2016: the end of a strange year

By now, 2016 has been almost universally condemned as a terrible year. It started badly enough, with the strange, talismanic passing of David Bowie but at least that tragedy was wrapped in mystery and muted (somewhat) by the beauty and brilliance of his final creative act – his perfectly stage-managed death. But then there was Prince, overdosed on painkillers in the night. And Brexit. Closer to home, the King of Thailand passed away. And in the final and most savage twist of all, Donald Trump  did the seemingly unthinkable and grasped the US presidency, transforming himself into a strange and strangely opaque human question mark, now hanging over the globe.

But for all that, it was a pretty quiet year for me. Same job, same apartment. If the world was in crisis, my world had rarely been calmer. I continued running, ate some good food and had massages, and saw some good movies (Rage, The Lobster, Train to Busan, The Wailing).  I also travelled a little: starting the year off back in the cold streets of Tokyo and jetting from there to Vietnam (twice) and the unexpected pleasures of Taichung and Shanghai. Next week I am heading back home to Australia for the New Year.

And I read. It was books that provided me with the greatest discovery of 2016 : the works of Karl Ove Knausgaard. I devoured his six-book series of autobiographical novels, one after the other, and felt transformed by them. Despite the glittered genius of Frank Ocean and his similarly immersive music, for me it was Karl Ove who ignited my imagination the most this year, making me think about writing in a new way. His was a memoir not of events, but of feelings, a  refracted world of mundane desires so acute and so honestly observed that it inspired me and made me wonder why I write – even this blog, for example, and if there is any value in it.

Next year – a little over a few weeks from now – will be tenth anniversary of this blog. Tenth! But for now, I am content to look back on the year that just passed before making too many plans for the future.

 

Goodbye 2016 – a playlist

Goodbye 2015

Another year has come almost to its end. 2015 was unremittingly positive for me, a year of consolidation and growth. Work was manageable and I was able to channel a lot of my energy into getting fit. I started to run seriously and surprisingly, this seemed to be the key to finally giving myself over to Hong Kong and appreciating its pleasures. I always used to say somewhat bitterly that if I left Hong Kong tomorrow there would be nothing I would miss, but that is not true anymore. The jog along the ridge of Pok Fu Lam, with the glistening Lamma strait littered with shipping, would be a view hard to top. The bike path along the river in Shatin. The cool forest paths leading up to the Peak.

2015 was also my 37th year and I found myself increasingly embracing the comfortable middle stage of life – the quiet pleasures of a good run, a nice meal (maybe even home cooked), a freshly brewed coffee at a hipster cafe, knitwear in neutral colours and a night on the couch with American Horror Story or Project Runway. My overseas trips were more weekends away at a nice hotel than month-long expeditions ( though wait, that’s not entirely true, I did backpack through Isaan and Laos too…)

Of course I still listened to music, read some great books, saw some great movies – but I didn’t feel defined by them anymore. At this point, I pretty much know who I am – and I’m enjoying the life I’ve got. And the people (person) I’m sharing it with.

2015 – a playlist

My single and video of 2015

…and arguably the best album

…and the album I’m still waiting for.

My Khon Khaen to Nog Khai train song.

And also

And two great Latin artists who were new to me this year, even if their ongs were released earlier:

Goodbye 2014 : the year in review

And, its over. Well almost. Goodbye 2014! Its been a great year for me – enriching and fulfilled. It was the year I learnt to SCUBA dive and cook (well, a little) and hiked around remote islands and countryside peaks. I got back into running and my boyfriend did a triathlon. It was a year of trips – to Indonesia and Taiwan, back to Australia and then to Thailand again.

It was a year of lazy Saturday mornings, tasty homemade breakfasts and checking out the nascent Hong Kong cafe scene. I watched great movies (so many of them) and returned to books, reading more voraciously than I have in ages.

I pretty much stopped going to clubs. I turned domestic.

Work was smooth. The city was in turmoil.

Friends visited me in Hong Kong, I visited friends in Melbourne and some great friends left.

It was a year in which I felt older and calmer and happier than before.

So thank you, 2014.

 

 

 

Some of the sounds of (my) 2014

From Brazil:

From Korea:

From America:

From UK:

From Australia:

From China (and Taiwan):

From the Gay World:

From other places:

Woman and man of the year

Woman of the year was Solange: she didn’t release any new music, but riding high on last year’s True EP she still managed to dominate the year with her much-reported fisticuffs in an elevator, hipster wedding and dreamy Brazilian honeymoon, all showcased to the world via her sharp instragramming skills. An all-around 2014 lifestyle icon.

Ilbonito’s man of the year though is a more obscure pick: Brazilian artist Jaloo. Why? Because he seems to offer the promise of globalisation at its most exciting, that an androgynous indie boy growing up listening to brega music on the banks of the Amazon could transform himself into an avant garde star of techno-brega-pop with one foot firmly in his homeland of Northeastern Brazil, and his eyes set firmly on the glittering firmament of the Western world’s top 40, via killer remixes of Kylie and Adele and this wonderful Miley Cyrus cover, all the while dressed like Lady Gaga in Rio Xingu facepaint.A true man of the times.

Films of the year

Under the Skin: 

Her: 

Calvary: 

O Som ao Redor:  (The Sounds Around Us): 

Stranger by the Lake:

Nymphomaniac: 

The Babadook: 

12 Years A Slave: 

Honorable mentions for older movies I saw for the first time this year: Castaway and the Moon, Nightfishing, The Fantastic Mr Fox, Exit Through the Giftshop.

Another year older

2013..

This week a gloomy chill descended over Hong Kong (eleven degrees and rainy), and school limped towards its drawn-out close before the Xmas break, and it finally hit me – the year is (all but) over. Spectacular Beyonce multimedia releases aside, 2013 has at this point, pretty much played its hand.

It was a tumultuous year.

On the plus side, it was a year of great music. I listened to summery pop and a Korean 1920s revival and three-year old Latin chart hits. I started to read again: Christos Tsiolkas’s “Barracuda” and Zadie Smith. And I travelled: I spent an amazing Summer on the streets and subways and in the parks and bars of New York City, hanging out in Brooklyn and dancing to disco music at a music festival outside a drug rehab centre in New Jersey. I visited Montreal for a good friend’s birthday, took another good friend to Bangkok and returned to Tokyo – the motherland! – after all these years to find it still as amazing as I had remembered. And much later, I spent a debauched long weekend in Asia’s newest party city, Taipei.

I met great new people and I reconnected with so many old friends – in New York, in Tokyo, in Melbourne, in Bangkok, in Brazil. I suffered through work (sometimes) and wondered whether it was time for a change.

But of course, the biggest and most lasting event of 2013 was none of these things. It was the end of a nine year marriage, which finally fell apart at the seams. I started 2013 as a married man and watched it all – like a slow motion car crash – fall away. Daisuke and I split.

I moved house. I started afresh. I started to see Hong Kong though a whole new lens, sometimes scary and often exciting. I re-entered the relentlessly paced, dazzlingly seductive gay dating scene with its new buzzing sex apps and illusion of endless, instant choice. And then I met someone – and decided to drop back out.

Which pretty much brings me up to speed, as I type this on the floor of my new much-loved apartment in my new(ish) not-yet-loved neighbourhood,looking forward to a return back to Australia at the end of the week – but now leaving someone behind in HK.

Goodbye 2013

Solange – Lovers in the Parking Lot

Lee Hyori – Bad Girls

AKB48 – 恋するフォーチュンクッキー

Kelis – Jerk Ribs

Asala Nasri – Ela Mata

Miley Cyrus – We Can’t Stop

Jinbo – Cops Come knock

Major Laser – Bubble Butt

Tove Lo – Habits

Nogizaka 46 – Baretta (unfortunately the amazing original video clip, quite possibly the year’s best, has disappeared from youtube. In it,  the girls gun each other down in a vigilante battle against human traffickers, with a savage twist at the end.)

Brendan MacLean -Stupid

John Park- Falling (actually a 2012 release, but reached me late).

Sky Ferreira – You Are Not the One

Blood Orange – Chamakay

Julieta Venegas – Te Vi

TOP Doom Dada

G-Dragon – Crooked

IU Modern Times –

Daft Punk – Game of Love

Annie – Back Together

Janelle Monae – We Were Rock n Roll

Micky Green – In Between (Temporary)

Royskopp – Something in my heart

Gaby Amarantos – Gemendo

And (NSFW!!!) Is Tropical – Dancing Anymore

2011: new artists

A David Lynchian pinup girl with a gravel voice – perfect.

Kimbra brought soul to the Oz charts.

Nicola Roberts filled the Lily Allen-shaped hole in the Brit music scene for a witty, spunky pop star with edge and style.

Lianne La Havas (that voice).

2011: Best books

1) The book that dominated my year was the one that I wrote, reasonably enough. We had some layout issues though so it will not be out until 2012 (ready to take poll position on next year’s list also 😉 )

2 ‘IQ84’ – Haruki Murakami

3 ‘Factory Girls’ by Leslie T Chang

4 ‘Ghetto at the Centre of the World’ by Gordon Matthews

5 ‘Casanova’  by Fabio Moon and Gabriel Ba

2011 Trends: Hip Hop hibernation

I realised while listening to this track earlier this week that I have barely listened to hiphop all year. Its been another super-boring year for the genre. Even quality R&B has just about dried up.

2011 K-Pop Top 10

#10 Bang Yong Guk – I remember

The histrionic boy/girl violence, heartbreak and gunfire we all know and love from Korean dramas – and it sounds like Eminem.

#9 Yoon Mi Rae 윤미래 – Get It In

Cyber-samurai. The clincher is that the biracial rapper kills her real-life husband in the end.

#8 2NE1 – I Hate You

All of 2NE1’s videos look like cartoons, so why not?

#7 Cast of Korea’s Next Top Model feat. Drunken Tiger and Yoon Mi Rae

Surreal, psychadelic hip hop featuring bright lights, models and incomprehensible mumbling. Weirdly addictive.

#6 IU – Good Day

So….cute!

#5 Brown Eyed Girls – Cleansing Cream

So…creepy.

#4 2NE1 – I am the Best

Its all K-Pop business as usual  – dancing in chainmail, expensively lit sets, Jeremy Scott, straightjackets – until they break out the machine guns at the end. Also noteworthy  – Dara’s metallic “ice cream cone” hat at 2:00.

#3 G-Dragon and TOP – Knock Out

A ‘fashion video’ par excellence. This is precisely when TOP’s shocking peroxide Max Headroom ‘do went from “What the…” to way cool.

#2 Sunny Hill – Pray

Vivisection, mutants, crossbows…and a sweet ballad.

#1 Brown Eyed Girls – Sixth Sense

Song and video of the year, no contest.

Woman of the Year

She sings. She dances. She writes. She conceptualizes. She raps. She rocks. She rolls. She does great videos and sings live. She is an android called Cindy Mayweather living in an elaborate space opera. She has astounding hair control. She refuses to take her tuxedo off to sell records. And she is a bright, shining talent. The woman of 2010, without any question, is Janelle Monae.

2009: Lady Gaga

2008: Amy Winehouse

Man of the Year 2010

This was a tough call. All year contenders had presented themselves, only to fall by the wayside. Eccentric British singer/songwriter Lightspeed Champion was an early hope but I never really got into his newest album, and he kept a low profile (although his most recent appearance, on Theophilus London’s “Flying Overseas” is a good sign).

Kele Okereke was another one with potential, the world’s first and only out-gay African electro rock star, but again the music didn’t quite live up to the hype although I did liked this:

After naming G-Dragon my man of 2009 I thought Korea might provide another winner. Taeyang scored a surprise hit in the West and remained sex-on-legs, but his album of slushy ballads was never my forte. Rapper T.O.P. with new shock-white-blonde hair made a late run but I’ve yet to hear his album. Maybe next year? Chan Ki-ha was another one, providing a startling new indie-rock voice to the K-Wave with the added bonus of a camp, Jarvis Cocker-like sensibility.

Francois Sagat,  a previous winner, had his gay-zombie-porn film briefly banned in Australia, raising his profile.

And of course, in the last few months one man shot from obscurity in a small rented house in inner Melbourne to capturing the global imagination. Surely Julian Assange (also with shock-blonde hair) was the man of 2010?

But for me, there was another man who shaped my life this year – the man who graduated and lured me over to start a new life together, at last. That was the big event of the year for me, no question. So my man of 2010 is my husband:

2009 – G Dragon

2008 – Francois Sagat

Comeback of the Year

The eccentric ice-queen of Chinese pop returned after a self-imposed decade-long absence.  Her concerts in Beijing and Shanghai broke tickets records and provided she still has what it takes to be a fashion and musical icon.

Five Trends of the Year

#1 Korean music continues to dominate.

This year K-Pop continued its rapid rise. Groups like Kara and Girls Generation stormed into the top spots of the Japanese charts, and Taeyang even scored a surprise iTunes hit in Canada. 2NE1 are to release an English language album, produced by Will.I.Am next year. Even Nicky Minaj (see below) got in on the act.

#2 South Africa emerges.

Die Antwoord were the year’s out-of-nowhere breakthrough artist, arriving with a fully-developed and perfectly executed sound (ravey-white-rap) and concept (“zef”, eg South African white trash). But elsewhere South Africa was riding on the waves of its high profile World Cup success, and there were interesting releases from Spoek Mathambo (Afro-house) and Simiphwe Dana too (her soulful,accoustic Xhosa jazz album was a few years old, but I only just found it). Africa has always been a driving force in music, it makes sense that its wealthiest and most developed economy should become a funky musical hub.

#3 A changing of the guard in Australia.

New names,  fresh faces and slightly hipper tunes knocked some of the stale old barely-disguised pub rockers out of Australian charts. Megan Washington was a huge success, and Miami Horror and Cut Copy advanced the dance music cause, while Jessica Mauboy stood within an inch of claiming our first actual decent R&B diva crown…until “Go Get Get ‘Em Girls”-gate (see below).

#4 Nicky Minaj. Will 2011 be her year?

#5 Gay videos.

There have always been music videos aimed at gay men. Think Beyonce with her bootylicious dancing boys and Lady Gaga with her “Alejandros”. But this year there was an unprecedented number of dudes who like dudes actually making the videos and expressing all kinds of different things in the process. Gay videos this year got smarter and hipper. And, encouragingly, more diverse. Cazwell did the hot, fun and dumb thing to great effect ( after all, nothing gets ‘the gays” like beefy boys in their underwear). And that is fair enough. But it was encouraging to see that gay videos this year were also fey and arty (Irrepressibles), melancholic (Ceo),  louche and ironic (Hunx and his Punx), and super-extroverted-hip-hop-party monster-jams (from Ab Soto, one of my crushes of the year) . Also, there were smart offerings from the Scissor Sisters and the outrageous Slavic camp of Kazaky, plus a black American-by-way-of Tokyo version for Jonte.

Great songs with great videos: 2010

Scissor Sisters, “Invisible Light”:

Kimbra, “Settle Down”:

Miike Snow, “The Rabbit”:

Sia, “I’m in here”:

Ga-in, Irreversible”:

Lee Hyori, “Swing”:

Theophilus London feat Solange and Devonte Hynes, “Overseas”

Die Antwoord, “Zef Side”

ALAN, “Red Cliffs” theme:

Lady Gaga and Beyonce, “Telephone”:

Luisa Maita, “Alento”:

Julieta Venegas, “Bien o Mal”

T.O.P, Turn it Up

IU, “Good Day”: 

Gene Kasidit, “Embrace”: 

Chan Ki-Ha and the Faces, “Full moon is rising”:

Great song, no video

Robyn had a sensational year, releasing three fabulous albums and (naturally) a slew of singles. Still, a shame she didn’t get around to making a video for this one – my absolute favourite Robyn moment of the many in 2010.

Kylie had a patchy year. She came back with “Aphrodite” but despite feeling the love from her fans and the critics the album mystifyingly failed to sell – again. In all honesty, she didn’t seem to care though, happy and healthy with her Spanish model boyfriend.  This duet with hip newcomers Hurts was a perfectly judged collaboration but  again, it didn’t quite get the attention it deserved.

UK newcomer Florrie kept on releasing great remixes – a little suspicious since no-one has yet heard any of her originals! Yet this track was addictive.

Great videos with OK to average songs

2NE1:

2NE1 triumphed this year with their second album, and despite the crucial and potentially derailing loss of their influential stylists. Still, they kept their look and CL stepped out as a super-charismatic front woman, and a blonde.

Can’t nobody:

Lee Hyori, “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang”:

Amazing OTT video for sadly a not very addictive track from her largely-plagiariazed and now aborted “comeback” album.

Minmi, パッと花咲く

I’m a sucker for kimonos and lit-up dancefloors!

Narsha, Bbi-Ri-Bop-Ba

Mix one part Lady Gaga, one part frothy 90s-influenced dancepop with one part Twilight – et voila!

Kelis, Brave

Much as I want to , I’m just not feeling the new disco-Kelis. Bring back the R&B!