Continuing my 6x6 series, publishing on the 6th of the month for the first time, here are six things I want to recommend for March 2025. Just as with the first installment in Feb 2025, these are things I think might be overlooked or under-appreciated or just things that I really enjoy that I want to share with others as I work to share more positive things.
This month, they're presented arbitrarily in alphabetical order...
Going back through an old document from 2020 I found a cryptic reference to "6 by 6," and notes that reminded me that I had grand plans to publish recommendations. From my fragmented scrawlings I think had meant to have six stable categories that I would return to again and again, with six new recommendations but always the same types.
Since I've lately been wanting to force myself to focus on sharing positive things, I decided to revive this castaway blog feature, but I decided against locking myself into six fixed categories and instead just recommend six different kinds of things each month.
Paradoxically, despite my often esoteric tastes, I tend to imagine the things I seek out and enjoy are widely known, but I suspect that is less the case than I assume, still hopefully even for readers with wide-ranging and capacious tastes there will be something new to discover.
I've also realized that in my delay in composing this first installment, I've missed the perfect chance to have these 6x6 recommendations to be published on the sixth of each month, which I'll try to rectify in the future.
With all of that ado laid out and addressed, here then are six things immaterial & material that I recommend heartily... For February 2025 I've decided that they will be listed arbitrarily in reverse alphabetical order...
The top gross of albums I listened to in 2021, upon which many of these albums feature.
It is again that time of year when post my idiosyncratic Top 25 albums of the year...
According to last.fm, where I track most (but not all) of my listening, I listened to 16,297 tracks and 1,699 different artists in 2021 alone. Albums are harder to track on last.fm if they have multiple artists, but I easily listened to over 800 different albums...
68% of those over 16 thousand track were new to 2021, so picking out 25 albums, even of just what was released in 2021 and not just new to me in 2021 was tough, but here are my current top 25 of 2021...
You can find a mixcloud mix with a sample track from each album here.
If you haven't been able to tell from the eleven Yule Tunes mixes I put together this year (easily found in one spot on the Yule Tunes Page), I picked up a fair bit of holiday music this year.
From that haul, here are some tracks and albums I recommend...
I ran two Alien The Roleplaying Game One Shots for Extra Life back in November 2020 and the Destroyer of Worlds mini-campaign in November and December. Prepping for those plus the Blank Check Podcast covering the franchise on their Patreon Extras Feed meant I re-watched all the films from September through January. Naturally, I've immortalized the list on Letterboxd...
2020 might have been a slouching beast of a year in many ways, but I did grab a ton of great music, in large part due to Bandcamp Fridays, which will return in February 2021.
Would it really be the end of the year if I didn't make a list of my favorite 25 albums from 2020? Probably, but I'm not willing to take that chance...
— Weird Christmas (@weird_christmas) November 18, 2020
Following up on my Xmas Sounds series, here are some additional Holly Jolly Discoveries I've picked up in 2020... This post will be updated through 12/25/20.
Enjoy finding some new Yule worthy tunes. Check out Part One...Albums, Part Two... Tracks and Part Three... 2020 Discoveries as well.
I used to go see movies, in the before times... Apparently I saw 44 films in the theater from 1/1/2019 through 3/7/2020 when the world shut down. I've been thinking back on the joy of buttery popcorn and the rumble of surround sound in a dark theater, so I went back and reminisced about the movies I saw then on Letterboxd.
I am setting this to auto-post in the wee hours of the morning December 4th, 2020, which is the last Bandcamp Friday of 2020... but if you happen upon it afterwards, it will still be a great list of the many, many albums on Bandcamp that I recommend wholeheartedly...
Firstly, you can find my twitter thread of Bandcamp recommendations from May through November below:
In order to support musicians, Bandcamp is waiving their revenue share for the first Friday of May, June and July 2020 (5/1, 6/5 and 7/3), making the first Friday a great day to buy music and support artists struggling with canceled gigs and tours.
— Mr. Zack (@thatwordyguy) May 1, 2020
And, I've already put together a list of 25 great charitable albums, Albums to be Thankful For... plus three posts of Xmas music (Albums, Tunes, Discoveries), most of which can be found on Bandcamp. Over on my gaming blog, Antagonist Relations, you can find my series of 'Music to Game To' which features many albums that are on bandcamp that make good tabletop RPG soundtracks & inspiration.
As always, you can see my whole Bandcamp collection at bandcamp.com/schwarzz
Having already shared some of my favorite Xmas albums, here are some Holiday tracks that I quite enjoy. These songs might not be on a whole Christmas themed album but they are still very much in the yule-time spirit...
You might not imagine that I enjoy Christmas music, but I do, though several winter seasons working retail/food service has given me a hearty allergy to the lowest denominator pop-Christmas schlock.
What I do love though, is unexpected and eclectic Christmas music that both subverts and celebrates the season. Here are some albums that will spice up your Yule season...
Elijah Wood has excellent taste, from helping to produce mind-bending films like Mandy and Colour Out of Space to voicing Wirt on Over the Garden Wall, post-Hobbitsing, Wood has gone in interesting directions.
Come to Daddy is an off-kilter, suspense thriller that takes full advantage of Elijah looking much younger than his age. Even with Norval’s mustache and bowl cut, he looks like a mid-20s hipster, especially when contrasted with an extremely grizzled looking Stephen McHattie, who radiates pure menace from the first moments of the film.
With a slow build and moments of dream-like violence that come interspersed in long uncanny sequences. The film builds an odd world that seems like a time out of place despite Norval’s name-dropping and the presence of smartphones. Everything works together to create a experience that feels unexpected and specific; showing off a juvenile machismo that haunts the men of the movie and using the unique location, dated set dressings and soundscapes of the house and its isolation in nature to create an ambiance of dread and barely contained brutality.
Even on a second watch, there were still delightful surprises to be found and it was satisfying to see how bits that I missed the first time through connected to and built up the movie's climax. If you can handle a bit of gore, I cannot recommend enough this movie, which at its center, chronicles the dangerously earnest attempts of Norval to connect with his daddy, even if it means he must push past his comfort and perhaps life itself...
This is special. pic.twitter.com/1b3jeu71WY
— Weird Christmas (@weird_christmas) November 23, 2020
I am a big fan of Bandcamp, as amply demonstrated by my collection there—I make about 90% of my music purchases there, occasionally buying direct from an artist or from Amazon when the black hole of american capitalism is the only place an album is available, but for the vast, vast majority of my purchases, I use Bandcamp.
More a music and merch store for artists and labels than a streaming service, though Bandcamp does offer some streaming—Bandcamp seems, from what I have heard and can tell, to actually pay artists! So, when you make a purchase you don't have to worry about the musicians only making fractions of fractions of a penny. Plus, since the COVID-19 pandemic began, they have been doing Bandcamp Friday, where they waive their fees and funnel that money to the artist instead.
And, in this turbulent year, there have been a bunch of bands and labels that have put out albums on Bandcamp where the proceeds went to a worthy cause, so without further ado, here are a slew of albums you can pick up on Bandcamp that I both heartily recommend and that also will pass on some of your money to a cause worth supporting! Plus for almost all of these albums, you can stream one or more tracks for a taste before you buy.
