Mixes Kristin Hersh, Hips and Makers 30th Anniversary Edition New Order, Brotherhood (Definitive) REM, We Are Hope Despite the Times Seal, Seal (1994) Deluxe Edition The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, Still Barking (1967-1972) The Dream Academy, Religion, Revolution and Railways: The Complete Recordings The Police, Synchronicity Super Deluxe Edition
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So what do we have coming in 2025? Good question. So far I know we have new albums coming from Franz Ferdinand, Ringo Starr, Sharon Van Etten & The Attachment Theory, Doves (!!), Manic Street Preachers and Mogwai. Stay tuned!
Hope everyone has a great 2025! See you in the next year!
I never got around to creating an end of year mixtape for 2023 — or a best-of list, come to think of it — and to be honest, I had good reason for it. While it was a good year for the most part, there were other personal things going on that took precedence, and it just fell by the wayside. I just didn’t have the spoons for it. It is what it is, though. It’s not the end of the world.
Now that we’re a month and a half away from the end of 2024, I’m pretty sure I’ll have something to go in the last week of December. I caught up on mixtape-making this year by reviving the Re:Defined series that I’d created back in the early 00s for similar reasons: changes in music tastes, changes in personal life, changes in outlook.
And there’s definitely been a lot of good stuff out there this year. I don’t always get to listen to it as frequently as I’d like (and I’d like to change that habit in the new year), but on the other hand there were quite a few albums I’ve been returning to on a consistent basis. Songs that get stuck in my head for days at a time.
We’ll see where this all leads in the coming weeks!
Whew! Hard to believe I’ve hit ten volumes on this series! The first one was made waaay back in the summer of 1997 during the HMV Years when I first planned out The Phoenix Effect, with the next three following close behind later that year and the fourth (my favorite at the time) in the summer of 1998. Flash-forward twenty years and I start making them again in late 2018 when I was self-publishing the Bridgetown Trilogy. [There were a few related diversions in 2003-4 and 2015 during the writing/editing of it, though I consider them a separate series now.]
This one was started probably late 2023 as a way to revisit the Mendaihu Universe though that was soon put aside so I could prep Queen Ophelia’s War for release and finish off Theadia. Considering I’m almost done with the latter and once again returning to the MU, I felt it time to finish this one off and get it into my listening rotation.
I’m fascinated by how eclectic this one is. There’s a lot of shoegaze, sure, but we’ve also got some oddball electronics, a bit of jazz, a few tracks that I’m currently obsessing over (that GIFT album has become one of my favorites of the year) and more. Just like the previous mixes in this series, they’re supposed to evoke a bit of urban distraction in one way or another, whether it’s the feeling of displacement, the discomfort of a stressful situation, or the willingness of blissful disconnection.
Hope you enjoy!
SIDE ONE 1. Hooverphonic, “A Guiding Star at Night” 2. Phantogram, “It Wasn’t Meant to Be” 3. Jonathan Bree, “City Baby” 4. Kelly Lee Owens, “Love You Got” 5. Kamasi Washington, “Interstellar Peace (The Last Stance)” 6. Bodywash, “Perfect Blue” 7. Whitelands, “Cheer” 8. GIFT, “Later” 9. Corridor, “Jump Cut” 10. Iress, “Mercy”
SIDE TWO 1. Whitelands, “Born in Understanding” 2. Ride, “I Came to See the Wreck” 3. Coma, “Surrender” 4. M83, “Radar, Far, Gone” 5. GIFT, “Milestones” 6. The Chemical Brothers, “Feels Like I Am Dreaming” 7. Jenny O, “Pleasure in Function” 8. Jonathan Bree, “Steel and Glass” 9. Coldplay, “One World”
Making the new Re:Defined mixtapes have definitely been an interesting experience, as I’ve given myself a reason to work not just with tracks that are getting a decent amount of play on KEXP but deep cuts that catch my attention when I’m listening to the albums at other times. I think I’ve finally hit a groove with this mix, as there’s a certain vibe that I hadn’t reached in quite some time. Have fun and give it a listen!
Track listing:
SIDE ONE 1. Hinds, “Boom Boom Back” (feat. Beck) 2. Mavis Staples, “Worthy” 3. Orcas, “Under the Milky Way” (a lovely cover!) 4. Cassandra Jenkins, “Delphinium Blue” 5. Liam Gallagher & John Squire, “Just Another Rainbow” 6. DAIISTAR, “Tracemaker” 7. The Softies, “23rd Birthday” 8. Jane Weaver, “Love in Constant Spectacle” 9. GIFT, “Going in Circles” 10. Bastille, “Emily & Her Penthouse in the Sky” 11. Ride, “I Came to See the Wreck”
SIDE TWO 1. Orville Peck & Beck, “Death Valley High” 2. deary, “Selene” 3. BADBADNOTGOOD, “Last Laugh” 4. GIFT, “Later” 5. Quivers, “Apparition” 6. Yannis & the Yaw with Tony Allen, “Rain Can’t Reach Us” 7. Wand, “Mistletoe” 8. Glass Animals, “Wonderful Nothing” 9. The Softies, “I Said What I Said” 10. beabadoobee, “Take a Bite” 11. Iress, “Mercy”
To celebrate the start of my major rewrite of Theadia, I created the fourth mixtape/playlist for it, and I think this one works exceptionally well as feels more cinematic and score-like than the previous three. I’m quite happy with this one and have already listened to it multiple times over the last couple of days! Hope you enjoy it as well!
Side A: 1. David Holmes & Raven Violet, “Stop Apologizing” 2. The Fauns, “Spacewreck” 3. Big Wreck, “White Lies” 4. Torres, “Collect” 5. Eluvium, “Vibration Consensus Reality (For Spectral Multiband Resonator)” 6. Brittany Howard, “What Now” 7. Sea Lemon, “3A” 8. Cast, “I Have Been Waiting” 9. Middle Kids, “Bend” 10. Calibro 35, “Apnea”
Side B: 1. Eluvium, “Endless Flower” 2. The Fauns, “Afterburner” 3. Trevor Horn & Seal, “Steppin’ Out” 4. Ducks Ltd., “Deleted Scenes” 5. Topographies, “Red-Black Sun” 6. Salt Cathedral, “Terminal Woes” 7. Torres, “Artificial Limits” 8. Horsegirl, “Anti-Glory” 9. Four Tet, “Daydream Repeat” 10. David Holmes & Raven Violet, “It’s Over, If We Run Out of Love”
[PS. I can’t seem to remember if I’ve posted the other three here or over at Welcome to Bridgetown, so I suppose I’ll have to follow up with those as well if I have not!]
Unlike last year, where I was just too preoccupied with Real Life and other things and hadn’t allowed myself to really get to know the new music I was acquiring, I’m making a concerted effort to pay attention to what’s coming out these days, and I’m quite happy to say that I’m finding a lot of really good stuff out there!
These two mixtapes were basically holdovers from late 2023 where I’d started a list of songs but hadn’t gotten around to completing it and arranging the tracklist flow. I’m quite happy with how they came out, however, and I hope you enjoy them as well!
From the Open Skies:In My Blue World 2, created 14 January 2024. No, I have not written the sequel to In My Blue World just yet! I only have a very rough two-page outline of an idea, but I think it’s worth working on as a future project later on in the year! All I’ll say that it involves our heroes facing off a new foe with a much stronger and creepier ability to siphon magic for their own nefarious uses! And what better way to prep for a future novel project than creating a mixtape soundtrack for it? [Note: for those of you playing along, the title here is borrowed from another ELO song, heh.]
Walk in Silence XXVIII, created 30 January 2024.First of all, I can’t believe I’m already up to twenty-eight volumes of this series!! (Then again, I’ve been making them since 1988, so…) This, Listen in Silence and Untitled have pretty much become my own NOW That’s What I Call… compilations that just won’t quit. This one came out surprisingly well and I’m finding myself returning to it more and more.
Why am I continuing this particular series, you ask? Especially since it’s no longer part of the Thirty Years On? To be honest, I felt I’d left the last entry up in the air, and the full story of what was going to happen within the next two years while I lived in Boston hadn’t even really gotten started. There’s a lot more to go here than just leaving college and figuring things out.
Two things happened in January of 1994: One, I was excited about starting this new story idea, even if the style and genre were completely new to me. I hadn’t felt this excited about a project for ages and I wasn’t about to pass it by. Two, JA introduced me to a girl one evening at a restaurant we sometimes went to, and one thing of course led to another and we were going out. D and I were…well, let’s just say that in retrospect we were great for each other when it came to creativity, humor and a love of music, but emotionally we should not have been in the same room. A great friendship that became a rollercoaster relationship and an interesting co-writing team. That is, when we were both not falling into our own worst moods and habits.
Mixtape, Nocturne OST, created January 1994. My science fiction story idea had taken root and on my days off and in the evenings when I wasn’t out with friends, I would work on a bit of worldbuilding for what was now entitled Nocturne. A few name changes and a major change in setting — and eventually even a map drawn for reference — and I was rolling. I even made the first mixtape, initially on the backside of my Belief in Fate mixtape that I’d made in the summer of 1989 — of songs that were decidedly different from the bloated soundtrack of the Infamous War Novel. [This playlist is missing the first track, Curve’s “Fait Accompli”.] This story might have had its origins with the IWN, but it certainly wasn’t going to be the same one I’d been trying to revive and revise all these years.
Course of Empire, Initiation, released 18 January 1994. I remember WFNX playing the above remix of the “Infested” single as it did something most metal/industrial bands didn’t do at the time: throwing incongruous yet perfect samples into the mix. In this case, Benny Goodman’s “Sing Sing Sing (with a Swing)”. It’s a wild and bizarre track but it was a perfect example of the Gen-X absurdist sense of humor.
Beck, Loser EP, released 18 January 1994. This song just exploded everywhere when it dropped early in the year, partly because it was such a perfect Gen-X theme song and partly because no one knew what the hell he was even singing about. Beck had been around in one indie form or another for a few years by this time, but this one song broke him into the mainstream for years to come.
Soundtrack, Faraway, So Close!, released 24 January 1994. Wim Wenders’ sequel to his brilliant 1987 movie Wings of Desire may not have been as big of a hit — let’s be honest, it had a lot to live up to — but it is a lovely movie nonetheless.
Kristin Hersh, Hips and Makers, released 25 January 1994. The Throwing Muses lead singer finally releases her own first solo album and it’s so delicate and fragile and so much the opposite of the Muses’ chaos that you’re afraid to break it. And yet “Your Ghost” remains one of her best and most beloved solo songs ever. It was well worth the wait.
Alice in Chains, Jar of Flies EP, released 25 January 1994. I’d been a passive fan of AIC, but I loved this release and played it endlessly on my Walkman. It’s quite different from their previous grunge style, instead focusing on a style that’s not quite folk rock but not quite indie either. Every single song on this EP is a banger. And yes, this one ended up as a high-repeat player during my writing sessions, not only during these years but later during the Belfry Years.
Meat Puppets, Too High to Die, released 25 January 1994. This band never quite got as famous as, say, Nirvana, even though they were friends and the latter would cover multiple songs of theirs during their MTV Unplugged session. “Backwater” ended up in heavy rotation for a number of years on alternative radio.
Tori Amos, Under the Pink, released 31 January 1994. Tori’s second album wasn’t nearly as devastating as her first, but she wasn’t about to let go of her quirky piano style just yet. I kind of prefer this one out of her early records as she seems to be having more fun exploring different styles and lyrical avenues with this one.
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Coming up: Creativity sparked, story and poetry ideas bursting forth, and another job lost
Okay, so before we go any further, I have to show you this picture.
[Miraculously, I managed to find a somewhat recent picture of it online. I can confirm this is indeed 213 Beacon St #5C, the same place I lived from September 1993 to August 1994.]
This was the shoebox apartment. Almost the entirety of it. What you see there is 95% of the apartment itself: a single room with a single window and a tiny loft — the photo is taken from the narrow kitchen/entryway that also included the stove, a sink and a fridge, and the super tiny bathroom is around the corner to the left. It really was that small, and it cost $500 a month. I could have looked for cheaper, but that would have meant moving to one of the outer neighborhoods and depending wholly on public transit to get anywhere. By living here I had much better and walkable access to work, entertainment and the few people I knew who still lived in town.
This is where my adult life started. This is also where my writing career started.
My plan was to start at Day One with the writing. I had my spiral bound notebooks and my typewriter, a foldout table, a TV and a hand-me-down VCR, my stereo and boombox, and most of my music collection, and that’s all I needed. I knew I had to start somewhere, so I relied on the reliable: yet another attempt at writing the Infamous War Novel, at this time called Nocturne. This must have been the fourth or fifth iteration, but the first not to explicitly take place in a small town. I also attempted a resurrection of the Two Thousand project I’d started a few years earlier in my sophomore year.
I was broke, I was lonely, I was always hungry, I had a smoking habit (Newport Light menthols at the time), and I was moody as hell, but I was also committed to writing. I wasn’t about to let that go.
I just had to keep going. I learned how to find entertainment cheaply if not freely: T rides up to Harvard Square to hang out and people-watch, walks on the Esplanade and through Back Bay, visits to Waterstones Books to read and chill, visits to Tower Records to see what they had in the listening booths and rent a few movies for a few bucks, and digging for gold in dollar bins at the used record stores.
Mixtapes, Good Grief, More WAUGH!!! Vol 3 and The WAUGH!!! That Wouldn’t Die… Vol 4, created September 1993. These two cheesefest mixes follow up on the “songs I like but don’t have in my collection at the moment” and clearly sourced from the family collections over the years with a few of my own dollar bin purchases thrown in. These were my favorites of this series and got quite a lot of play on my headphones. Noted: the Volume 3 title is a nod to the Charles Schulz Peanuts paperback I owned as a kid.
U2, “Lemon” single, released 1 September 1993. This oddball track from Zooropa got some pretty heavy airplay on WFNX. It’s my least favorite track on the album, but I’ll admit it’s catchy as hell too.
Chapterhouse, Blood Music, released 6 September 1993. I really liked this record, even though it unfortunately didn’t get much airplay anywhere that I knew of, other than hearing “We Are the Beautiful” on WFNX every now and again. It’s a much headier and heavier record than their previous one but it’s just as great. A few years later I’d discover that a UK edition had a remix cd entitled Pentamerous Metamorphosis by a duo called Global Communication added to it, which would become a Belfry writing session mainstay.
Prince, The Hits/The B-Sides, released 10 September 1993. I never had the money to buy this until years later, but it was hard to resist wanting it considering it was the first official ‘best of’ collection for him. For the time being I made do with the cassettes of his I already owned.
Counting Crows, August and Everything After, released 14 September 1993. It was hard to escape “Mr Jones” that autumn, as it was played EVERYWHERE, constantly. I wasn’t the biggest fan of the band and ended up lumping them in with the earthy-crunchy 90s hippie bands for a while, but I eventually grew to enjoy them. I did in fact like the single “Round Here”.
Morphine, Cure for Pain, released 14 September 1993. These local boys always put out fantastic blues rock with their unique bare-bones sound that sounded just that little bit boozy. I picked this one up on cassette and loved it, especially the deep cut “In Spite of Me”.
Dead Can Dance, Into the Labyrinth, released 14 September 1993. This one got some seriously heavy play in the shoebox during my writing sessions. I’d always loved their work, but this record went in a slightly different direction, sneaking out of their chamber music style and veering towards folk music but not without dropping an amazing nightmarish goth staple in “The Ubiquitous Mr Lovegrove” single.
Soundtrack, Judgment Night, released 14 September 1993. I remember seeing this movie with JA but I’ll be damned if I remember any of it other than the heavy-as-fuck soundtrack made up of hard rock/rap duets. Helmet and House of Pain’s “Just Another Victim” got some major play on WFNX that season.
Cocteau Twins, “Evangeline” single, 17 September 1993. Three years later and the trio finally release an absolutely lovely — and yes, autumnal-sounding — single preceding their upcoming new album. I’d hear this one all the time on the radio and it would make it onto one of my next mixtapes as well.
Buffalo Tom, Big Red Letter Day, released 21 September 1993. I loved this local band since first hearing “Birdbrain” a few years previous, and this record proved they weren’t going to stop putting out amazing albums any time soon. I’d hear “Soda Jerk” on the radio all the time, but my favorite track from this album is “I’m Allowed”, which I know I’ve posted here a few times already. Highly recommended.
Curve, Cuckoo, released 21 September 1993. I was so on the fence with this particular record that I ended up not picking it up for a few years, but when I did it became a Belfry staple for a good number of years. While not as tense and dense as Doppelganger (which I loved, especially “Fait Accompli”), this album is just as moody if not more atmospheric. It’s since become my favorite of their catalog.
Nirvana, In Utero, released 21 September 1993. It took me a while to grok this third album of theirs, and it still feels a bit disjointed and desperate, but it also features my favorite Nirvana song “All Apologies” which would pop up on a few of my mixtapes over the years.
Melissa Etheridge, Yes I Am, released 21 September 1993. I remember this album being a huge thing when it dropped because at the time mass media rarely provided us with such a positive message of sexual and gender self-expression. Not to mention that the glorious “Come to My Window” was one of her biggest hits ever.
James, Laid, released 27 September 1993. Yes, that band with that one song of theirs most alternative stations will ever play, and sadly it’s become my least favorite because of that. It’s a great album regardless, especially with a single like “Sometimes”.
Pet Shop Boys, Very, released 27 September 1993. It had been a good couple of years since their last studio album (Behaviour in late 1990), and this was quite a welcome return. They were still slowly moving towards the heady techno sound that would become their style for the next several years, but this one still had the feel of their last couple of albums, creating a nice middle ground.
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Next up: A chance video rental and a trip to the laundromat changes the course of my future.
Walk In Silence 