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“Paradise” by Thaiboy Digital and swedm®

Despite proclaiming myself a “drainer” at the ripe age of 14, I never fully explored Thaiboy Digital’s discography until last Friday. I found that Thaiboy’s latest project, in collaboration with the electronic music collective swedm®, “Paradise,” was an exciting and promising introduction to the Thailand-born and Sweden-raised rapper. Although this album has been categorized as trance and electro house, I believe a case can be made that “Paradise” is at least hardstyle-adjacent, with its pulsating synths and dominating kick drums at the album’s center. In just 13 tracks spanning 36 minutes, “Paradise” felt like going on a high-energy, nostalgic EDM pop journey.

My personal favorite track is “Dreaming Your Reality.” At 71 beats per minute, “Dreaming Your Reality” is vastly different from the rest of the album as it’s the slowest track. I love the long buildup for a drop that seemingly never happens. Lyrically, I feel that “Dreaming Your Reality” lays the foundation for some of the album's common themes: freedom, reinvention, and chasing your dreams (obviously).

A close second, though, is “Destiny,” which is the perfect album-closer. “Destiny” features an upbeat instrumental that is incredibly reminiscent of early Daft Punk. Despite sonically contrasting with “Dreaming Your Reality,” the two tracks complement each other beautifully lyrically. “Destiny belongs to you / I’m gon’ make your dream come true,” upholds the hopeful theme that “Dreaming Your Reality” sets for the rest of the album.

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EsDeeKid LIVE @ Rolling Loud Orlando 2026

Over the past year or so, I’ve fallen into the habit of playing recorded sets from music festivals while studying, typically of the EDM variety. In recent months, my playlist has been dominated by the UK Underground, and with Rolling Loud just taking place last weekend in Orlando, it was only a matter of time before I found myself watching EsDeeKid’s set.

I put EsDeeKid’s set in the “watching” section because his set design, production, and visuals were honestly my favorite part. With the Liverpudlian rapper maintaining an anonymous status, his mask muffles his voice during live performances, making it difficult to listen to at times. I absolutely adore the medieval theme he had on stage with the castle set piece and knights. This largely stems from the fact that the past few live performances I’ve been to were mostly DJ sets that heavily relied on lasers and on-screen visuals, so I found EsDee’s production incredibly refreshing.

Performance-wise, one of my favorite moments is when EsDee transitions from “Phantom” to “Rottweiler” (4:29-5:21). With nearly a minute in between songs, he builds an incredible amount of suspense, when guitar suddenly erupts, and EsDee laughs menacingly into the mic as the “Rottweiler” intro starts playing.

There’s a brief moment as EsDee performs “LV Sandals” where he bends over and waddles forward on stage (24:02). This is another one of my favorite moments throughout the set, as he references fakemink’s performance of their song with Rico Ace.

Blue Velvet (1986, David Lynch)

Admittedly, it’s taken me a while to further explore David Lynch’s works past Mulholland Drive (2001) and the pilot episode of Twin Peaks; I’m embarrassingly late to Blue Velvet.

Blue Velvet felt like a surreal take on Hollywood’s Golden Age and reminded me of Alfred Hitchcock’s work. I adore how Lynch portrays small-town America and its underbelly.

I was incredibly charmed by Kyle MacLachlan’s performance as Jeffrey Beaumont, but I think the best overall performances came from Isabella Rossellini and Dennis Hopper. Hopper absolutely dominated every scene he was in as Frank Booth. His character’s erratic and angry nature was terrifying. One of the scenes that honestly struck me most was Frank asking Jeffrey what his favorite kind of beer is. I didn’t expect him to take that much offense to Jeffrey preferring Heineken over Pabst Blue Ribbon.

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DAZED: The Culture Clash Issue

While I was in the United Kingdom with my sister over spring break, we were shopping at M&S for Percy Pig. In the search for the British gummies, I saw a glimpse of fakemink’s face on the magazine rack in the distance. I immediately picked up the magazine, DAZED's Spring 2026 Issue.

After seeing fakemink in concert at Brooklyn Steel in April, I’ve been rereading the Culture Clash issue, starting with Solomon Pace-McCarrick’s interview of the Essex rapper. I was endeared by how McCarrick captured fakemink through their conversations about Pokémon, natto, and his upcoming album, “Terrified.”

Outside of fakemink, I loved the Sound On spotlight on seven multilingual artists. I was recently talking to an acquaintance about how my playlists have been feeling stale as a result of Spotify’s poor algorithm, with most days feeling as if I only listen to the same five artists. Admittedly, I haven’t been doing too much on my part either to find new music, but after reading the Culture Clash issue, I walk away with just a little more variety on my playlist, ranging from Billionhappy’s Chinese electronic rap to Coals’ Polish pop.

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Despite this being divided into three sections among listening, reading, and watching, I do realize that the music I listen to was incredibly central across all three sections, oops! Perhaps next week I’ll engage in media that isn’t so centered around my playlist.

On a more personal note, this is my first time writing for fun in a really long time after running away from writing. I told myself I would try to be more consistent with posting to Substack, and I really enjoyed writing this, so maybe same time, next week?

Sam x

I started 2025 thinking I was going to be this massive cinephile and watch so many films but nothing could be further from that. At the rate I’ve been going I might as well retire the the cinephile label altogether. While I’ve seen very little, I’ve definitely fallen in love with what I’ve seen so far.

After Hours (1985, Martin Scorsese)

To be honest, when I first watched After Hours, I liked it, but I wasn’t in love with it. At that time, I had also been seeing a guy who went to NYU and the film felt very reminiscent of going into Downtown Manhattan to see him. But after letting the film marinate in my head for a few weeks, I fell in love with it. To continue being honest, this was my first Martin Scorsese film, aside from the half of Taxi Driver I had watched when I was 15 and never finished. I’m in love with the absurdity of this film and the situations Paul Hackett is forced to go through all in the name of a hookup, and eventually home. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about this film since watching it and I’m definitely in need of a rewatch.

While it initially reminded me of this guy, After Hours admittedly makes me look back on that entire situation in laughter. I could probably go on about how film is such a beautiful medium and how it could completely change your outlook on life but that’s not the point of this post!

Kneecap (2024, Rich Peppiatt)

When I first watched Kneecap, I immediately knew I was in love. I had watched Kneecap on a random sleepless night and my mind had been so scattered by the end of it. I had been in search of a film to obsess over and change my life and Kneecap had done exactly that. I was visually stunned the entire time by the mise-en-scène and cinematography.

Going into this first watch, I knew the film was going to be about the hip hop trio, but I admittedly had never listened to their music beforehand. When “Parful” started playing, I knew I was going to actually start listening to Kneecap. Aside from the trio’s own features on the soundtrack, I absolutely loved Alanna Royale’s “Fall In Love Again” and BICEP’s “Glue.” Continuing with the overall sound of the film, I absolutely adored Mo Chara’s narration. It reminded me a lot of Danny Boyle’s Trainspotting, which I think is largely why I enjoyed this film as much as I did. Nevertheless, Kneecap is truly a wonderful showcase of resistance and the fight for the preservation of the Irish language. I truly think it’s one of the best films to come out of the 2020’s thus far.

Honourable Mentions:

Nerve (2016) dir. Ariel Schulman, Henry Joost— this was the most aggressively 2016 film I’ve ever seen and I love it for that.

The Social Network (2010) dir. David Fincher— put watching this off for the longest time and ultimately had to for school, loved Andrew Garfield in this one.

Despite being in a film slump, these films have definitely helped me get through it. I really do hope I can find the time to watch more films, but in the mean time I will continue obsessing over these probably.

Follow me on Letterboxd…

Sam x

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