i listened to 200 albums in 2025, and i made 52 soups!

my favorite albums that came out this year my favorite albums that came out in past years

i listened to exactly 200 albums in 2025! it’s way less than the last couple years! for basically the entire year whenever someone asked what i’d been listening to lately i said i was in a rut, and it was alway true. i got out of the rhythm of listening to music on my way to/from work when i started biking to work last january, started listening to more music at work when i started working functionally solo for most of my day, and then stopped working there and fell off. i’ve even fallen out of the habit of putting on music when chilling at home and especially when cooking, which historically has been the big new music time!! this has happened before, i usually oscillate between “music is good right now” and “podcast is good right now”, but podcast has been bad for basically the entire year and i still don’t put on music :/ . treacherous brain!!

it is really just falling out of the habit, because there have been times where whenever i put something on i liked it, like in december, but there’s a block in my brain where i don’t put anything on. i think part of it is that it’s gotten harder for me to spontaneously listen to music. i stopped paying for spotify in august, which fuck those guys and i don’t regret that at all, but i didn’t really have anything to replace it with. i almost always use bandcamp now, which is great!!! but a lot of bigger artists aren’t on there, which has come up when i want to listen to albums by people like madonna or pharoah sanders, and in rare cases it blocks you from listening to an album more than three times if you haven't bought it. and that’s great! i should and will buy music on bandcamp!! the other things i’ve been using are soundcloud, which has always had ads on my phone, and on youtube, which my laptop adblocker recently stopped blocking ads on. so i avoid those mostly!!! i’ve been getting into souls**k, which rocks, but it’s much less spontaneous if i’m trying to put on something new on during my trolley ride.

when i do spontaneously listen to music now, it's been nts. i love it! it’s close enough to my music tastes (primarily dance music ambient and jazz with a focus on the overlooked/experimental/strange, sometimes they have guitars or label showcases or really anything. honestly my only critique is that they play too much downtempo but i recognize i am biased) that one of the two stations is at least Fine, especially if i’m at work and just wanna hear a kick drum, and if i’m really lucky it’s one of the best dj sets i’ve heard. many djs also have an extensive archive of their monthly shows. i listened to most of jane remover’s wait watch this shows (all amazing!! she is a genius. i listen to the june 21 set pretty often), and everything chuquimamani-condori has put out on there. because i get the aux at predictable times of day at work, i also have gotten familiar with the weekly shows that run then, like the spinee set on saturday nights that is reliably fantastic and strange. her bio says she was on pc music but i’d never heard of her before this. she’s great! dj wawa also has a monthly show that is always a welcome treat. in general’s nts’s programming is great. i happened to be listening to the NTS Guide to Indian Classical Influence on Jazz that rocked my world and another time i happened to be listening to the NTS Guide to Digicore that aged me so much i turned into dust. two hours of these!! what a treat!! huge fan of nts and i want to incorporate it more into my listening habits at home and keep up with specific artist’s shows.

a very brief shoutout to the humble fm radio. this year i was very brave and admitted to myself that i prefer wprb from princeton to wkdu from drexel even though wprb is based in new jersey and wkdu is based up the street. basically every time i tune into wprb they are playing some weirdo shit i either enjoy or at least am compelled by. sometimes it’s bog standard college rock! then i put on nts. but the hit percentage is soooo much higher for wprb than wkdu. it’s tragic! i wish the radio i have in my house would pick up wprb (or the eagles broadcasts!) but it’s easy enough to put on my phone or computer and let go for a while. i just want to use my radio more. i don’t listen to either of these to follow specific djs like my friends do, but whenever i put it on on saturday morning and i remember it’s the indian classical station i smile. maybe 2026 will finally be the year of the pirate radio for me!!

i feel like my music taste changed very little last year, much less than it did in 2024. i still like scary kick drum music and free jazz, i still get annoyed every time i hear a guitar unless you’re more eaze or sonny sharrock, i still like it when it’s confrontational noise, i still really like it when the song is more than 20 minutes long, i still think the minimum tempo for club music should be 160.

my goals i wrote down last year were to listen to more dj mixes, delineate more genres of dance music in my head, and listen to even more music from outside the anglosphere. i listened to much more dj mixes, both incidentally on nts and intentionally putting sets on. i’m better at identifying more types of club music, which i’ve mostly done by going to dj sets with my friend, leaning over and saying “gabber” and then she smiles and says “hardstyle” and i say “fuck” and then i do better next time. incidentally this is also how i’ve learned about birds. still much to learn! i did a decent job at listening to more international music, but i was still focused on us/europe and something i want to keep expanding. i would like to find specific bandcamp pages that do a lot of reissues and trust their curation. the main music site i’ve read for the past few years, stereogum, is going behind a paywall, which is great and they should do that, but i won’t go with it. they’ve primarily covered music i’m not interested in the past couple years but they had a couple good monthly columns i relied on for music discovery, so i have to do something new now. i’m thinking of becoming a resident advisor guy. sure!! i continue to find ways that cohost shutting down has soured my relationship with being online and music discovery is For Sure one of them. i miss that place! people were so excited to talk about anything they liked.

anyway! that was my music year. i have fewer three thumbs up releases than last year (just three! los thuthanaka, skrillex, and ninajirachi) because i tried to be more choosy; my criteria is that it either blows my mind so astoundingly or it opens up a whole new genre for me / seriously changes how i think about a genre. it didn’t happen very often this year. a highlight the past few years has been seeing people/people’s tastes show up in my listening habits, which i also felt like was rare this year. i think partially because i’ve been in a rut i’ve been talking less about music to my friends, and also i’m meeting fewer new people than i was when i was in a band and a little more social. i also continue to remember that my taste diverges pretty strongly from other people’s; i was talking to a beautiful woman about the music i was excited about and i played her the new skrillex album and summun bukmun umyun by pharoah sanders within about five minutes of each other and got a bemused but mostly baffled and slightly concerned look as i floundered trying to explain why i like them. i don’t think i did a very good job at all!!! however we are now dating :). she is very patient.

for the coming year i want to incorporate the ipod that is sitting on my nightstand into everyday use + to commit to doing frequent small imports of audio files to have something new to listen to (a goal i have had since 2022); i want to learn to dj and then spin a set (a goal i have had since 2020); i want to find new avenues like blogs or smaller websites that are talking about music that i am interested in; i want to buy more music on bandcamp and download more mp3s; i want to force myself to relearn the listening-to-music-at-home habit i’ve had in prior years; i want to play a show non-dj style; i want to talk to more people about music in person. attainable!!

Just OK year for music! good year for soups!

i saw someone online in december 2024 who had made 50 soups in a year and i said i bet i could do that and then i did that. i made 52 soups this year!! if you count risotto as a soup, 50 if you don’t. but i think you should count risotto as a soup. i don’t think i like learned anything huge about myself through doing this, but it was still a lot of fun. very quick reflections

  1. i discovered that i’m something of a soup radical, and it felt important to me to make a statement expanding what a soup can be. i believe that the lines between soup, sauce, and drink are thin enough to be almost nonexistent. that being said, i tried to hew somewhat closely to what people think of as soup. i did include the controversial risotto but i didn’t include things like smoothies and hot chocolate, which i would argue are both soups. expand your mind open your heart.
  2. if i made a soup more than once i only wrote it down again if i felt like i meaningfully changed the ingredients or preparation to make it a new thing. i had gazpacho several times and a couple of warm tomato soups, but overall i made very few repeats.
  3. even with 52 there were still many soups i was looking forward to i didn’t end up making!!! luckily life is long and i can keep making soups forever. thai red curry, dal tadka, mattar paneer, ramen, ful, and sujebi I Am Coming For You Soon.
  4. a lot of soups revolve around meat. pho i would love to make you some day. chorba frik i am sorry for what i did to you
  5. i cooked red chili with sweet potatoes and hominy on new year’s eve 2024 and i cooked white chili with oyster mushrooms and jackfruit on new year’s eve 2025 and that felt lovely :)
  6. it was fun to have a soup guide my grocery trip and it was just as fun to cobble soups together from extra ingredients/leftovers; i felt much more confident at going from a recipe but the leftover method did lead to bangers like a rich potato-veggie-noodle soup but also led to bombs like barley cabbage slop. addl shoutout to paneer tikka masala, addl condemnation to the carrot kohlrabi soup i spiced so goofy it was nearly inedible.
  7. i fucking love gazpacho. clear winner for First Time Soup Award!!!! we had so many extra fresh tomatoes for so long at work this summer i made gazpacho probably 3 or 4 times and every time it was a Gift.
  8. i am very excited to not feel obligated to make a soup whenever i cook!
  9. my culinary goal for next year is to feel comfortable improvising a salad :) i am not very experienced with them if anybody reading this has salads they like please text me and if you don’t have my number just eat a very good salad and think of me :) thank you :)

my soups!

  1. corn risotto
  2. leftover bean and vegetable soup
  3. lentil soup
  4. dumpling soup
  5. hot and sour
  6. veggies and rice stew!
  7. veggie adzuki miso soup
  8. root veg shakshuka

    9. root veg shakshuka

  9. oakland shakshuka
  10. zine borscht
  11. curry w japanese sweet potato
  12. mapo tofu

    13. mapo tofu

  13. barley cabbage slop
  14. potato veg noodle soup
  15. cream of mushroom soup
  16. broccoli cheddar soup
  17. tantanmen
  18. sichuan sanni noodle soup
  19. leftover broth egg noodle soup
  20. bell pepper bean soup
  21. savory oatmeal
  22. indian curry w cauliflower and chickpea, from old jar
  23. tikka masala adjacent veggie soup
  24. pozole verde w zucchini n dandelion greens
  25. ajoblanco
  26. gazpacho
  27. ribollita
  28. changua

    29. changua

  29. tomato and zuc minestrone!
  30. punched up ramen w squash n egg
  31. carrot ginger kohlrabi soup
  32. scratch japanese curry w tofu katsu
  33. mushroom risotto
  34. heirloom and cherry tomato shakshuka
  35. vegan fresh tomato soup w grilled cheese
  36. purple potato and leek in bread bowl
  37. vegan blended mushroom soup
  38. paneer tikka masala
  39. enchilada soup w chochoyotes
  40. tomato soup w polenta cotija n garlic
  41. corn and coconut soup
  42. corn chowder
  43. parsnip soup
  44. pasta fazool
  45. acquacotta
  46. fire soup

    47. fire soup

  47. caldo de queso
  48. japanese-inflected kale polenta soup
  49. pozole rojo
  50. chorba frik
  51. sopa de mani
  52. white chili

my music!

january!! we did it!

feb

march!

april

may

june

july

august

sept

oct

nov

dec