I just got home from my third trip with the European Coaster Club. My previous two trips have taken me to various parks in Austria and Tivoli in Copenhagen. This time around, we went to Finland with the mission of riding every single operating coaster in the country. Did I complete the mission? Pretend you did not see the title of this post and read on to find out!

Day 0: Helsinki

The tour included an extra hotel night in Helsinki the day before we depart, allowing us to arrive on the Saturday whenever it suits us. One of the participants offered us a tour of the Oodi central library of Helsinki, where he works.

I was particularly impressed by the second floor with the various workshops, letting anyone with a library card get access to a multitude of things like 3D-printers, sewing machines, musical instruments and recording studios.

After the tour, I made the way by tram to the Kaivopuisto park, where the pride festival was held. It is a really big thing in Helsinki it turns out.

I met up with a friend from the Demoscene there before I headed back to the hotel.

Day 1: Särkenniemi

The bus on which we will spend a significant amount of time on arrived to take us to Tampere and our first park, Särkenniemi.

We were let into the park before the official opening time in order for us to get an Exclusive Ride Session (ERS) to the newly opened Vekoma Family Coaster, Konect. After the ERS, we spent the rest of the day exploring the rest of the park.

The first thing I rode after Konect is Hype, a Premier Rides Sky Rocket.

I did not like it as the restraints seemed to be designed to put all pressure on your shins, not particularly fun as you travel through the slow twist at the top. What did not help was the fact that it started raining heavily at the same time our ride cycle also started. Since the ride involves being launched straight upwards, we got completely soaked.

The rain stopped shortly after we had left the ride. The ECC members riding the cycle after ours were spared and had not even noticed the rain while waiting in the indoor queue. It made for a fun anecdote if nothing else.

Rides of note

Konect

Video

A weird feeling came over me as I sat in the second last car of the train during its voyage up the lift hill. Here I was, finally riding a roller coaster as part of an ECC trip again. I’d been waiting for this ever since the trip was announced late last year. And there I was, part of the first cohort to ride this newly built coaster during this ERS!

It made me forget that the coaster’s first drop was coming up, and the pop of airtime I got from sitting so far back in the train took me by surprise as a result.

Konect is a nice coaster. Lots of little small bounces and tight maneuvers. It even has a soundtrack playing on the train’s built-in speakers, but to be honest, I’ve never really felt that an on-ride soundtrack adds much as it always gets drowned out by the rush of the wind. They do try to have a consistent theme of nostalgia/time travel with the coaster, but the theme is not really present during the ride itself so it kind of falls flat. Still, a great addition to the park and a superb replacement for the Volare that used to be there.

(Good riddance.)

Tornado

Video

A rare Intamin Suspended coaster. The subterranean station with its natural rock walls and lift hill taking you back above ground, surrounded by trees, is super cool. A loop, cobra loop and then you travel through the first loop! This gives a stat-boost to the excitement rating, as any RTC player knows. It then performs this uncomfortably slow roll over the station, followed by a helix and yet another slow roll.

It does have some stylish moments but it was just a bit too rough for my tastes.

Day 2: PowerPark

We arrived at PowerPark outside of Kauhava. Our plan was to have an ERS on the Gerstlauer Infinity coaster, Junker, but due to it being struck by lightning the day before, it was not running that morning.

To make up for it, we instead had an ERS on Pitts Special, also a Gerstlauer Infinity coaster. Why change a winning concept, right? Also, why change the color scheme and train design?

While we were queuing during the ERS, we did see an empty train being launched on Junker, which gave us hope that they would be able to repair the ride during the day.

We were then given a tour of the Pitts Special workshop and got to walk around the track area.

One of many photos I took of the wheel carriages to use as reference for my work on accurately modeling roller coasters in Blender.

After the ERS, we spent the day riding the rest of the coasters and other rides the park has to offer, all while paying close attention to the whatsapp group for any news on Junker reopening. We eventually received the sad news that the coaster needed a replacement part that could only be ordered from Gerstlauer. Thus, our mission to ride every coaster in Finland was a failure. Unfortunate, but there is little to be done about the weather.

Personally, I was not sad about getting every single credit Finland had to offer, but I was bummed out about not getting to ride one of the signature rides of the trip. The video of it is worth a watch to see what I missed out on.

PowerPark also features this:

I’m not sure what they were going for but there you go.

Rides of note

Pitts special

Video

The vertical lift hill is cool, the very steep first drop is cool, the spiraling ascent followed by the spiraling descent, all cool. And then it sort of runs out of ideas of what to do with the remaining kinetic energy it still has. Sure, the airtime hills are fun but it sort of feels like it is filling time to make it back to the station.

It is a serious ride and a great addition to the park, but it gets overshadowed by the more ambitious Junker. I was also told by ECC members more familiar with Gerstlauer that it was particularly smooth for being a Gerstlauer. So there’s always that.

Thunderbird

Video

This one starts out fast and then it just stays fast. Lots of small airtime hills close to the ground to ensure they are taken while the train is moving fast. Then it follows its initial footprint for another lap.

I found that riding front or back did not add much in terms of additional airtime so my preference was actually to ride in the center of the train so that your speed more naturally follows the height of the track and you don’t get those push/pull effects that you otherwise get while cresting the hills riding way front or back of the train.

It sure is slow after the brake run though!

Day 3: Vauhtipuisto & Suomen Tivoli

Day 3 began and we made our way to Oulu, where the fixed park Vauhtipuisto is located and not short from there, the location where the traveling fair Suomen Tivoli had been set up at the time.

We started out at Vauhtipuisto and began queuing for Mato Mainio, one of many SBF Big Apple / Wacky Worm coasters in the world. My first time going on one of those.

We then made or way to Herra Lohikäärme (Mr. Dragon (or Mr. Salmon-Snake if you are doing a literal translation)).

I got a seat in the front car. As was a common theme of this trip, I did not have particularly much in the way of legroom, but I managed to wrangle my legs into a position where the lap bar could be closed.

I was not prepared for the sudden turn right after the hill and ended up banging my knee against the fiberglass resulting in a bruise and a scrape. The dragon bit me, but crucially, the dragon let me live.

After sightseeing on the Oulu beach and having lunch, we made our way to Suomen Tivoli where they had a Pinfari roller coaster by the name of Roller Coaster. It was quite smooth for a traveling coaster, a pleasant surprise for sure.

They also had another Wacky Worm. Yay.

Rides of note

Gravitron

A message in the tour chat group stated that the fair had a classic Gravitron running. I’ve never ridden one before.

You enter the disc, lean back against the inclined wall and then it starts spinning, pinning you to the wall from the centripetal force. Gravitron answers the question of what life would be like if Earth’s gravity were 3 times stronger: We would spend a lot of time lying on the ground, barely able to move our limbs, all while struggling to breathe properly. I rode it twice.

Day 4: Santa Claus Village & Ruka Ski Resort

We stayed at the Santa Claus hotel in Rovaniemi and then went on a short bus ride to Santa Claus Village.

There isn’t much to write about it so I’ll just make a bulleted list:

• Santa charges €40 for a photo with him.
• You are spoiled for choice when it comes to souvenir shops, selling such things as Moomin-branded everythings and puzzles with AI-generated Christmas motifs.
• There is a surprising amount of bathroom stall graffiti in the Santa Claus Visitor’s center men’s room.
• The official Santa Lore includes Santa owning huskies:

It is a tourist trap and you should feel fine skipping it.

We then made it to Ruka Ski Resort, home of an alpine coaster. I rode an alpine coaster for the first time last year during the ECC Austria trip, however it was a single-rail coaster that was pretty rough. The other alpine coaster, the double-rail one, we were unable to get to due to the bus not being able to drive on the narrow roads leading to it. So this was an opportunity to ride that style of alpine coaster for the first time, nice!

Ruka also featured a zip-line, which I skipped due to being warned about the slow queue, a toboggan ride and a mountain cart track. A total 5 ECC members fell off the toboggan ride when they rode it. I was not one of them thanks to me riding it like I was fearing for my life. The mountain carts were super fun.

Rides of note

Ruka Coaster

Video

I finally got to try a double-rail alpine coaster. A bit on the shorter side maybe and it did a pretty good job of braking by itself so riding it without applying any brakes was not that big of a deal, much unlike Fisser Flitzer from last year’s trip. It was however hard to ride on the helix without thinking how much faith you are putting in the cart’s upstop wheels to keep you from a big fall to the ski slopes far below.

Mountain carts

“I ride my bike daily on what the average Swedish traffic planner considers acceptable bike infrastructure. How bad could a gravel path with car tire chicanes thrown in every now and then be in comparison?” I thought to myself before gunning it down the hill. Would I be punished for my hubris? Nope. Would I have a good time? Yes.

You ride one of these trikes down the hill. You have one brake for each rear wheel, so you can lock one up and sort of drift-steer your way downhill. I loved it.

Day 5: Nokkakivi, Tykkimäki

The toughest day with a total of 8 hours of planned bus travel began. First stop was Nokkakivi, a small park with a collection of flat rides and an Interpark Cyclon coaster (which began its operating life at Freizeitpark Familienland, which we visited last year!).

We then make our way to Tykkimäki which also features a single coaster, the newly built Pohjolan Express. The coaster was not rough, but I did not find it to be as smooth one would expect such a newly built and gentle coaster to be.

Tykkimäki was a nice park with some fun rides. The Star Flyer gave some nice views of the beautiful Finnish landscape surrounding the park.

Rides of note

Kummitsujuna / Spook Train

We were asked to spread out and not order lunch at Nokkakivi all at the same time in order not to overwhelm their kitchen. I had my lunch early. While eating my seventh hamburger of the trip, a message appeared in the group chat:

Guys, if you want the Snow White dwarfs ruined for you for life, do the dark ride

Intrigued, I made my way there after finishing my meal.

Content warning: A lot of gory imagery and an animatronic so notable it made the news¹. Twice².

You could tell they had fun with it when they built the ride, shoving whatever scary prop they could find in there.

Day 6: Linnanmäki

The final day dawned, a day I was very excited for. We were going to visit the biggest park of the trip, Linnanmäki, a visit that included a guided tour and ERS of the scenic railway Vuistorata, and an ERS of the very highly regarded Intamin launched coaster Taiga.

I was assigned to the group that would visit Vuistorata for the first hour before swapping with the second group to visit Taiga.

The underside of one of the trains parked in the depot.

The engine powering the coaster’s lift hill.

I asked the brakeman what the different buttons did. They enable certain brake systems that are in place as an addition to the ride brakes controlled by the lever as a safety measure. They also have a horn!

The purpose of the horn is to warn the other brakemen if the train valleys (when it fails to clear an uphill section and gets stuck on the track).

We then had our final ERS on Taiga followed by a visit to its workshop and track area, which is otherwise inaccessible to the visiting public.

The park then opened to the public and we spent the rest of the day riding the other rides and collecting the final coaster credits of the trip, including Ukko, a Maurer Rides SkyLoop.

I did not like it. I think there were few of us who did.

Finally, a little detail of Pilotti, a kiddie coaster that sparked some discussions on whether it actually counted as a coaster.

I counted it as one.

Rides of note

Vuistorata

Video

A wooden rollercoaster with a brakeman riding every train to regulate the speed to keep the train from flying off the track. The first thing I noticed was that it was very smooth. My other point of comparison, Rutschebanen at Tivoli is a much rougher experience. However, the roughness and general joie de vivre of Rutschebanen is what makes me regard it as the more enjoyable one of the two. Still, Vuistorata is fun, a classic and it is big.

Taiga

Video

This is my new favorite coaster of all time, beating Wildfire at Kolmården. I recommend looking at the video above because it features so many different… features that are hard to convey in writing. It is really fast paced throughout while still letting each element stand on its own. You are only restrained by the big lap-block over your thighs so you are frequently struggling to keep your upper body upright and within the train during the quick banks and twists.

I estimate riding it 15 times. I called it quits when my shouts of excitements were replaced with groaning from the pain in my thighs caused by the restraints during all the airtime moments the ride offers.

Plus the train design is so cool.

Summary

I arrive home, happy and tired, a substantial amount of bus travel now safely behind me.

The trip description did warn about it being quite a tough one, with a lot of early starts, late hotel arrivals and significant amount of time spent traveling between parks. It was all made tougher by the seats not providing enough legroom for someone shaped the way I am. The bruise from Mr. Dragon on my knee kept reminding me of itself every time I bumped it against the seat in front of me. All in all, the discomfort left me bit extra exhausted each day. I am not the most talkative person even on a good day, and the lack of energy from the travel meant that I did not socialize as much as I wished I had. At least I did not come down with a cold mid-trip like last year!

Coming up in August is another ECC trip, this one going to Poland. Super looking forward to that one too!

To all ECC members who are also going to Poland - I’ll see you there. To everyone else - I’ll see you on a roller coaster somewhere, some other time. Looking forward to meeting you all again!

rykarn

In the time since I last was there, Gröna Lund has gained several coasters so riding them all will put me in a good position to get my first ton-up, 100 coasters ridden, during my upcoming ECC trips to Finland and Poland this year.

I got up at a pretty early hour (not as bad as when I did my my one-day trip to ride Wildfire at Kolmården) to catch a very comfortable train ride to Stockholm. I made it to Gröna Lund with a pretty decent amount of time before they opened for the day. As it turned out this was the first open day of the season, something I completely missed when I planned my trip.

The Credit Chaser’s Dilemma

Every coaster you ride counts. This includes kiddie coasters, of which Gröna Lund has two. I was chatting with a friend of mine, also a coaster enthusiast, what the optimal plan would be - get the kiddie coasters out of the way first or catch an early ride on the proper coasters before the queues start filling up? The mental image of a 2 meter tall man, waiting before park opening, unlimited express-queue wristband equipped, dashing to be first in the queue for Tuff-Tuff Tåget is a pretty silly one. Yet this was what I planned on doing.

However, the entrance gate I queued for led into the main park area, away from the kiddie coasters so I ended up doing the proper coasters first, starting out with park’s signature ride.

Monster

It should be made clear from the start, Gröna Lund is not a big place. Space is at a premium. Fitting a B&M Suspended Coaster in such a small footprint is extremely ambitious and they pull it off well. All the close encounters with nearby buildings and walkways really make the ride a great experience and it works even better due to it being suspended. A curving first drop takes you through a nicely paced sequence of rolls and immelmanns and tight maneuvers. A nice pop of airtime after flying through a building, followed by a long turn into the downhill brake run to the underground station, itself a really cool feature and space-saving measure.

Monster manages to do a lot under space constraints, but those constraints can also be felt in that the run time is not super long and it is limited in the sensations it can offer. The sightseeing elements of it, flying among the nearby buildings and rides make up for it though.

Insane

“Fun” I sent to my coaster enthusiast friend, accompanied by a photo of the ride itself. “Oh boy, one of those. Is it as rough as the others?” was the reply.

Insane is one of 6 Intamin Zac Spin coasters in the world, but currently the only operating XL version of the model with the second clone of it in storage in Canada. I enjoyed my ride on it! It left a good first impression. After the fact, I realized that the reason for this was likely because the weight distribution during my ride was really lopsided. As a result, it spun around heartily, always somehow aligning itself to let the seat and backrest catch the g-forces and giving us a nice backwards flip at the final bend before the brake run. Sure, it was a bit rough. I banged my leg against something under the seat and I discovered a small cut on my hand afterward, though whether Insane caused it or something else I do not know.

I rode it again later and I fully understood the reason for my friend’s question. I was basically given the inverse of the first ride. This time, all the forces were concentrated either to my shoulders or my abdomen through the overhead restraints. This is how I discovered that the fly button on my hiking pants protrudes a fair bit and sure does hurt when a multiple of your body weight is placed on top of it.

I did not ride it a third time.

Kvasten

A nice modern Vekoma Suspended Family Coaster providing nice views of the park as it flies around in its small footprint. I kind of feel like they did not manage to figure out the banking during the curve after the first drop and the articulated arms that the seats are suspended from do not compensate for this. Some nice g-forces at the final helix.

It shows off the layout of Twister really nicely, which got me excited to ride it next. You can also spot a remnant track piece from Jetline where it emerges from the tunnel after its first drop.

Twister

It was closed! I was super sad about this because it looked like an absolute airtime and whiplash machine when seen from Kvasten. I guess there is always next year. Plus, next year the new coaster Fenix will open, taking up the footprint of Jetline as well as the renovated Vilda Musen. So there will be 3 more credits to collect in Gröna Lund.

Tuff-Tuff Tåget

Kiddie coaster #1. Like riding the baggage conveyors at the airport. Credit collected, next.

Nyckelpigan

Kiddie coaster #2. Had to contort my legs to get the lap-bar closed. Credit collected, done.

Off to Norrköping

I wanted to go ride Wildfire again, since I’m already in that part of the country. So after Gröna Lund I hopped on a train to Norrköping and stayed the night at a hostel. The day after, I went out to Kolmården. Since I had a lot of time to spare this time I could also take some time to look at the animals and ride the cable car safari. Still, Wildfire is the main reason I went and it is as fun as ever. Because of the season being so early, the queue was non-existent. While the dolphin show was on, there were so few visitors around that I and 4 others could ride it back-to-back 5 times without having to get out of the train.

It did seem a bit sluggish though, likely owing to how cold the weather still was and that the train was never more than half-full.

Thoughts

This was my first time planning a personal coaster trip involving an overnight stay and I’m really happy with how it worked out. I think I screwed up a bit on two points. First of all I severely underestimated how cold the weather would be so I was freezing a fair bit during the evenings. I also overestimated how much time I would really feel like spending at Kolmården so I ended up having a lot of waiting in Norrköping to do. Turns out Norrköping’s restaurant selection is pretty scarce on a Sunday evening too.

Next up is an ECC tour at the end of June where we will ride every operating coaster in Finland! Super looking forward to it!

Take care,

rykarn

While the entire visit deserves a full writeup, I can’t really muster the effort. I will however make this little picture album post about one of the highlights of the trip, going backstage on the 111 year old wooden coaster Rutschebanen.

This coaster predates the invention of the upstop wheel, so it requires a brakeman to manually regulate the train’s speed to keep it from flying off the tracks. After an hour of us ECC members having an exclusive ride session before it opened for the day, we were then given a guided tour behind the scenes of this coasters by one of the brakemen.

The coaster itself is an absolute airtime machine. I found myself often going first Woooo… as the train crested a hill, then …ooo-Ooof as I was slammed back down into the hard wooden seat.

One of the trains in the maintenance workshop. I asked our guide if he was able to tell the 5 trains apart just by feel when maneuvering them and he said ‘Absolutely’.

Part of the track blueprint. In the middle you can see a switch where the trains can be diverted to the left, into the workshop (the crosshatched area).

The coaster’s lift hill uses a steel cable that the trains grab onto. Here is a previously used cable that suffered some sort unpleasant-to-untangle failure. Our guide explained that Rutchebanen is THE attraction of the park. Many Danes have formative memories of this being their first ever roller coaster, something that they maybe remember riding together with their parents when they were young. If the coaster is out of order, this becomes reason for people demanding their money back. No other attraction evokes such a response when it is closed due to technical issues.

You cannot see it in the youtube video I linked above, but some of the tunnels where the track turns around have animal props standing around. I guess the polar bear heads need frequent replacing?

The machine room. The motor originally served at the docks and was made some time in the 60’s, but they do not know the exact year of manufacture.

The coaster was open to the public as we were given the tour, providing some interesting angles to observe it.

The trip was great fun! I will take a moment to list a few other highlights:

• The Christmas decor of Tivoli is bar none. They go all-in on lighting up the place.

• We had an exclusive ride session on the B&M coaster Dæmonen, just before midnight after the park had officially closed. I rode it back-to-back 8 times, with one of those rides departing on Saturday and arriving back in the station on First Advent Sunday as the bells of Copenhagen City Hall struck midnight. Very cool in both meanings of the word as the late November midnight in Copenhagen is not particularly toasty.

• The Tivoli hotel was probably the nicest hotel I’ve ever been to.

I’m locked in for two ECC trips this summer - one where we will ride every operating coaster in Finland, and one that tours some major parks of Poland. I’m pretty stoked!

Lyra Rebane, one of the people from the CSS Crime scene on cohost was also holding a talk about using CSS to develop games. What absolutely delighted me is that she used one of my CSS Crime games I made on cohost as an example of how to use the <details> html element to create a point and click game.

Here is a link to the talk in question, timestamped to the part where the details element is explained. My game, Cache Server Varnishing Game! is the one that was featured in the talk and is shown a half minute or so after the timestamp.

One of the goals when I started making this website was to host my old CSS Crimes. Unfortunately that project fell way back on the backburner because it turns out that reworking those things into something that works the same way on this site is very tedious and error-prone. It gets worse when it is an image-heavy game like the one featured. I should probably get working on rehosting that one on this site though - it is my favorite of the CSS Crimes that I made on cohost and it deserves better than just existing on archive.org which, while it is a great and important service for maintaining a historical record of the internet, is really slow and janky and not very nice to browse.

So yeah. It is fun to see that people still remember this stuff. I sure miss it as it was an excellent creative outlet for me. That chapter has ended but new chapters have also begun. So it goes.

rykarn

passengerprincess - PASSENGERPRINCESS

Fun listen. Very ‘kids these days’ I guess, good opportunity to at least stay a tiny bit with the times. Thanks polywolf!

Philip Glass - Philip Glass Solo

Chose to list this one just after the passengerprincess one to maximize the style-whiplash. There was a period in time where I would just stream the Kundun soundtrack in my noise cancelling headphones at work to stay focused. All because of that Fatal Farm video. If you do not know what I’m talking about, please set aside an hour and click that link.

Figured it was time to actually add some Philip Glass to my mp3 collection.

Lasse Marhaug - Provoke

My sister suggested a music festival for experimental music in her home town in Norway. Had a look at the lineup and this artist was featured, so I bought this to familiarize myself with the Norwegian noise music repertoire.

Vladislav Delay - in a lawless world there is strength in numbers

New Vladislav Delay, one of the many monikers of the prolific Finnish electronic musician Sasu Ripatti. His albums are always journeys into strange environments, this one seems to be a very rhythmic one and dare I say kind of upbeat? Looking forward to giving this an attentive listen.

emptyset - Emptyset

Filling in a gap of the emptyset albums that I used to listen to during my Spotify-using years. This is an early one in their discography, feels a lot more concrete and techno-like compared to how experimental and abstract their later releases became.

Others

I’m at a good number of embedded tracks now so I’ll just list some other releases I bought:

Zimoun - Wind Dynamic Organ, One & Two

Dopplereffekt - Metasymmetry

Daphni - Butterfly

Hope you are also having a good time finding new music in 2026.

rykarn

I want to start out looking back at the resolutions I set for last year.

See my friend

Towards the end of last year we finally made plans to see eachother again. I stopped by his home in the university town where we met. Got to see his kids for the first time. All very nice and I hope this lowers the barriers to making future plans to hang out more again!

Pay attention to live shows

I went to two shows!

• Godspeed You! Black Emperor. Had a great time.

• VNV Nation. Had a great time there too!

Go on a Roller Coaster trip

I did this and loved it, despite all the head injuries I ended up accumulating.

Ditch Facebook

I deleted my Facebook not long after posting last year’s resolutions. It was easy and I recommend anyone reading this to do the same.

Keep doing stuff with Blender

I pulled this off too, unfortunately it was mostly as part of a side project that I want to keep segregated from my main site so it has not resulted in much art I ended up posting on this site. In fact, I only posted one animation on here. It is a really cool animation though, you should check it out.

Resolutions for this year

The only thing that comes to mind is that I want to get better at drawing and 2D art in general, so I’m making that my only resolution. The rest of my energy will be spent on maitaining the good habits of last year’s resolutions, because they were really the sources of all the highlights of 2025 for me.

Thank you for reading and I wish you a good 2026, despite it all.

rykarn

So here goes.

SHXCXCHCXSH - tttttttttttttttt

And I immediately start out by breaking the rules! This is not a track that I heard for the first time this year because it was released in that awkward spot between posting last year’s music rundown and the start of this calendar year. I’ll allow it.

The easily pronounced album ……t from the Swedish duo by the easily pronounced name SHXCXCHCXSH came on my radar via some bandcamp subscription, don’t recall which. I vaguely recall seeing their name somewhere but I guess I had dismissed them just by the name alone as some kind of indie-rock band or something. Had I known that they are a Swedish electronic act, one half being once a member of the legendary electropop group Slagsmålsklubben, I probably would have paid more attention.

In tttttttttttttttt we are inside a gigantic, dying machine. Mechanical shrieks give way to harsh electric buzzing and a heavy thud-thud, thud-thud conveying us forward as two hoarse square waves are being modulated on top of it all, creating their own polyrythm. It has accompanied me during my bike commutes many times this year. Helps me during climbs.

The album reminds me a bit of ASA - Radial which I covered in my 2023 music rundown. I think what appeals to me is that I can recognize the usual genres but interpreted in a way that is harsh and indifferent to what you, the listener, make of it. My way of consuming this album is also similar - keep it playing in the background and turn it off half way because it felt too rough to have on. Only after listening to it on its own terms I got the hang of it and was able to enjoy it.

Runner-up track from the album: tttttiiiilll

CRZKNY - TR-06

Staying with the theme of polyrhythms, I really liked Deadly Outlaw by CRZKNY. Again, this is something that reimagines genres on its own terms, in this case by programming the baseline in whatever time signature it feels like and construct everything else like as a scaffold around it.

TR-06 is a great example and a pretty laid-back listen. Dub chords echo on repeat in the background while a 9 beats long kick drum loop lends us support in the lower registers. Hypnotic. I also like the way it serves as a place to catch a break from the otherwise somewhat dark and heavy mood of the rest of the album.

VNV Nation - On other Oceans

I was excited to finally get the full album Construct after hearing the teaser tracks of it as well as having seen VNV Nation live here in Gothenburg.

I had it on in my noise cancelling headphones while testing my code on the shop floor where I worked during the first half of this year. (In this case, I was writing code that was run on physical machines with stepper motors and pressure cylinders and jackscrews and all sorts of stuff.)

It isn’t goodbye, it isn’t the end if we should part

This track came on, and while I was not really paying attention to the lyrics, I really liked the melody in the chorus.

Impressions and traces remain inside like shining stars

I put it on when I got home and was cooking dinner, this time being more conscious of the lyrics too.

One day i’ll find you out on the waves of other oceans

And it just got me super emotional.

I started to think about people in my life, ones who were once a huge part of it, people who I miss, people I want to keep in touch with. Maybe one day we will finally meet again, see where we are now, see how the times have changed us? It is not the end, even if it has been a while.

In a year filled with keeping in touch with friends recently made, friends newly made and finally meeting up with friends for the first time in a long time, this was a song I really needed. In a year wherein I tried new things, actually went out into the world once more and have made plans for further new things, the hopeful message it tells is something that really fits with what I’m going through. This year has been somewhat rough but also filled with specks of light that I need to hold on to.

The last time a song lyric got me that emotional was another VNV Nation song of course.

Conclusion

Thank you so much for reading this! I love writing about the things I love (go figure) and these yearly posts and they provide me an opportunity to really dig into why I like the things I do. Understand myself a bit better. I hope your year provided you with similar opportunities.

Take care,

rykarn

If you have done any similar writing about your year’s music listening, please let me know! I’d be happy to read it.

I do not use Spotify, so I don’t get any unwrapped list or other summary of my listening habits. Also, just throwing out an autogenerated list of your music consumption habits feels a bit impersonal to me in addition to all the downer bits about Spotify being a shitty service that does not compensate artists. Instead I will write a bit about 3 tracks that stood out to me this year, just like last year.

Emptyset - Cinder

I was really excited to see a pre-release of new Emptyset material, and I was even more excited after hearing one of the early access tracks, Cinder.

Man, this is nasty. I love the raw dynamism of the noise the duo’s strange repurposed A/V gear produce, the way it swells and moves to fill in the gaps between the percussive elements and transients, like it has heft, inertia. A rapid, distorted 3/4 beat pounds away, but never settles in to order, always giving a small intermission between every phrase to stay in the gray zone between structure and chaos.

This brings me back to my first time hearing them and their Collapsed EP on raster-noton, in particular the track Core with is non-linear rhythms and noise swells. A great return to form after their last couple of releases which unfortunately did not grab me as much as their early material.

I saw them live in Brighton a couple of years back, much recommended if you have the chance to see them!

ASA - Inconsciente Alfa

This album ended up on my bandcamp wishlist due to it being something from Raster-Raster and the description mentioning this being a collaboration involving Atom TM. I bought it on a Bandcamp Friday and then let it sit in my collection unplayed, save for the first few tracks, which I found myself struggling to get past. It took me a few attempts to really get it - this is not music for playing in the background when working or in some sense enjoying. ASA do not hate you for listening to their album, but there is a certain indifference toward you, the listener, that permeates the whole experience. You are free to take this album in, but you have to meet it on its own terms. The music is hard, stoic, brutalistic. Spanish voice samples are thrown in, sometimes with little regard to matching the actual rhythm or mood of the underlying track with Modernizaciòn Acelerada being a good example of this (this song is only present in the digital release).

Inconsciente Alfa is one of the more approachable tracks on the album, and is the track that sort of made me ‘get’ this album and enjoy it for what it is. A rhythmic mishmash of chopped-up radio stingers give way to a 4-step beat that builds the track up again in a nice fashion, and I always find myself bobbing my head along to it.

Low Roar - I Won’t Be Long

This year I finally got around to building myself a proper gaming PC, and I have spent a lot of time playing titles that I felt I missed out on during the time I daily drove an old macbook. I bought Death Stranding on a whim after hearing a clip of @drewtoothpaste talking about it on a podcast. This game accompanied me during a time of recovering from a small surgery this autumn. This was my first time playing a really big ambitious game and I was completely hooked from the point where Low Roar - Don’t Be So Serious starts playing as you descend down into a valley, just taking in the beautiful landscapes and great music.

This is not really the stuff I normally listen to, but there was so music from this game that made an impression on me, both from Low Roar and others. There are a bunch of different Low Roar tracks I could have chosen for this entry, but I went with the one above which (at least I think) is not part of the Death Stranding soundtrack.

On the topic of game soundtracks, a runner-up was the Outer Wilds soundtrack, another game I caught up with with my new PC. Tremendous game.

Rest in peace Ryan Karazija.

Finishing thoughts

If you made it this far, thank you so much for reading about my musical tastes. I know these kinds of posts are kind of difficult get attention on - I know full well that I am quick to skip past music recommendations from others. There is just so much stuff out there and so little time. It is always easier to spend that time listening to the stuff you already know and that you know that you enjoy, you know?

If you liked this post or feel that your tastes seem to align with mine, you might also like my introduction to Pan Sonic, one of my favorite bands.

I don’t use Spotify so I do not have end-of-year summary of what I played the most. My main source of music streaming has been whatever I have in my Bandcamp collection, so instead I am going to list a few tracks I enjoy from albums I bought this year.

Vladislav Delay - Isoviha

Listen to it here (Embedding is unfortunately disabled for this track.)

Last year I listened a lot to the albums Rakka and Rakka II by Vladislav Delay. These albums were inspired by the barren Finnish landscapes north of the arctic circle. They cannot be described as ambient albums as they are much more forceful - the power of the molten rock kilometers below you, the mountain-eroding winds and rains, life and growth forcing itself through every crack in the earth.

The album Isovia from this year is a soundtrack to one’s return back to civilization from the wilderness. The tracks are short with rapidly changing themes, distorted voices trying to grab your attention, the stress of ‘normal’ life ever present.

For this reason I found the entire album a bit difficult to listen to unless I am in the correct mood for it. The album’s title track Isoviha stands out for me though and it is one I keep coming back to for another listen. It is something about the different textures, interrupted by the rhythmic bursts of voices and sections of constantly pounding base drums that makes the entire track seem cohesive despite jumping between so many different forms and shapes. Anger and energy, it gets me pumped up.

Amamelia - Colourbox

Bandcamp link

Turns out a catchy melody with vocals over the Amen Break makes for a pretty fun listen. Love the crunchy 3D graphics of its music video too!

Second Woman - 300528mj1

Second Woman’s self-titled debut album came out in 2016, which goes to show how out of the loop I was when it came to discovering new music during my Spotify-using years.

300528mj1 starts out in complete chaos. We only have a drum machine to listen to and it has gone haywire, its tempo is wildly oscillating and it is just mashing every instrument in order. In the background, a temporal foothold develops in the form of a dub chord stab which later is accompanied by a slim drum loop. Eventually, the orderly rhythm section takes over while the chaos fades away, leaving us with the most pared-down dub techno track - dub techno for skeletons.

Second Woman seems to have been a temporary collaboration between two established electronic artists (one half of Telefon Tel Aviv for instance) and they have not released anything new since 2018. A shame, because this is really up my alley, much like Cam Deas & Jung An Tagen - Presentism was last year for me. There is something about this kind of focus on unpredictability and clean sound design that hits it for me.

There were a bunch more music I enjoyed that also deserves a writeup, but I think leaving it at these three is a nice summary of the year. I hope you, the reader, also had a nice time discovering new music in 2022.