RIP Ralph Towner. The only album of his I actually own is the quasi-new age Blue Sun from 1983, but the playing is gorgeous and the deluxe production hits the spot in the way that only 80s ECM can.
I bought Sherriff Lindo & The Hammer’s Ten Dubs That Shook The World after hearing a couple of tracks on Dublab. It’s fantastic, but also serves as a proof of concept for digi-dub in how bone-dry drum machine tones are transformed into swirling psychedelic clouds.
This album of Finnish folk songs by Teppana Jänis & Arja Kastinen is utterly arresting in both concept and execution: wax cylinder recordings from over 100 years ago by the former are blended with modern recordings by the latter to dazzling effect. One of the most beautiful things I’ve heard in a long time.
I like it when ambient artists show their teeth a bit, and this new collection from Loris S Sarid delivers absorbing, blissy atmospheres whilst also offering a barbed commentary on the appropriation of the genre by corporate streaming culture. A welcome corrective.
My listening was all over the shop this year, with as much time (if not more) given to radio streams, online mixes and podcasts than full-length albums. I managed to log almost everything I listened to via Last.fm, meaning I’ve got a pretty accurate list of everything I hit play on. Filtering out the archival jazz LPs and deep dives into the Beach Boys and Warren Zevon back catalogues, here are five albums released in 2025 that are still striking a chord with me at the end of the year.
A couple of weeks ago I dumped every FLAC in my library tagged “2025” onto my phone in a bid to get ahead of year-end season. The io release on No Part of It is patient and enveloping, setting a tone then iterating on it very gradually. The Lia Kohl album is a trove of exquisite miniatures that ends in an emotionally arresting place. Nyahh Records’ Fiddlers comp has an unfussy approach to presentation and recording that succeeds in making these performances feel like a living tradition rather than a period/heritage piece. The BlankFor.ms and Nico Georis albums continue Leaving Records endlessly winning hand, and the Emerald comp on Moon Glyph suggests that they’re the only contemporary practitioners of kankyo ongaku-esque new age you need to bother with.
Listened to a lot of radio this week, so not many albums logged to my Last.fm account. But I loved the Gina X compilation on Dark Entries. No GDM was and remains a total banger that first crossed my path in the electroclash days, but this comp shows that Gina and collaborator Zeus B Held had plenty more in the tank, even if they didn’t really diverge from their winning formula that much.
I generally think Depeche Mode peaked as an albums act in the 90s, and listen to their 80s material through best ofs, playlists and live records. Construction Time Again is aimed far more directly at the dancefloor than I recalled, while also being the most overtly concrète they ever sounded. An amazing record with phenomenal low-end.
David Byrne’s stock as an artist has never been higher, even as his new records are received with little more than a shrug. I think Who Is The Sky is delightful; like post-60s Brian Wilson, your response to this will depend on whether you read its disarming literalness as radical and heartfelt or lightweight - childlike vs childish.
I went to see Laurie Anderson at the Roundhouse in London last week, and it was an incredible show - galvanising and deeply moving in equal measure. The Ugly One With The Jewels is my favourite Laurie Anderson record, for how it presents her practice in its most distilled form: strange, funny, haunting stories that reveal an undeniable truth even as the meaning slips out of your grasp.
Erik Hall’s ongoing project to record the canon of minimalism by himself shows an admirable commitment to the bit: Music For 18 Musicians (performed by one); Music For A Large Ensemble (solo). I find this funny, just as much as I find the work enchanting, his painstaking assembly of these musical patchwork quilts revealing little details in the individual lines that are obscured on more traditional recordings.
The lovely new claire rousay record is a return to her trademark palette of quotidian sounds, conversational snippets and ambient washes, to a degree that might appear formulaic if it wasn’t so emotionally affecting. The magic of her music lies in the sense that you’re never quite sure what she’s up to, only that she’s doing it with astonishing precision.
Every six months or so, I text my friend Gareth a Bandcamp link with the caption “Is electroclash back??”. (We’re both hoping the answer will be yes.) New York offer not just the requisite octave basslines, but also the dislocated weirdness previously found further down the tracklist of a Fischerspooner album.
I spent last Saturday at the Gob Nation all-dayer at the Tuffnell Park Dome, and loved it. Spike’s self-titled EP is one of my favourites of 2025, and her live show suggest there’s even better songs to come; my favourite discovery of the days was trash-punk duo Grazia.
People rarely talk about Greatest Hits albums in the age of the playlist, but Warren Zevon’s makes an incredible case for his singularity: these songs are packed with highly detailed Cold War intrigue, they’re full of pathos, and they’re incredibly funny.
Here are some records I’ve listened to over the last week.
The most interesting thing about my relationship with Bob Dylan’s music is that I’ve hitherto managed to avoid having a relationship with Bob Dylan’s music, and only recently thought about starting one. I’m listening to his early albums alongside the Never Ending Stories podcast’s excellent Do Look Back mini-series on this period, as a way of getting to grips with a body of work I mainly know through cultural osmosis. At this point I have nothing insightful to add about one of the most analysed discographies in music history, other than to say - these records are good?