Top 25 Albums of 2025

Ela Minus – DÍA

Ela Minus turns inward on DÍA. The result is more reflective and nocturnal. The record merges synth-pop, techno and Latin inflections in songs about healing, burnout, and trying to stay human.

Adrian Sherwood – The Collapse Of Everything

Label-founder Sherwood’s latest just might be a career-summary transmission from his control room. The dub vibe is unmistakable, but the record keeps mutating into industrial, ambient and other apocalyptic psychedelia.

Brian Eno & Beatie Wolfe – Lateral

Lateral is slow-moving tones, chiming harmonics, and an open sense of space. Eno (still in his prime) and Wolfe build pieces that feel like slowly changing landscapes.

Swans – Birthing

Hours of slow, apocalyptic incantations. Birthing is Swans in maximal mode. Not casual listening.

Mogwai – The Bad Fire

Three decades in, post-rockers Mogwai lean deeper into synths, melody, and melencholia. The Bad Fire trades some of the standard post-rock shock-and-awe tropes for something more luminous and quietly devastating. Think a sci-fi score about making peace with the apocalypse.

Verses GT (Nosaj Thing & Jacques Greene) – Verses GT

Nosaj Thing and Jacques Greene merge rave and R&B. The tracks glide on nimble breakbeats with guest vocalists flickering in and out. It’s sleek but not sterile. Think club that works equally well on headphones at 2 a.m..

Rochelle Jordan – Through The Wall

A perfect late-night record, Through The Wall is sultry music for neon-lit sidewalks and fogged up windows.

Sofia Kourtesis – Volver [EP]

Dedicated to the LGBTQ+ community, Volver fuses Lima street energy and Berlin club science, delivered with Kourtesis’ genuine sense of heart.

Atmosphere – Jestures

Jestures finds Slug and Ant reflecting on life. It’s funny, tender, yet still sharp.

BADBADNOTGOOD & Tim Bernardes – Poeira Cósmica [Single]

Toronto's jazz voyagers BADBADNOTGOOD link up with São Paulo singer Tim Bernardes for a lush, sun-kissed dream. It's pure golden-hour vibe.

Stereolab – Instant Holograms on Metal Film

The first Stereolab studio album in 15 years is everything we wanted: motorik rhythms, and Laetitia Sadier coolly singing about capitalism’s death spiral. It feels less like a 15 year reunion and more like they never stopped.

Kiasmos – Burst (ANNA Remix)

ANNA takes Kiasmos’ cinematic melancholy into a techno crescendo. The remix is like driving fast through an Icelandic snow storm with the windows cracked.

Half Japanese – Adventure

Jad Fair and company deliver another set of off-kilter love songs and starry-eyed affirmations. Adventure is full of outsider warmth. They’ve been doing this for 50 years and still sound delighted.

FKA twigs – Eusexua

Fusing trip-hop, and avant-pop into a single feverish dream. Eusexua is sensual, unsettling, and strangely uplifting.

Loscil – Lake Fire

Built from the remnants of a scrapped ensemble project, Lake Fire is a timely meditation on destruction and renewal. The music feels like driving through a mountain landscape filled with the smoke of wildfires.

Saint Etienne – International

With International, Saint Etienne close the book on a 35-year run with a record that feels both like a farewell postcard. It's cosmopolitan pop, and soft-focus nostalgia, with an emotional intelligence that's rare in today's EDM music.

Bitter:Sweet – Baby Is Back

Shana Halligan revives the Bitter:Sweet name with a record that feels like an update on 2000s lounge-tronica: smoky vocals, and dusty beats. It’s an impossibly smooth and bittersweet vibe that could also be a spy movie soundtrack.

Sudan Archives – The BPM

Sudan Archives leaves the bedroom and heads for the club. The BPM combines house and techno rhythms with distorted vocals, and heartbreak you can dance out of your system.

Ólafur Arnalds, Talos – Signs

Piano, soft electronics, and Talos’ reverb-wrapped vocals meet in a satisfying slow-burn. Signs feels like watching a storm roll in over Snæfellsnes in Iceland.

Kieran Hebden + William Tyler – 41 Longfield Street Late 80s

Four Tet and Tyler are an unexpected combination. Together they build radiant, slowly unfolding pieces out of finger-picked guitar, drones, and electronics. It’s hazy country music that also pays homage to The KLF’s seminal album, Chill Out.

Emma-Jean Thackray – Weirdo

Written in the aftermath of personal loss, Weirdo is a an exploration of grief disguised as a funk-jazz-soul record. I view it as a celebration of neurodivergence. Everything’s in play, but it never feels cluttered.

Kaytranada – AIN'T NO DAMN WAY!

This album is peak Kaytra with its rubbery basslines, and chopped R&B samples. It's just a little off-kilter in exactly the right way.

Adrian Quesada – Boleros Psicodélicos II

The Black Pumas guitarist digs into his retro-futurist bolero universe with a second volume full of music evoking late night Mexican AM radio sounds. It’s vintage Latin romanticism through a psych-soul lens.

Eric Hilton – Midnight Ragas

Thievery Corporation’s co-founder returns with a record that plays like early Sounds From The Thievery-HiFi. Dub bass, sitar lines, and multilingual vocals drift in and out. This one lived at the top of Mountain Chill's playlists for a good part of the year.

Blood Orange – Essex Honey

Dev Hynes’ first Blood Orange full-length in six years. It's a hazy, heartful look back at his English childhood: grief, family, club memories, and all. For me, the track "The Field" is heart wrenching. This one pulls from The Durutti Column’s “Never Known” (1981).