I feel like I’ve said this about every year recently as each one comes to a close, but I think this is the sincerest I’ve been when I say that 2015 was genuinely just a weird year for me. A great one for sure, but also a very a surreal one. For the first time, I can really feel the transition from my early youth to adulthood, and it’s happening in double-time.
Despite all of the changes in my life, it was still a great time for all the things I’ve come to know and love. Unfortunately I didn’t get as much reading done as I intended to, but I indulged in a plethora of music and movies as I usually do and reinvigorated an old passion of mine: video games. When coming up with this list of these things I did that came out this year, I found that most of my time was actually spent catching up with things that came out prior to this year. As I’m starting to grasp how limited my free time will become after finish school, I’ve also started to realize it just isn’t practical or worthwhile to listen to nearly every album that came out in the current year. But I still feel like it’s certainly worth it to at least stay in the loop of current trends in entertainment and art.
So without further ado, here’s my unranked list of the things that I loved in 2015:
Music
Vaporwave is an interesting and polarizing genre. The prolific netlabel Dream Catalogue seems to churn out vaporwave releases from obscure artists so regularly that you have to wonder if any of it’s good. I haven’t listened to all of their releases, mostly because I tend to binge on vaporwave whenever I’m in the mood for it and eventually get fatigued, but most of their stuff I’ve checked out has been mediocre at best. Fortunately, sometimes you stumble across a gem like this and get obsessed with it for weeks on end. 新しい日の誕生 is an album that sounds exactly like the cover looks: peering through a window at a city covered by a neon light and rain-induced haze. Although it was released on a primarily vaporwave-oriented label, I wouldn’t really classify it as lazily chopped-n-screwed remixes of 80s pop songs. I can tell a lot of work went into carefully arranging dreamy synth samples into hypnotizing melodies that wouldn’t capture the mood of this album on their own. Definitely don’t let the context of “vaporwave” steer you clear of this album; this is just a good ambient release.
Recommended track: 真実の恋
Out of the things that I can say that I did in 2015, I never thought doing a exclusively jazz-themed radio show would be one of them. I’ve been a DJ at my school’s radio station for a few years now, and while I dabble in jazz here and there, I’ve always been too intimidated to have entire shows based around one genre, even more so when it comes to jazz. If I was going to do it one semester though, I’m glad I did it when Kamasi Washington’s The Epic was still in constant rotation for me. I wouldn’t even classify this as an album as much as I would a 3 hour journey of soul-searching spiritual jazz. In just a single song, Washington manages to carefully tread between meditative and energetic moments. I only got to listen to the entire thing in one sitting on a handful of occasions, but it was an absolute delight when I did.
Recommended track: The Magnificent 7
For those uninitiated with Travis Miller’s (aka Lil Ugly Mane) projects, this dude should be commended just for running the gamut on nearly every genre out there. Third Side of Tape (as well his first two tapes before this one) is different from core Lil Ugly Mane albums because it showcases Miller’s talent not only for creating odd and interesting beats but also captivating black metal, harsh noise, punk rock, techno, and post-punk. It’s hard to call this a coherent album thematically (though I don’t think it was ever intended to be), but Miller makes his originality in even the most saturated genres seem effortless.
Recommended track: SIDE THREE-B
This one has certainly been the biggest grower for me out of all the albums on this list. You can certainly tell that this was made with a lot of trappings of the producer’s previous work, but above all there exists an overt jazz influence that just blends beautifully with the synth landscapes that he’s familiar with. Unlike a typical jazz album, there’s almost no improvisation at work here; everything feels meticulously crafted as one might come to expect from a techno producer. But like a jazz album, there’s so much to appreciate in the subtleties of each track on repeated listens. If you have a moment to drop everything and just listen to an album this year, this one is certainly worth your time.
Recommended track: Silhouettes (I, II, & III)
Every year I contemplate participating in the annual tradition that some partake in known as Nothing But Black Metal November. And yes, the challenge is exactly what it says, which is why I have such a hard time committing to it. Believe me, there is a lot of great black metal out there, but the recent wave of it has felt increasingly derivative to me. Then you get bands every once in awhile like Misþyrming who prove that they can crush your soul just a little bit more than you previously thought. Like the ２８１４ cover art, this one’s is incredibly evocative of the mood that its music encompasses, perhaps even more so. Seriously, it feels like the band put the cover art up on the wall in their practice space and weren’t satisfied with a song they wrote until it felt like you were being swallowed by the molten rock below the earth’s surface. Söngvar elds og óreiðu is still very much typified by the black metal style they embrace from the likes of Deathspell Omega (though they do dabble in some interesting dark ambient pieces here and there), but they have a produced a truly raw and challenging album that still experiments with the genre’s tropes, even in 2015!
Recommended track: Ég byggði dyr í eyðimörkinni
I knew something was very different about Carly Rae Jepsen from other pop artists when I listened to 2012’s Kiss. I feel like I’m pretty harsh on saccharine pop albums in general, and that’s not because I dislike the happy feelings that pop music evokes; a lot of it just feels disingenuous and detached from real emotion. E•MO•TION, as the title so outrightly indicates, is everything but disingenuous. I could tell that Jepsen was absolutely instrumental in the songwriting here. The intricate and expertly produced dancepop beats deserve a great deal of praise for their sheer catchiness and variety in paying tribute to several eras of 80s pop. But the majority of the credit for the impact of this album goes to Jepsen’s delivery. When a song is thematically happy, she sounds like she’s smiling. When a song is thematically somber, she delivers her lines with a subtly melancholic tone. It’s not a revolutionary album and it doesn’t need to be. It reminded me that there’s still sincerity in places that I thought were devoid of it.
Recommended track: Gimmie Love
If you told me that I’d have a K-pop album (let alone two) on this list at the beginning of 2015, I just wouldn’t be able to believe you. Most K-pop releases abide by Sturgeon’s law, but there are several gems out there that are actually quite enjoyable. Red Velvet are a relatively new girl group and so far their output has been colorful, varied, and irresistibly catchy. This year we saw both an EP from them, Ice Cream Cake, and their first full-length, The Red. Both are great in their own ways (Ice Cream Cake is equal parts frenetic and mellow), but I’m not even going to try to dilute it, The Red slaps. From the first horn hit in the single ‘Dumb Dumb’ all the way to the 8-bit pluncks in the closer ‘Cool World’, this thing is as infectious as pop gets from front to back. A common complaint I see from people who are against listening to foreign music is that there’s no point in doing so when you can’t understand the lyrics. They could be singing about how much they hate me and I wouldn’t care. Red Velvet are proving that creative concepts don’t have to outclass the sonic quality of music in K-pop.
Recommended track: Ice Cream Cake (Ice Cream Cake), Time Slip (The Red)
I regularly half-joked that this was the year of Future and Young Thug, but Future’s mixtapes in 2015 were actually great. 56 Nights, however, is particularly astounding. I knew from the instant I heard the opener that this would be my favorite gym music, the pick-me-up on the morning drives to work, and the celebratory anthems I needed after a long week. The beats are monstrous and murky while Future’s delivery is cathartic and unrestrained. This could’ve been a tape with 23 throwaway tracks that rappers love to drop as soon as they’re finished recording them. Instead we got 8 white-hot bangers that feel like they were mindfully crafted and combed by 808 Mafia and Future.
Recommended track: March Madness
Honorable Mentions
- Alex G — Beach Music
- CFCF — The Colours of Life
- Dawn Richard — Blackheart
- Grimes — Art Angels
- Jefre Cantu-Ledesma — A Year With 13 Moons
- Kendrick Lamar — To Pimp A Butterfly
- Mickey — Eye Witness
- Oneohtrix Point Never — Garden of Delete
- Pinkshinyultrablast — Everything Else Matters
- Sufjan Stevens — Carrie & Lowell
- Toby Fox — Undertale Original Soundtrack
- Travi$ Scott — Rodeo
- Viet Cong — Viet Cong
- Young Thug — Slime Season / Slime Season 2 / Barter 6
Video Games
5 years from now, I’ll probably look back at 2015 as a formative year for me if only because I reinvigorated my long-lost love of video games. I purchased my first console, a PS4, since the Wii and built the gaming PC of my dreams. Both of those huge purchases allowed me to have some very memorable experiences playing games this year. The following list is but a fraction of the total amount I played this year, but I don’t think it needs to be said that 2015 was an exceptionally strong year for games.
Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain
While it certainly wasn’t my favorite game this year, I just had to put MGSV front and center on this list because of the impact the Metal Gear Solid series had on me in 2015. At some point next year I intend to do a post on my experience with the MGS series as a whole, so I’ll save my entire story with it for then.
Let me get the bad stuff out of the way first: this game somehow keeps getting more disappointing the more I think about it. Konami had a very chaotic year from their cancellation of the Silent Hills successor P.T. to their fallout with Kojima. I was hoping even with all of the drama that MGSV would still turn out to be perfectly fine and the “conclusion” to the series that Kojima had so masterfully created up to this point. Whether it’s a rapidly depleting budget or an unreasonable ego, apparently even geniuses like Kojima have their limits. From its onset, MGSV is lacking in an engaging and satisfying narrative like all of the other games. But to make matters worse, it just ends without any well-constructed arc. It’s like you could tell the moment when the executives at Konami busted in to the offices of Kojima Productions and shut off the lights. I realize that Kojima is overly ambitious, but even he could’ve done a better job of planning for this. As if the story wasn’t deteriorating at a fast rate over the course of the game, it goes out with an abrupt whimper. I have smaller gripes with various aspects of the game, but the narrative of MGSV is without a doubt the most disheartening aspect in a series of games that always kept my attention, for better or worse, with its story.
Well with all of that out the way, why is this even on my list? For how many things I wish could be better about this game, there are twice as many things, if not more, that I love. First and foremost, the gameplay is unparalleled in any other stealth game, and that’s saying a LOT for a series that always had a bad history with clunky and frustrating controls. I don’t think I’ve played another game that feels quite as tight and responsive as this. If I had an idea about how I wanted to infiltrate a base, not once did I have to compromise on my plan because of the controls. I also wasn’t limited in the number of ways I wanted to accomplish something due to the sheer number of tools at my disposal. I could have my dog distract enemies on one portion of the base as I flank another or carefully place responsive decoys around the base to draw out the enemy and sneak around them. The toolset in MGSV opens a seemingly unlimited amount of options that were not available in the previously linear Metal Gear games. If you want to be stealthy, get ready for some of the most tense and enjoyable stealth gameplay the series has ever seen. If you want to go in guns-blazing (which you could never do before successfully), have a blast. And I can’t forget the fantastic selection of licensed 80s songs in the soundtrack. It’s impossible for me to convey how satisfying it is to have your helicopter play ‘Maneater’ every time it picks you up. On top of all of that, throw in a surprisingly complex resource/soldier micromanagement system and attaching balloons to stuff to acquire those resources and soldiers, there’s so much to love in this game.
So while MGSV may make some tradeoffs that I’m not totally happy with, I’d be lying if I said what is there isn’t incredible. It’s not a fantastic Metal Gear game but it transcends that to be a fantastic game. That’s something everyone can appreciate.
Undertale
Undertale came out around the time I was absolutely consumed by my time with MGSV. Even though I was occupied, I still was very cynical that it would end up being nostalgia bait for those with an affinity for Earthbound and other quirky RPGs. I can’t express how thankful I didn’t let my cynicism get the best of me. Undertale’s selling point is that it’s unique because you don’t have to kill any enemies. Instead, you can use a conversation mechanic to convince your enemies to back down or allow you to escape encounters. This alone enticed me to pick it up, but it didn’t completely suck me in until a gradual tonal shift around the halfway mark that challenges all of the choices you’ve made up to that point. Depending on how you played, Undertale will make you feel emotions that just completely take you by surprise. It might make you uncontrollably laugh, or it might make you feel unbearably guilty, or it might make you feel cozy and warm. It’s such a brief and concentrated experience that I had no idea I wanted until I was finished with my second playthrough, but I’m so grateful that games like this still exist today.
The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask 3D
I hardly count this as a 2015 game, but I feel like I have to mention it because Majora’s Mask is basically what got me into video games. I vividly remember going over to my friend’s house when I was 6 and just being absolutely blown away with every thing about it: the characters, the masks, the areas, the eerie undertones, everything.
This revamp is everything I could’ve asked for. It’s still almost identical to the original game, other than the obvious graphic overhaul and minor mechanic tweaks, all of which make sense. I could never adequately describe my appreciation of this game. It manages to feel so different and risky from the other past and current 3D Zelda games, even after over a decade of iterations.
Super Mario Maker
It feels a bit reductive to just call this a level editor, but that’s really what it is. What makes SMM work over other level editors is our universal familiarity with Mario mechanics and a therefore intuitive toolset. I personally didn’t make many levels, but I had a blast just playing other user-created levels, surprising me with the extent that others utilized the game’s very simple tools. Shoddy 1–1 remakes aside, I’m impressed that people are still subverting what you can do with such a simple format. I really hope Nintendo keeps this around as long as possible because I could easily see myself going back 2–3 years from now to this and seeing what people are coming up with.
Bloodborne
I suppose it’s not really fair to put this game on my list since I’ve only put about half a dozen hours into it so far, but every second I’ve spent with this game has been excellent. Having played a good amount of Dark Souls earlier this year, I was somewhat intimidated by this game knowing that there were no shields (which I’m heavily dependent on in DaS), but I was pleasantly surprised to find out just how good the combat feels. It’s still unforgiving and deliberate in a way that all the Souls games are but picks up the pace to make individual encounters with enemies just that much more intense. While many people have criticized the monotony in the environments, I can’t help but just aimlessly wander around in awe of all the Gothic scenery.
Ori and the Blind Forest
After being pretty disappointed in this year’s Axiom Verge, a game that pays a stylized tribute to Metroid but never elevates itself beyond that, I realized that it’s no longer enough to make a competent clone of a 2D Metroid game and stop there. Ori and the Blind Forest uses the Metroidvania format as a framework but distinguishes itself from other shallow clones by employing a beautiful hand-drawn artstyle, powerful soundtrack, and satisfying platform mechanics that provide for a relaxing yet challenging experience. I mean it when I say this game is hard, though the cutesy Disney-like aesthetic might make you think otherwise. What makes Ori still successful despite its periodic spikes in difficulty is the immediate ability to make another attempt depending on where you set a save marker last. You will fail many times, but you never feel like you lose any of your momentum. Clocking in at just around 8 hours, Ori and the Blind Forest is a short but sweet game with lovingly crafted features that deserve to be experienced.
Honorable Mention
Life is Strange
Life is Strange was a rollercoaster for me, not only in terms of the feelings it evoked but also the quality of the overall experience. Just when the characters and relationships I built with them in LiS’s world started feeling concrete, the awful pseudo-teen dialogue took me right out of it. However, as someone who’s very down on the style of adventure games that Telltale has been churning out, Life is Strange pleasantly surprised me. I’ll admit that it goes some adventurous places, both narratively and setting-wise, and provides light commentary on topics, like assisted suicide, that I would’ve never thought I’d see in a game of this scope. I can’t come out of Life is Strange saying it’s an absolute success, but there are more than a handful of moments that resonated with me enough to say it mostly worked.
Movies
I was going to write more blurbs about the movies I saw from 2015, but at this point I’ve written more than 3000 words about just music and games and I also didn’t see that many movies, so I’ll keep it short.
Mad Max: Fury Road
Star Wars: The Force Awakens
Sorry you got the short end of the stick, movies! But thanks for another memorable year, 2015. I have no doubt that 2016 will turn out to be yet another great one.
