2018 Music in Review

This year was an okay year for music. I listened to a ton of new releases, but the number of high quality albums was a little low. Here are my faves:

- Merrie Land - The Good, the Bad, & the Queen
- The Now Now - Gorillaz
- The Hex - Richard Swift
- Blank Panther - Kendrick Lamar

And other great records:

- Isolation - Kali Uchis
- Everything is Recorded - Richard Russell
- Everything is Love - The Carters
- Babelsberg- Gruff Rhys
- POST- - Jeff Rosenstock
- 7 - Beach House
- Dirty Computer - Janelle Monae
- Room 25 - Noname

Pretty skimpy. Two Albarn records in one year is great, though. I'm thankful for them. Looking back over my favorite tracks of the year it's fantastic to see a ton of genre blending. It's getting harder to draw hard lines between rock, pop, R&B, rap, etc. Everyone is stealing from everyone else and that's exciting.

SF and Near

Twitterless Weekends

Second weekend in a row in which I’ve deleted Twitter from my phone. It’s working for me. No longer feel addicted to it.

Tough Day

The Music of 2017

2017 was a good year for music. I ended up listening to more tunes than I had since 2013, if I can trust the data at last.fm. Tons of great records. A few really great ones. Here are my lists.

Favorite records of 2017:

• Mangaliso — Bongeziwe Mabandla
• Humanz — Gorillaz
• Damn — Kendrick Lamar
• Drunk — Thundercat

Honorable Mentions:

• La Confusion — Amadou & Miriam
• I Tell a Fly — Benjamin Clemintine
• Capacity — Big Thief
• Hug of Thunder — Broken Social Scene
• Chronology — Chronixx
• Ash — Ibeyi
• 4:44 — Jay Z
• Harmony of Difference — Kamasi Washington
• Sleep Well Beast — The National
• Africa Express Presents The Orchestra of Syrian Musicians & Guests — The Orchestra of Syrian Musicians & Guests
• In Mind — Real Estate
• Ctrl — SZA
• Antisocialites — VVaves
• Big Fish Theory — Vince Staples

And here’s a public playlist of my favorite tracks of 2017 on Apple Music.

Favorite People

Married!

CardStack.io

I built the new website for CardStack this week, and it went up yesterday: http://cardstack.io. What Cardstack is doing is amazing, and their roadmap is seriously impressive. Ken and Chris are fantastic people and I owe them a great deal of gratitude for the work they've given me in the last year. I'm incredibly excited to keep building things with them and the group of talented people they've surrounded themselves with. More great stuff is coming! Head to the website to read the technical details. Actual products and applications will be announced soonish.

Ask Brooklyn Museum Officially Released

Ask Brooklyn Museum was officially released this month, moving out of its year-long beta phase. The reviews have started to roll in and they're positive so far. I'll try to keep a running list here: The New York Times, The Verge. It was a winner of two 2016 MUSE Awards: a Gold award for mobile applications, and the Jim Blackaby Memorial Award. I've also written a case study, going into fuller detail about the design of the app.

Drew and Becka

Cousins!