ALBUM DISCOVERIES OF 2025

Hyperdawn, Institute of Contemporary Art, London 2025

(1) Studio Albums of 2025 (in no particular order):

Oren Ambarchi, Johan Berthling, and Andreas Werliin - Ghosted iii (Drag City)
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Ghosted III picks up where II left off, and it doesn’t disappoint. Endlessly listenable—the trio of guitarist Ambarchi, drummer Berthling, and bassist Werliin, plays in delightful harmony with one another, with the same caliber of heady departures from each of these incredibly talented artists taking shape across the album’s slow burn. Underpinned by Werliin’s hypnotic basslines, the momentum swells into a space I could live inside of.

Listen if you like: Can’s Future Days, Jan Jelinek’s loop logic, Drag City’s patient faith in progress

Nadah El Shazly - Laina Taini (One Little Independent Records)
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What El Shazly is creating resists my own impulse to impose tidy musical categories, instead demanding to be encountered on its own terms. Ethereal vocals drift over beats that recall Fatima Al Qadiri’s explorations of East–West tension. On Laini Tani (which translates to “find me again”), the Egyptian-Canadian musician is deeply engaged in this crossover: she sings in Egyptian Arabic, with melodies that at times gesture toward classical mawwāl forms, her voice employing traditional modulation techniques even as the ground beneath it shifts. That delicacy is paired with deconstructed club elements, rhythms and textures that misalign, blur, and quietly reform. Heady, soft, and beautiful, this is a record that deserved far more attention than it received.

Listen if you like: Fatimah Al Qadiri’s East-West abstractions, Deena Abdelwahed’s Arab-futurism, Arabic vocal traditions refracted through contemporary electronic form.

David Grubbs - Whistle From Above (Drag City)
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An all-instrumental departure from the Gastr del Sol vet (who recently collaborated with Water Damage on the collective’s latest LP Instruments), Whistle From Above is a highly listenable—and at times downright hypnotic—excursion into an Americana-inflected landscape tinged with ghosts. Supported by some equally heavy hitting music legends and the unexpected instrumental entries of cello, trumpets, harp, analog electronics, and piano (among others, of course), the album is a heady and contemplative journey that spans the breadth of Grubbs’ musical inclinations.

Listen if you like: Jim O’Rourke’s quiet structuralism, Gastr del Sol at their most skeletal

Phi-Psonics - Expanding to One (Gondwana Records)
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Cosmic; sometimes jazz really allows you to feel the connection between the musicians. Expanding to One unfolds like a shared condition, through presence rather than propulsion. The explosion of new-era jazz artists coming out of the LA scene has been something to behold these past few years. Bulbous yet soft, this album is stripped of climax, instead favoring a slow accumulation of trust. You simply love to feel it. Put this record on on a slow, sun-kissed Saturday morning and make a divine breakfast for the person you cherish.

Listen if you like: Alice Coltrane, Pharaoh Sanders, Carlos Niño, the Gondwana/International Anthem space-time continuum

Los Thuthanaka (Studio Pankara)

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It’s not just me here, the internet is seemingly in unanimous agreement on this: Los Thuthanaka is something incredible. A project created by musician siblings Chuiquimamani-Condori and Joshua Chuquimia Crampton—who are each incredible in their own right—their dizzying (and unmastered) collaboration is a frenetic, logic-defying collage of genres and time. At times panic-inducing, at times serene, Los Thuthanaka takes the listener to somewhere I guarantee they have not been before. Combine the syncopated samples of indigenous Andean percussion with loops of heavily distorted guitar and layer daub after daub of stabbing synth and gregarious radio DJ tags over one another and you might start to form a fuzzy picture of what’s going on here. If it seems hard to imagine, that’s simply because it is—this needs to be heard to be understood.

Listen if you like: Grupo Aymara, listening-as-ritual

Maria Somerville - Luster (4AD)
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This is an album to lose yourself in. It makes sense that the most ethereal shoe gaze emanates from beautiful, soft-spoken, kind Ireland. Maria Somerville, who fittingly opened for My Bloody Valentine at a series of their recent concerts, casts an almost illusory presence over the already misty layers of guitar-driven pieces on Luster.

Listen if you like: My Bloody Valentine, Grouper, Cocteau Twins, Broadcast, Atlas Sound

Sa Pa - Ambeesh (Matthew Kent)
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A mesmerizing album, suffused with weight and texture. The whole thing sounds like when you’ve just left a club, but you can still hear the bass through the heavy doors. It’s muddled out, jarring, and beautiful. Like Andy Stott from far away.

Listen if you like: Andy Stott’s bruised, low-light atmospheres, Deepchord’s submerged drift, Demdike Stare, Vladislav Delay, ambient techno

Basic - Dream City (No Quarter Records)
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Every now and then there is a recording that makes me jealous—I want to have been in the room playing with them while they were laying this down. On Dream City, it really feels like esteemed musicians Chris Forsyth, Douglas McCombs, and Mike Patrick Avery were just out there having so much fun. The 26 minutes of jams, which grow and develop with take-it-away nods from one musician to another, are foot stompingly joyous.

Listen if you like: Tortoise, Horse Lords, Bitchin Bajas

TLF Trio - Desire (15 Love)
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Simple is good. Simple is beautiful. On Desire, the Danish TLF Trio—cellist Cæcilie Trier, pianist Jakob Littauer, and guitarist MK Velsorf—aren’t looking to challenge. Obviously, I don’t say that disparagingly (this is a best of list!). I am moved by how plain this album is, austere. It’s not minimalist—there are dense and mushrooming layers of sound that cross each other, creating moments of both harmony and discord—it’s restrained without being cold.

Listen if you like: Contemporary classical, ECM Records, Nils Frahm, Kali Malone, Tim Hecker

Michael Grigoni & Pan American - New World, Lonely Ride (kranky)
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As has been noted in previous years, I’m a sucker for ambient Americana. Well, this collab between Michael Grigoni and Mark Nelson aka Pan*American is exactly that. Soft pedal steel twangs ring out over desert plains; hushed, textured shimmers flit across a starry sky at night. New World, Lonely Ride is gorgeous—let this album be your desert companion.

Listen if you like: The patient elements of Gastr del Sol, Talk Talk, kranky records

The Sorcerers - Other Worlds and Habitats (ATA Records)
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This one is FUN. The Sorcerers are a quartet of white English guys from Leeds crafting some of the unexpectedly funkiest, teeth-gritting, head bopping Ethio-inspired jazz around. When I first listened to this I knew nothing about the band, but, if I’m honest, this flatcap-toting group of Brits is not who I was picturing behind these grooves. It just goes to show you that music can be transcendental (and that there are some interesting things going on in Leeds).

Listen if you like: Mulatu Astatke, Hailu Mergia, Getatchew Mekurya

EsDeeKid - Rebel (XV Records/Lizzy Records)
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I have to admit, I play this in my headphones with a cheeky smirk on my face—it’s my little secret: the Brits don’t know that this American geezer on the train to Manchester is listening to a young, Liverpudlian MC rapping in a heavy Scouse accent about sniffing shards in Prague. (I’m reminded of this scene from Office Space, only it’s the Brits that I’m afraid of.) The accent and flow are compelling draws, and certainly make EsDee kid stand out from the growing pool of talented MCs coming out of the UK right now, but it’s the grimy drill beats with blasted out—decimated, even—bass that take Rebel to another level. You’ve not heard anything like this mate.

NB, for my coolness points: I heard this months before the Mr. Chalamet made his appearance with the young MC!

Listen if you like: Dizzee Rascal’s Boy In Da Corner, Wiley’s Wot Do U Call It?, Ruff Sqwad

EsDeeKid · 4 Raws

Malibu - Vanities (YEAR0001)
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A lot of music writers panned this—I don’t understand the disdain. I found it to be a patient, swelling album, dotted with moments of 90s new age synth pads and Enya-esque interludes. Good fun for an ambient record, if you’re asking me.

Listen if you like: ambient pop; Huerco S.’s devotional calm; I find a strange similarity between Vanities and Oklou’s Choke Enough—so see if you can find the crossover there, I guess

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ALBUM DISCOVERIES OF 2025

(1) Studio Albums of 2025 (in no particular order):

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