darius - ugly nostalgia (2026/1/1 - 1)

darius - ugly nostalgia

i'm not quite sure how i want to format my entry titles yet... i think i like artist - song (YYYY/MM/DD - #). i want to have all the important stuff in one spot. anyway, 2026, am i right? i have yet to really process that we're in a new year. i did so little to celebrate last night... i actually didn't do anything. i didn't even have a sparkling apple cider to drink.

but all that is beside the point. it's because of the new year that i am here and blogging on a profile that i made ten months ago and never touched again. in february of 2024, i spontaneously began a project i had been itching to do for quite some time; a daily music blog. all things considered, i did a pretty damn good job keeping up with it, lasting until the end of my junior year in june. with the start of summer break, i lost my routine, and stopped writing entries as well. but i wasn't done with the project yet. i promised myself i would pick it up again in 2026 and write a full year of entries. so, consider this my resolution. i'm vowing to write an entry every day, no matter how small.

when i did this last year, i did everything on a dingy little strawpage, far too small to handle the scale of my blog. so i'm going to do things a bit differently this time. if you're somehow seeing this right when it's posted, you'll notice that my spacehey profile is very bare. that's because i have no idea what i'm doing. i don't even know if i'm writing this in the right spot. for now, i'm focusing my energy on getting my entries done, and then the aesthetics will come second.

i have a lot more to say, but i'll save that for later entries. right now, i want to actually talk about today's song like i'm supposed to. i struggled quite a bit with picking out a song, because what's fitting for the first entry, written on the first day of the year? it was tough, but i think i made a good pick. this is "ugly nostalgia," the opening track for darius's album exuviae. since it's the opener for an album named after an animal's shed skin with a title about the past, i think it's a good choice.

musically speaking, the song is wonderful. it has these beautiful bells as the leads with these fun breakbeats and synths as support. it's overall a pretty song and easily my favorite from the album. i'd probably consider it my favorite song by darius, honestly. i'm not going to actually talk about it in much detail because i've already said so much unrelated stuff, but it's worth a listen.

i've actually spent nearly an hour writing this, and i have some fish to catch in animal crossing, so i'm ready to wrap this entry up. i'm really looking forward to what this project will bring. happy new year!

- toffee