Sunday, 18 January 2026

Instant noodle reviews

 My instant noodle ratings (no particular order):

  • Samyang Buldak - overpriced and uninteresting when you eat them, but it puts a fire in your belly that will power you for hours.
  • Nongshim Shin Ramyun - these are the noodles with the springiest texture, and I like that the noodle cake is round because so is my saucepan. There are no varietes of this brand that are bad. I think their spicy chicken tastes better than Samyang Buldak. Their Cham Pong noodles are great seafood flavour. But most of all, I like their kimchi noodles. I sometimes like to add some sauerkraut to them to make them extra fermenty. That is extra sodium though, so maybe not a healthy option.
  • Nissin Ramen - if you want a traditional Japanese ramen, these are the best for that. I really like their black garlic, and sesame varieties. Their tonkotsu ramen is pretty good too, though I get the feeling from the way tonkotsu ramen is described, it's not a great replica.
  • Mama - these come in the tiniest little packets but are confusingly not lacking when you make them. I love their "creamy Tom Yum" flavour. Their kimchi flavour is also good, almost as good as Nongshim.
  • Doll Ramen Noodle - I only had the spicy lobster flavour of these before but they are much, much hotter than Samyang Buldak. They are good but too hot for me to eat regularly.
  • Maggi - the only brand that'll do you an instant asam laksa (tamarind based Malaysian laksa) so I am forever loyal.
  • Prima Taste Instant Singapore Laksa La Mian Noodle Soup - these are very fancy and expensive and despite being largely palm oil and desiccated coconut, it feels like they are healthier than any other instant noodle. They are good at what they do, but not my favourite.


Tuesday, 21 January 2025

Albums to listen to before you die

I'm listening through the list of 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die, in no particular order. It seems good for getting me to listen to things I'd never bother to listen to otherwise. Genres I never explore. Artists that don't really interest me. Weird stuff that has more artistic merit than musical. It's a good exercise, I think, to experience more things in life.


I'm going to list some albums by artists that aren't on that list, that I would put on such a list, if I was making one:

  • Nat King Cole - Love Is The Thing (1957)
  • Phil Ochs - All The News That's Fit To Sing (1964)
  • Wendy Carlos - Switched On Bach (1968)
  • J.A. Seazer - Kokkyō Junreika (1973)
  • Roy Orbison - Black And White Night (1988)
  • Skunk Anansie - Paranoid And Sunburnt (1995)
  • Kirsty MacColl - Tropical Brainstorm (1999)
  • Yuki Kajiura - FICTION (2008)
  • The Protomen - Act II : The Father Of Death (2009)
  • Module - Shatter the Original Videogame Soundtrack (2009)  
  • Square Enix Music - NieR Gestalt & NieR Replicant Original Soundtrack (2010)
  • Perturbator - I Am The Night (2012)
  • Yousei Teikoku - 神パラ楽典 ~神様と運命革命のパラドクス ボーカルアルバム~ (2013)
  • Algiers - Algiers (2015)
  • Prelude To Ecstasy - The Last Dinner Party (2024)
Discussion on each album after the break!

Thursday, 26 September 2024

Albums I have enjoyed in 2024

 Here are some albums I have enjoyed, which were released this year.


  • Prelude To Ecstacy - The Last Dinner Party
  • Vestiges of Verumex Visidrome - GNOME
  • Lives Outgrown - Beth Gibbons
  • Citrus Maximus - Pomelo Chess Society
  • Wine On Venus - Grace Bowers & The Hodge Podge
  • HIT ME HARD AND SOFT - Billie Eilish 
  • Sanguivore - Creeper
EDIT now we're in 2025: Songs Of A Lost World - The Cure - is an AMAZING album and you should listen to that too!!!

 

Thursday, 3 August 2023

Recommended Twitch Musicians, 2023 edition

I seem to have forgotten to do one of these last year. Oops. But here we go, this year's edition, new people to check out:


  • Steve Forward. Really incredible guitarist, from Essex, UK. Professional session musician, has his own albums out. Really great CGI effects to watch, too.
  • KseniaGalaxy. Very talented singer, originally from Kazakhstan, has lived in Thailand for many years now. Has a very fun community and uses fun CGI effects with filters as she sings, to transform her into various things.
  • JMO piano. Known as Jon Michael Ogletree on YouTube, where he's much more famous. Pianist who plays his own arrangements, all learned and played by ear. He's on just about every night, and is very accommodating.
  • SteggyMusic. From Ohio, USA. Vocal and acoustic guitar, has some original songs too. Mainly rock music. He's got a lovely voice.
  • syjamusic. Symon James, from London, UK. Not a lot of musicians on Twitch play 100% original songs. Syjamusic does exactly that.
  • DeltaCrab. Taiwanese-American fellow based in Amherst, Mass. Crazy stuff with synths! & guitars and vocals too. Sometimes he'll make loops out of people chatting, a lot of fun, always fresh!

As always, I still recommend my long-time favourites: Joshua Woo, Lara6683, Jonathan Ong, PorkRollBobihazabeard, VenusWorld.

Wednesday, 13 April 2022

Space Invaders has lyrics, at least in my head.

 

Oh hey, it's nearly Easter.

Fun fact: ever since I heard the song "Gesthemane" from Jesus Christ Superstar, the soundtrack to Space Invaders has had lyrics in my head, and they are : "why must I die? why must I die? why must I die? whymustIdie? whymustIdie? whymustIdie?whymustIdie?whymustIdie?whymustIdie?"



Wednesday, 6 April 2022

Is "Cradle Of Love" by Billy Idol actually a really dodgy song?

 


YouTube autoplay brought me to this song tonight, I hadn't even thought about it in years.

This song is dead suspicious. I think it's a celebration of underage sex. Though it's from 1990, it's got an older 1950s kind of feeling to it. It's got "Cradle" in the title, as in, what babies sleep in. "Robbing the cradle" is what people say about age gap romances, so it seems like a pun on that.

"It burned like a ball on fire / When the rebel took a little child bride" - I think this is a reference to Jerry Lee Lewis, whose big hit was Great Balls Of Fire. He married his cousin when she was 13 years old.

It also contains the words "flesh for your Romeo", and one of the main things people always like to bring up about Romeo & Juliet is that Juliet was also 13 years old.

Then the rest of the song is all like wey-hey I had sex.

Conclusion: This song is dodgy as fuck.

Monday, 20 December 2021

Christmas thoughts

Tonight I am thinking to myself about how I got cast as one of the three kings in a school nativity, when I was in primary school. 

I didn't volunteer, it was because they needed someone "of Orient". 

All I really learned that was sometimes all you are to people is a race.

Thursday, 24 June 2021

Recommended musicians on Twitch, 2021 edition

I made a post like this last year, I think it's about time I did an update for 2021. Now that musicians have been forced to take down their VODs from Twitch because of licensing stuff (Twitch don't like paying royalties), it's harder to see which streams are going to be "your thing", so - have a read, and maybe look through their YouTube and songlists to see if they perform the kind of stuff you like. Pretty much everyone is free to listen to, but whether song requests are free differs from channel to channel, so, be polite and read streamer profile panels for info. Tipping money is a friendly and nice thing to do!

Here we go.

Monday, 24 May 2021

Thoughts by a British person about American TV's ideas about British people

One thing I find really weird about American TV is that if they make a character who they think is stereotypically posh British, they give them this weird accent that doesn't sound like anywhere in Britain and make them use obscure words like "nary" which British people stopped using a few hundred years ago.

Wednesday, 13 January 2021

Thing about Day Of The Tentacle

I know it's not cool to talk shit about a beloved older comedy game, but I've been playing Day of the Tentacle (remastered version) recently and.... 

Wednesday, 5 August 2020

The song "Jealous Guy" is such a non apology

I'm talking about John Lennon's song Jealous Guy.

People go on about this song "oh it's so beautiful", "oh it's so sincere". But I find it ugly and insincere. Which doesn't mean that I think people are wrong to like it, just that they've missed something.

Context is huge. John Lennon stated in interview that he was a wife beater, through jealousy. Read the bit in the wikipedia page on him about his relationship with Cynthia Lennon

The Beatles song "Run For Your Life" on Rubber Soul (1965) is another song Lennon wrote (well, Paul McCartney gets co-writing credits) where a jealous guy threatens to murder his "little girl" if she does anything with another man. The line "I'd rather see you dead, little girl, than to be with another man" originates in an Elvis Presley song, but John Lennon decided to expand that into a full song. I've read claims that George really liked the song and John hated and regretted writing it.

In his last major interview, John Lennon spoke of the opening lyrics in the Beatles song Getting Better:

"It is a diary form of writing. All that 'I used to be cruel to my woman / I beat her and kept her apart from the things that she loved' was me. I used to be cruel to my woman, and physically – any woman. I was a hitter. I couldn't express myself and I hit. I fought men and I hit women. That is why I am always on about peace, you see. It is the most violent people who go for love and peace. Everything's the opposite. But I sincerely believe in love and peace. I am a violent man who has learned not to be violent and regrets his violence. I will have to be a lot older before I can face in public how I treated women as a youngster."

Speaking about Jealous Guy in 1980, John Lennon said:

"My song, melody written in India. The lyrics explain themselves clearly: I was a very jealous, possessive guy. Toward everything. A very insecure male. A guy who wants to put his woman in a little box, lock her up, and just bring her out when he feels like playing with her. She’s not allowed to communicate with the outside world – outside of me – because it makes me feel insecure."

And perhaps that would all be good and well, except that he sang the whole thing as "how he behaves when he's jealous" - it's framed as "something I did in the past" but there's no "and I don't do that any more".

Monday, 13 July 2020

Everything there is to know about Total Eclipse Of The Heart

Total Eclipse Of The Heart might be my favourite song of all time. It was the first record I owned that I truly fell in love with, and all I had was a 7" single that my family got from collecting cereal box tokens (wanna see it?). It's probably rare now. It was the B-side! I was probably 7 years old. Is that weird? Haha. I didn't even hear the full album version for another decade or so!


Friday, 24 April 2020

Love Never Dies review

There are spoilers in this review. It's of this Melbourne production of Love Never Dies which is free to watch this weekend:



This Andrew Lloyd Webber musical isn't bad bad in the same way as some of the others, it just makes me feel ill watching it.

I think maybe the show would have been better if the characters weren't supposed to be the ones from Phantom, because it makes all of my red flags go off seeing Christine so quickly welcoming of the phantom just because he says he feels great pain without her and they reminisce about their "one night" together.

I mean, I am still thinking of him as a real horror; manipulative / stalker / threatening / murdering.

And both phantom and Raoul - when confronting each other - treat her as a possession, and Raoul has become just angry and useless... there's no-one really to root for out of the two of them.

And I would not put a child in the trust of a twisted and murderous man just because he's biologically his father.

It's not that the show is bad bad, it just makes me feel like everything the show wants me to get on board with is wrong. I'm sitting there going "no, no, no, no, no" at every moment that I think is supposed to be positive.

I think if you looked at the book for this musical in isolation, this phantom would be no more of a horror than a grumpy goth with bad skin.

So... either you have a phantom who is far too horrible for you to want him to succeed, or a completely declawed phantom who is just bland.

Wednesday, 15 April 2020

A word I don't like

I don't mind the word "moist" at all. I am not sure why people don't like it. But I really don't like when people are doing a cooking show or cooking instructional video and use the word "slurry" to describe mixing something into a paste - because it just makes me thinks of farms and how they smell.

Sunday, 12 April 2020

Currently playing : Nier

I'm currently playing Nier (not Automata) on Xbox 360.

I really like it. It is a beautiful, sad game, with beautiful music and good artwork.

I finished the game with one ending last night, and decided - rather than play and get the next ending to the game, I would start over again from nothing.

There's an achievement for completing the whole game under 15 hours which I'm aiming for. I'm skipping all the sidequests, which means sadly I miss out on Devola & Popola singing together.

It is unrelentingly sad, just chock full of sad stories, sometimes unnecessarily sad. 

For example - when you go to turn in your final fishing sub-quest, there's another man standing in the quest-giver's place. He tells you that the old man who gave you the quest died then says no-one in town really liked him anyway. I mean, come on, writers, you didn't need to do that! This has no impact on the overall story of the game, they just decide to throw in things like that all the time.

But the sadness is a good outlet for me in this world we're living in. It's easier to put your heart into a bunch of fictional grief and feel that than look at the world today pretending along with everyone else that the daily massive amounts of death aren't that bad.

Saturday, 11 April 2020

What's The Buzz - Jesus Christ Superstar - sounds like invincibility to me

Andrew Lloyd Webber has been releasing musicals for the public to enjoy for free for a short window of time during this lockdown period. This week, it is appropriately Jesus Christ Superstar.


I say "appropriately", but really... he's made Jesus Christ available for 48 hours from Good Friday until Easter Sunday, which is the exact opposite of how Easter is supposed to work.

Anyway. I started watching, and this song "What's The Buzz" starts up.



And I think to myself... hang on, this tune... what is it? It is the song of my people. Yes! It is:


Sorry, that's all I can think now. (Yes I know Jesus Christ Superstar came first)

Friday, 3 April 2020

Persona - Poem for Everyone's Souls & Elvis Presley - My Boy

I noticed a thing.

The melody for "Poem For Everyone's Souls" - which is the music for the Velvet Room in all the Persona games - and the chorus to the song "My Boy" by Elvis Presley really sound a lot like each other.

(listen at @1:35)


(listen at @0:31)

Wednesday, 18 March 2020

Recommended Twitch musicians

If you're on lockdown and are hankering for some live music, well, you can get that on the internet nowadays. Here are some of my favourite musicians on Twitch:

  • Plastic Josh
    https://www.twitch.tv/plasticjosh
    Songlist: https://www.streamersonglist.com/s/plasticjosh/songs
    Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/6FfAxaRvMrikzkied5Kduv
    UK musician - guitar (both acoustic and electric) and piano, has a voice of gold. Wide range of music - if I said it was "the kind of music Q Magazine likes" would you know what I mean? Does a fantastic Gethsemane. Made me actually enjoy Radiohead songs outside of Creep. Especially look out for streams where his brother comes along to join him singing on duets. He has his own band "Plastic Sun" and their original songs are great (but a right bugger if you want to sing one in the shower)
  • lara6683
    https://www.twitch.tv/lara6683
    YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/lara6683
    Songlist: https://goo.gl/6AVr4n
    Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/2v5wjWQZ9ViJUXAetTQcZ6
    Many years ago, maybe a decade by now, I enjoyed listening to some piano covers of video game songs by someone called Lara de Wit. Then about 2 years ago, YouTube decided I ought to listen to a "mega medley that was supposed to be 5 minutes" that goes on for about an hour and a half. By someone called lara6683. And she was just taking suggestions from chat and playing a seemingly endless medley out of it all. Just out of memory. Then after a while, I found out that Lara de Wit and lara6683 were the same person. Her thing is that she's really, really good at learning new songs by ear. If you pay her a bucket of money at the start of a stream, she is likely to live learn a song of your choosing. She's also very good at taking songs and mashing them together on the fly, her improvisational / arrangement skills are fantastic. She is very popular and often gets over 1000 concurrent viewers. Song requests are generally sub-only and at her discretion - so 100 people might request and she'll pick an hour and a half's worth of songs out of the list. 
  • ortopilot
    https://www.twitch.tv/ortopilot
    Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/3CckGnXzzJ9GARII95dDek
    Another UK musician, this one's a Northern English singer / songwriter who plays keyboard and guitar and is an absolute wizard with a looper, and makes some solid, funky music. His sound setup is studio quality. His streams are generally a good time.
  • supershigi
    https://www.twitch.tv/supershigi
    Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/user/supershigi
    Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/2RnGA202UcoKq6KjzQCbNR
    Laura Shigihara is one of my favourite video game composers. When Plants vs Zombies came out, I loved the soundtrack so much I went and bought it separately and listened to it over and over. In the game To The Moon, her song Everything's Alright is the most perfectly fitting song within a game I think I've ever heard. So when she started streaming, it was like a goddess coming down to earth. She plays keyboard, has the sweetest, gentlest voice, and is generally a super nice person.
  • Spence Elliot
    https://www.twitch.tv/spenceelliott
    This guy is seriously as though one of the Beach Boys was born 50 years too late, or something. Has a great voice, plays acoustic guitar and piano. He specialises in 1960s - 1970s music, mainly folk but also rock and stuff. All his song requests are paid. He's really, really good. And really welcoming and friendly too.
  • Contracrostics
    https://www.twitch.tv/contracrostics
    Exceptional classical pianist named Matt, from the USA, who has an amazing antique grand piano right there in his house. When he plays, it's like a story. It's beautiful. He'll only play what he wants to, but he's got a ton of classical sheet music, and I've never disliked anything he's played. He doesn't always stream music though - sometimes he plays games. He's a really chill guy and it's nice to watch his gaming streams too.
  • knumb the geek
    https://www.twitch.tv/knumbthegeek
    Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/knumbthegeek
    "Folk-punk" American musician named Kevin - amazing on fiddle, also plays guitar and mandolin. Often uses a looper. Sings enthusiastically, though he kinda sounds like Goofy (but, a smarter version). Has a really great, contemplative, wild, brutal, and sometimes funny set of songs on his playlist, some of which he's written himself. Oh and a bunch of American and Irish traditional tunes too.
  • Mermaid Unicorn
    https://www.twitch.tv/mermaidunicorn
    Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/6gfQSJ07CJAEvOwKz4sX2f
    Canadian musician Alanna Sterling is one of the greatest talents around at the moment, I'd say. I'm not going to list all the instruments they play, let's just say "all of them", because it basically is. Their song "Monsters Under My Bed" was probably the best original song I heard in the whole of 2019.
  • Jonathan Ong
    https://www.twitch.tv/jonathanong
    YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwbNxgXSHBjGBUjKHVZS7ZA
    Dr Ong is like a mad scientist of music, from Australia. He's an amazing, outstanding pianist. He also plays flute and saxophone and otamatone. His stream has "The Most Keyboards On Twitch" (TMKOT) - he has dozens of them, all doing different things - and he seems to have an unending desire to acquire more of them. He also has a baby grand in his room which he usually plays. He'll play intricate classical pieces just to warm up, before playing whatever pop / rock / video game music / memes people hurl at him to play for the next 5 hours or so. I especially love when he covers either Muse or Nier on piano. People often pay him to make loops of songs, he'll listen and create his own version, layering and layering and layering. He has really funny animations and overlays too.  I've seen him play a piano with 102 keys (and he broke it just through playing it, I don't think he's allowed back there anymore). I've seen him play for so many hours he literally stopped to go and superglue his fingers back together, and he came back giggling like a maniac. He's just started on some serious compositions too, which are really fine.
  • Texasraw
    https://www.twitch.tv/texasraw
    Nice to see an older musician on Twitch. He's from Texas as the name suggests, and he plays hit rock songs from the previous century on electric guitar & kick drum. He's really good but I also feel like he's a bit underappreciated.
  • Lemonagogo
    https://www.twitch.tv/lemonagogo
    Singer / guitarist from the US, has a really nice, soothing voice. Her knowledge of 80s pop music is pretty legendary. 
  • Venusworld
    https://www.twitch.tv/venusworld
    Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/4BQv8prfL0d4D0qR0q474d
    also Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/4nuyPqafby01SAz10TFNU5
    Venus is a singer / songwriter from English, so posh she could play Mary Poppins without having to affect an accent. She writes some surprisingly dark songs, my favourite of hers is "Before You Go". Her community are really supportive and sing along in chat when she sings original songs. She previously recorded under the name Sophie Janes before settling on the name Venus, that's why she has two Spotify channels.
I'm listing nationalities mostly so you get an idea for the timezones they'll stream for. Though some just seem to be on at whatever time they feel like (e.g. Jonathan Ong, Contracrostics, Johnny Kuik). All the Germans speak perfect English because of course they do.

Also worth a mention: SavingMusicLive - this is where a lot of charity music streams are held, Gluecks (German, pianist), Johnny Kuik (UK keyboardist, plays along to a lot of anime music and East-Asian pop), pealeaf (Canadian, pianist), meriamber (Australian, songwriter - writes some hilarious songs), Dan Chapman (amazing vocalist, songwriter, guitar & keyboard), Andrew Telles (piano, keyboard), Tammy Blackmedia (singer-songwriter, guitar & keyboard), CallsignScarecrow (UK, vocals, guitar, large beard), Egglyberts (UK, pianist), Liz Singer (vocalist, covers musicals and pop music, heck of a belt), ka_klick (US, guitarist, sings nerdy songs he's written), Megan Lenius (US singer songwriter, her song Allison is brilliant), Umilele (Ukraine, ukelele), KristyKates (US, guitar, vocals, generally very nice person), theluckmusic (wow these voices! Guitar, keyboard), JadothMusic (German, singer / guitarist), pianoimproman (piano, keyboards), matthewkheafy (US metal musician Matt Heafy from the band Trivium), Luck Reunion (Willie Nelson, Paul Simon & co are going to do a live concert soonish)

And, I don't know if they're gone for good, because they haven't streamed in ages, but these folks are great: Kyle Landry (pianist), ihazabeard (vocals, guitar), BagelRabbit (violin improv)

Tuesday, 27 August 2019

I Drove All Night

This is one of those songs that I love but also rant about.

It's a great song. There are so many great versions; Cyndi Lauper, Roy Orbison, Celine Dion...  I really like the version by The Protomen too. It's like the Roy Orbison version, but ramped up and more epic.

BUT!

I just want to say to the two guys who wrote this song... "No, it's totally not alright".

Seriously, if I was dating a guy and I thought he was 200 miles away but he got horny and drove up, snuck and crept in to my bed and woke me up by [surprise sexy times] I'd wake up terrified assuming it's an intruder and lamp him. If it didn't end in fatality it would end in "We need to talk".

And you know! You know by listening to the song the guy knows he's doing something terrible, or he wouldn't have to ask "is that alright?" so much. No it's not alright!

And I don't know if this is just what I get out of it, but I feel like he thinks he's earned his sexy times just because he drove so far, and he's going to be mega pissed off and act like a pest if he gets home to "go away, I'm sleeping!". There's definitely a sense of entitlement I get out of these lyrics.

The fact it's sometimes covered by women doesn't make it better. It's still creepy.

And I know this was written before mobile phones so phoning to ask "is that alright" before driving all that way isn't that simple.

This song... I have so many problems with it and I don't think of it as romantic at all, but I still like it, and I really like the various artists who've performed it. I suppose that's a bit weird.

Thursday, 4 July 2019

Perfect balance

I just looked up how many people there are in the world. There are 7.7 billion people. I also saw that in 1960, there were 3 billion. So if Thanos did his thing, he'd have to come back and do it every 40 years or so to really achieve "balance".