2025 consumption: a look at some stuff I liked

Right, right. This should’ve been finished before the end of 2025. But between engagements and gastro, it took a bit of a back seat.

YES I KNOW GODDAMNIT.

But now I’m (mostly) back on deck, so here’s your yearly guide to things I perceived. You can check through the previous versions (here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here) for some more me-review action.

I think this will be less wordy than the usual variant, but we’ll see how we end up.

Music

Apart from a few physical purchases (let’s face it, one: the new album by The Necks), I bought my music from Bandcamp this year. My ridiculous-sized library continues to grow, and the combination of a NAS and Plexamp for streaming those titles (well, the ones I have tagged and imported, which is a small percentage of the total… yet) remains solid. (I’ve also started storing audiobooks in the same system, which is another step away from the Amazon hivemind, which feels good.)

I revived a CD player and revisited my physical collection more than I had in previous years. Combined with a Wiim streamer, this means I’ve been able to inflict grievous experimental music bullshit on the household at large, which makes me (at least and mostly only) happy, though I will convince Eve that some of this stuff is good. At some point.

Maybe.

The number of tracks I listened (at least according to my Last.fm account) was about 19,000 (or 69 days) taking my total to almost 260,000 tracks listened since I started keeping tabs. This is an increase of 17% over the previous year, perhaps attributable to my moving to a new office with a musical setup more amenable to daily listening.

Here’s how LastWave saw 2025.

A graph showing musical listening throughout 2025. — *Music nerds, click here to see a larger version.*

(Speaking of Last.fm-related information, this link should send you to a scatterplot of my listening since 2006. It’s granular, so if you want to see what I was listening to on a particularly long and dark night of the soul, you can pick up that detail with ease you goddamn creeper.)

2025’s top 20 artists by tracks played:
Miles Davis; John Zorn; Jenö Jandó; Godtet; Melvins; Aphex Twin; Rage Against the Machine; Coil; Rocket From The Crypt and The Beatles. Just outside the top bracket lurked OGRE YOU ASSHOLE, Pink Floyd, Pere Ubu and Ryoji Ikeda.

If you’re a more visual person, cop this:

A collage of album colours. There are 100 albums on here so I'm sorry that I'm not going to transcribe them. — *Yeah, I don’t know where that Mingus album went either. (Click to enlarge.)*

Again, this was a year where longer albums – complete sessions and v/a compilations – skewed the data. There’s a lot more compilations floating around in the mix, but that’s not a bad thing: I have enjoyed having more of a range of experiences throughout the year.

Here’s ten albums that I really enjoyed in 2025 that aren’t really covered in the list above (well, some are but this is my place so you get what you get). Not necessarily new releases, but all worth a listen.

22 by Deathcomet: Look, it wouldn’t be a list here without Dan’s project of interstellar flanged insanity. They keep coming and keep being GREAT.
Abandoned Cricket Games by Jerrah Patston: Long-time readers will know I LOVE Jerrah’s work. His simplicity and truthful writing – aided by some properly great musical assistants – is wonderful. And he got to record a song about Paul McCartney not playing ‘Mull of Kintyre’ on an old Abbey Road console, so he’s doing WAY better than most people in the music game. A true gem.
Carving the Wall by LSZ: a crushing slab of mystery, somehow different from all the other LSZ crushing slabs of mystery. This person’s practice makes me want to MAKE THINGS.
Disquiet by The Necks: Yes, you might argue that this is more of the same, but honestly when you’ve been doing ambient improv jazz as long as these three, you can pretty much hang your hat on the solidity of practice. Three CDs, four tracks, no bullshit.
Signal Abnormality by Form of an Owl: Another mate called Dan (this time in New Mexico) creates solo cello works that remind me a bit of Philip Shepherd but with a more massed-guitar sensibility, if that makes sense? Big tone clusters and tremulous skies.
Ripping Nails Records compilations: a good label (their motto is NO GODS NO COPS NO NAZIS NO EXCUSES) with a series of killer compilations dedicated to decent causes. Absolutely worth your time and cash.
Requiem by All Men Unto Me: Introduced to me by Brendan of Convulsing (who is an absolute monster talent), this is a transmasc take on the Missa pro Defunctis, featuring doom organ and layered vocals and just… holy fuck. Gives me the same feelings of experiencing something terrifyingly transcendent as when I first heard Lingua Ignota.
Nature and Computers by OGRE YOU ASSHOLE: Japanese krautrock? Japanese krautrock. Amazing jams, solid driving music, annoyed I only just discovered this.
Monthly subs to Transylvanian, Fiadh and Bent Window: each month, new albums from bands I’ve never heard of drop into my collection and there’s always something amazing.

Gigs

We saw a bunch of shows this year. Here’s some pictures of the local wonders:

The marquee of The Enmore Theatre, Sydney, with YOU AM I displayed above a crowd of people. — I got another chance to make up for the terrible night I had at the first lot of these anniversary shows, years ago, and the boys delivered. *Hourly Daily* and *Hi-Fi Way* for life, folks.

The Drones performing on stage in Melbourne. — Wait, a Drones reunion? Supported by Don Walker and The Nation Blue? Well, shucks. Flew to Melbourne for this one and fuck me if the Drones weren’t tighter than ever. It was as if they’d never been away. Just ridiculously great.

A rainy night shot of Katoomba's The Little Lost Bookshop.

This is a bookshop in the Blue Mountains. It is cold, wet, and the first gig of the Blue Mountains Void Observance League has just taken place. The League supports weirdos making drone, noise and assorted mayhem for like-minded weirdos, and discovering it was probably the best musical event of the year, for me. It’s the sort of stuff I like, held in a place I love, in the misty mountains.
There’s more shows planned, with some examples of what you might hear located here. I have also promised to contribute to Liber Enya, so I hope you’re all ready for me to be on my obnoxious noise bullshit this year.

In terms of international acts, it was a little restrained. But both shows we caught were ace:

A shot of Supergrass playing the Sydney Opera House Concert Hall. — A bunch of cheeky chappies revisiting their youth? Helps that they a) have all aged well; b) are all still mates; and c) write incredibly catchy tunes. A joyous night of silly, good-natured fun.

The finale of the first Sydney Oasis concert, 2025. — Was Oasis too expensive? Yes. Was it fookin’ biblical? Also yes. Banger after banger.

Podcasts

Not a lot changed here. I have switched to audiobooks for mowing distraction (5ha of land takes a bit) and so podcasts tend to be coffee run affairs. The same big guns kept in my regular rotation, though: Matt Bevan’s If You’re Listening, Robert Evans’s Behind the Bastards, and the excellently bitchy If Books Could Kill.

Books

Once more, I planned 2025’s reads on the first day of the year. Once more I kept my suggested book numbers in line with the year: 25 for 2025. I was a bit more successful in crossing some books over the TBR than I had been in 2024, as you can see.

(What I didn’t get through now lives on my TBR page where they will be linked when reviewed. Eventually. Reviews for this year’s books can be found on my HBR page.)

Through the year I consumed 87 books (5% more than the previous year, which was more than a third up on the year before that) covering almost 25,000 pages. Audiobooks accounted for 382 hours of the year, an increase of almost 40 hours over 2024. Most of the books I read (45%) were between 250-500 pages, while audiobook duration was tied between 5–10 hours and 20–30 hours (at 28% per type).

My average rating for books tin 2025 was 3.79 rather than my usual 3.8, so some things changed this year. Something that didn’t change, though?

A graph showing that I am more bibliographically depressed than my friends. — *Vibe check: still true to brand.*

I read mostly physical books (44%, further ahead of digital at 36%), I listened to almost 16 days’ worth of audiobooks, and I spent 14 days per book, on average. Fiction made up 74% of my intake, and more than 25% of what I read was in translation. My author breakdown wasn’t great, however: 25% female versus 75% male, which is something I would like to change.

Three books on the list were read as buddy reads through TSG, which as ever is something I recommend. (Especially if you can snag a bit of snark from Elizabeth of Scrivener’s Tools in the process, especially on SFF books.)

I remained a member of a local book club – we meet on the first Saturday at the local bowls club – but attended a bit less in 2025 due to work trips and general tiredness. It’s still a good club, though: people talk about what they’re reading rather than a specific book, which is a much more democratic way of handling the proposition.

Here’s how the reading itself panned out:

A graph detailing the amount of books, pages and hours listened for 2025.

The books that stuck with me – from those I read in 2025, at least – were, in no particular order:

Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland by Patrick Radden Keefe: I knew the Troubles were grim, but fuck.
Our Share of Night by Mariana Enriquez: magical realism without the saccharine.
They Will Claim That I Was Dead by Florian Freichs: UDO KIER IS THE GAY POPE!
The Viaduct by David Weldon: If The Road involved trainless bridges, maybe.
Legacy of Ashes and The Mission by Tim Weiner: I knew American geopolitical wrangling was grim, but fuck.
The Director by Daniel Kehlmann: Not everything can be fixed in post.
Lanny by Max Porter: That kid’s weird.
The Wax Child by Olga Ravn: That wax kid’s weird.
253 by Geoff Ryman: Commuters are weird.
The Auctioneer by Joan Samson: That titular Auctioneer is weird.

The very best audiobook, though? Miriam Margolyes’ reading of Dickens’ Bleak House. If you haven’t had the pleasure, do not hesitate. It is incredible, and a complete delight.

Everybody needs a naughty queer auntie like Miriam. She’s the best.

While the proportion of nonfiction went down compared to 2024, I did have a bit of a theme – geopolitics and finance seemed to poke their heads out a bit more. Fascism (in terms of conspiracy and conspirituality) featured, but the nonfiction works that had an enormous impact on me were both by Marx: 2025 was the year I finally digested Capital and The Communist Manifesto.

I won’t get into it now, but fuck. Read them, listen to audiobooks, whatever – just understand that old mate had a lock on this whole capitalism shit a long time ago. (If you don’t have the gumption to get through the whole thing, I can wholeheartedly recommend Terry Eagleton’s Why Marx Was Right as a good bulwark against the sort of bullshit anti-Marx theories you’ll find in most Murdoch-adjacent op-eds. Just… do it. This was perhaps the most transformative thing I consumed this year in terms of general mindset, even if the content itself was often headache- and sleep-inducing.

I didn’t list anything as DNF this year, but I did end up pausing some books I hadn’t made much progress with: the Riverside edition of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, Arthur Conan Doyle’s complete Holmes works, and The Tale of Genji. I intend to reboot these through 2026, which I have earmarked as The Year Of The Tome.

2025 was my first year without Goodreads and I didn’t miss it: TheStoryGraph is a much better option, with much better functionality, and I recommend you give it a go. (My profile is here.)

(If you wish to contribute to this part of the write-up, feel free to buy me something from here, especially as I’m attempting not to buy anything new myself this year. Or raid it for things you might like.)

Movies

Looking at the statistics from 2025, I watched 64 films, or 1.2 per week. Of these, 15 were repeat viewings, while 6 were released in 2025. (I watched more films last year than in the preceding year, though the amount of new releases was lower than the preceding year.)

I only managed to get to the cinema once in 2025, while I was in Melbourne for the Drones reunion. I caught a screening of Sinners there, which seemed to fit the big screen (and the former prison in which the cinema was located) well, even if it wasn’t the most even film. It was one of only a handful of films I saw that came out last year, with others I enjoyed including The Monkey and Bring Her Back, both different takes on the horror flick.

Speaking of horror, I seemed to be on a bit of a gruesome jag last year, with schlocky crap making up a lot of my watchlist. Schlock I caught up with included the excellent Hands of a Stranger, Maniac Cop, Psychomania, Horror Express and Dr Terror’s House Of Horrors (by which I mean excellently terrible). I aldo revisited the RoboCop series (I should’ve stopped at the first, let’s face it) and rewatched films including Naked, Se7en, the original The Vanishing and The Limey again after many years, and found them as excellent as ever. (Except for the remake of The Vanishing which was somehow worse? than I remembered.)

I enjoyed Conclave, finally catching up with a bit of frocked drama after somehow missing it, and discovering it was far more engrossing than voting has any right to be. The best thing I saw, though?

The fucking SOUNDS.

If you haven’t seen The Zone of Interest, do so. It is difficult to say I liked the film, but it is an incredible piece of work. A film about a Auschwitz, filmed in Auschwitz? Oh yes, it’s as full-on as you’d expect, even more so. Just, engrossing and awful, and incredibly necessary.

TV

Television didn’t really figure too much in 2025. We watched Deadloch (and loved it), and enjoyed the just-deserts conclusion to You (especially how angry it made the Joe-lovers to see him actually face consequences) but I wasn’t particularly driven to pull anything out of the to-watch list.

No, I tell a lie: we worked through the first season of Fleabag, almost a decade after it screened. And I’m glad that much time had passed, as I was able to approach it without any preconceptions. It certainly made me glad that I wasn’t in my 20s any more, though.

I saw quite a bit of various versions of Alive by dint of being on the couch when Eve was working her way through them as a defragging exercise, and I quite enjoyed that. Stranger Things came to an end, and though I thought the series dragged a bit, by the midpoint I was into it, and (as a bit of a cheat, as I’m writing this in 2026) felt they stuck the landing pretty well. Fan service? Sure. But true to the vibe of the thing, which counts.

(The Simpsons and Bob’s Burgers continue to drip-feed sanity, as ever.)

The list of shows-I’ve-gotta-watch continues to expand with no real end in sight. At some point a streaming service rationalisation is going to come, though, and THEN we’ll see the difference between wants and needs, I guess.

Games

I prioritised reading this year, so my games consumption wasn’t huge. Again, I went for some time last year without playing games: a period of five months or so. But I did get my mojo back and managed to complete quite a few. As ever, I find that I like more immersive single-player games – I’m just not into multiplayer, really – set in distinctive worlds.

I played (and completed):

Max Payne: BULLET TIME!
Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne: BULLET TIME BUT JANKIER!
Max Payne 3: BULLET TIME but you’ll be cover-shooting mostly.
The Elder Scrolls Oblivion Remastered: Finally completed, stole a lot of cheese.
Atomfall: What-ho it’s the wicker man!
RoboCop: Rogue City: Fanservice cheese with a special turn by an insufferable academic.
Star Wars: Jedi Survivor: The platforming sucks and there’s no way to actually order the lightsaber I so carefully designed in-game, but my god that setting.
Greedfall: I love me some Eurojank adventure.
The Invincible: A Lem-inspired walking simulator? OH HELL YES.
Far Cry 3 Classic Edition: Despite some shitty levels, this still holds up!

There’s other stuff I’ve played and not really sunk my teeth too far into, of course: the Indiana Jones and the Great Circle which is great but hasn’t exactly clicked yet, and Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, which I really like the look of but haven’t played long enough to glom on to. I’m sure I’ll come back to them – you know, once I get through Ghost of Yōtei.

My pick for the year?

Home planning was never so cryptic

Blue Prince, without a doubt. I skipped the reviews and went in blind, and I’m glad I did. This was not the sort of game I would normally play – a roguelike house-builder walking simulator? – but it drew me in. A lot deeper than I first thought, I played it to completion, but in no way discovered the whole story. The fact this was a one-dev joint is crazy. So, so good.

And of course…

2025 was a hard year for a lot of people. We’ve had it comparatively easy here, but I have had a lot more responsibility at work of late, which has made it more difficult to regain my balance between projects and be as much a part of things as I’d like. It’s something I need to work on, and I’m hoping some of the tools I have gained through some of the Mental Health First Aid training I’ve undertaken will help in that regard.

The year felt a bit like this at times, only without the epic jams you’re imagining.

Still, like I say – things are good. I live rurally and have a fair bit of quiet in my life when I want it. I couldn’t do what I do without Eve, and the life we have (a work in progress, as is everything) is fuckin’ great. I turn 50 in 2026 and things are just getting started – assuming saying that isn’t some kind of cosmic red rag – and I can’t wait to see what else is in store. And to make plans for the kind of person I want to be on the downhill run.

(I just hope I’m less tired for it.)

If you made it this far, who the fuck are you?