A Closer Listen
This year’s top album was a revelation: one of the humblest records we’ve ever covered drew acclaim from our entire staff. In a year of tumult, it comes as no surprise that we would be drawn to the quiet and unassuming pleasures of an ordinary day.
Our overall list also conveys a concern with the state of the world as it is. Two albums capture the sounds of street protests in different nations. Others address marginalized people in the U.S., erased histories in Mexico, the invasion of Ukraine and the genocide in Gaza. On our larger list, multiple albums highlight climate change and governmental denial. In 2025, music seems more relevant than ever before. To be aware is to be energized, to be energized engaged.
And so, two prevailing forces, comfort and anger, co-exist in our Top 20. Each is essential. In a harsh world, we need comfort, but we also need encouragement for the fight. All this being said, there is always room for virtuosic music that impresses in its own right, as can be heard in a wide variety of timbres below, from Welsh primitive guitar to multitracked voice, retro electronics to European church bells. We hope that you enjoy our selection of The Top 20 Albums of the Year!
1) Okkyung Lee ~ just like any other day (어느날): background music for your mundane activities (Shelter Press)
As I write this, I start thinking I might be doing the music an injustice by solely listening to it. Focused upon it, I notice the album’s diary-like structure, an invitation to distractedly fill in the blanks of pieces that tend toward repetition, clarity, and simplicity. As I calmly watch my cat sleep nearby, I start to think of how truly experimental all of it is, because I’m starting to feel like I am living through a moment, that the music yet shifts my attention away into the here and now, into a meditative kind of presence. The cat’s belly lowers and rises, her fur standing out in a nice little pattern – the background becomes the moment’s form, and I feel love. It is, after all, an infinitely common occurrence, each and every time decidedly unrepeatable, each and every time blurring into a mass of moments of which I haphazardly stumble both into and out of. I return to the album, and I notice it finished a long time ago. (David Murrieta Flores)
Original Review
2) Gwenifer Raymond ~ Last Night I Heard the Dog Star Bark (We Are Busy Bodies)
Here are some of the legends that may be told about Gwenifer Raymond: when she was a baby, woodland sprites snuck into her room at night and replaced the bars of her crib with strings, and this is how she learned how to play; when she was older, she showed bears how to avoid traps, and in return, they shared with her the language of the forest; whenever she plays guitar, foxes are so mesmerized that they stand next to rabbits without making a move, which is why the rabbits run whenever they think that a song is ending. “Welsh Primitive” is more than simply the name of a style; it is also an amalgamation of folk tales, sci-fi speculation and video game energy, a new hybrid for a modern age. (Richard Allen)
Original Review
3) Patrick Shiroishi ~ Forgetting Is Violent (American Dreams)
The affirmative register in which Shiroishi’s work usually operates (hopeful and tender) becomes here an expressionist vehicle for something much more raw. It lets rage and sorrow in, turning the emotional development of the album denser, acutely intense. Whereas in past works those feelings might’ve been the result of reflection, here they are fully integrated into the seams of a musical tapestry that confronts listeners directly. It does not really want you to pace yourself and consider the world’s injustices, it wants you to experience them, to tear apart your stable sense of self with screeching dissonance and litany drones, to make indifference and distant thought impossible. Its measured musical violence affirms lives lived in resistance, the construction of a memorial meant to never transition into monument: to remember is to feel the past’s aching complexity in your very bones. (David Murrieta Flores)
Original Review
4) Yara Asmar ~ everyone I love is sleeping and I love them so so much (Hive Mind/Time Released Sound)
Loss so great it becomes the motor of love. Of dwelling in the details of what is still within your grasp, knowing that every little absence is but the prelude to a presence of some kind. Asmar’s mix of field recordings and unique instrumentation articulates this dialectic, memory not as baggage but as the horizon within which affect becomes possible. Some cultures conceive of the past as being before them, which is to say you can only ever move forward within what is no longer there. As you find yourself immersed in the past, it does not negate the present, but creates it; its form is not sequential, but that of a choreography of sounds once found and sounds now generated. A spectral mass that haunts not: it is, and the fact of its great absence can only turn to happiness, to lust for life. (David Murrieta Flores)
Original Review
5) Whatever the Weather ~ II (Ghostly International)
Talking about the weather is probably one of the defining British characteristics. If you ever visit these shores, then ‘lovely/terrible weather, isn’t it?’ is the perfect conversation starter. You’ll get an answer, probably complaining that it’s too hot or too cold, or there’s been too much rain, or not enough rain. We’re never happy, which is partly the inspiration behind Loraine James’s evocative second volume as Whatever The Weather. The cover suggests desert heat this time round, rather than the chilly snowscape of volume I, but the music veers all over the temperature gauge. There’s still room for intermittent rain or sunshine, but for the ‘warmer’ tracks, it feels like we’re gatecrashing on a barbecue. The ‘colder’ tracks (between 1 and 9 degrees centigrade) are suitably chilly – but two volumes in and we haven’t dipped below freezing yet. Maybe that’s for Volume III – there’s still plenty of scope with this imaginative, impressionistic project. (Jeremy Bye)
Original Review
6) Ludwig Göransson ~ Sinners (Original Motion Picture Score) (Sony)
How often do movie scores appear on our overall list? This is only the third instance. The last was Explosions in the Sky’s TV documentary score Big Bend in 2021; before that it was Disasterpeace’s It Follows in 2015. So we can safely say, as we proclaimed in our initial review, that Sinners is not just the best film score of 2025, but one of the best of all time. The entire film is about music, covering the blues traditions of America’s Deep South during the Jim Crow era, and about authenticity and reclamation. (There are also, as some have noticed, vampires.) But neither the film nor score are content to remain in that era, as demonstrated in the phantasmagorical sequence scored below; past, present and future mingle in a miasma of sound. At first, while listening to the score without the visuals, one recalls the movie; but on repeated listens it becomes its own animal, a testament to the power of Black culture and the enduring legacy of its under-appreciated pioneers. The film is like no other, and receives a score to match; the soundtrack, especially Jayme Lawson’s “Pale Pale Moon,” is exemplary as well. (Richard Allen)
Original Review
7) Sara Persico ~ Sphaîra (Subtext)
Though the artist is based in Berlin and this record was recorded in Lebanon, the aesthetic of Sara Persico’s hometown of Napoli looms large over Sphaîra. The inaugural 2025 release from Subtext, our label of the year, Sphaîrafinds the composer translating the skeletal architecture of a dome in Tripoli into a profound sonic study. The work channels the physical and political weight of this abandoned structure through immense, electroacoustic drones that feel geological in their scale. Persico meticulously processes recordings of the site’s resonant frequencies, weaving them with submerged melodic fragments and a patient, textural tension that evokes both ruin and potential. This is an architecture of sound, where formal minimalism mirrors the building’s stark form, and every sustained tone maps a space of arrested time and contested memory. Persico masterfully renders not just a place, but the hauntingly beautiful silence of a future perpetually on hold. (Joseph Sannicandro)
Original Review
8) Lyra Pramuk ~ Hymnal (7K!)
Each and every one of us is a choir, each and every one of our voices a peculiar harmonic orchestration, each and every one of our sounds a forceful vibration of life. Pramuk’s collection of sacred songs emphasizes these fugue lines in which totality is impossible, alluding to verbs (“Rewild”) and objects both abstract (“Solace”, “Reality”) and concrete (“Incense”); originally a companion for devotion, the hymnal was made both standard and unique by print culture, musical pieces of singular commonality. They are always the same, they are always different. Its verbs and objects of sacred import form an unconventional set of concepts, perhaps detached from any particular tradition, thus rendering their spirituality open, multiple, undefined. This is deeply spiritual music for people who feel the world just as profoundly, but whose consciousness branches out towards unbound infinities, both within and outside. (David Murrieta Flores)
Original Review
9) Various Artists ~ Only Sounds That Tremble Through Us | فقط أصوات ترتعش في أجسادنا (Bilna’es)
One of the stories often lost in street protests is that while they can be expressions of anger, they can also be expressions of solidarity and joy. This facet is brought to the fore on this two-record set, which incorporates the percussive and often exalting sounds of public and private gatherings in Iraq, Palestine, Syria and Yemen. The first LP, under the direction of Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme, mixes them into a suite-like framework; the second invites DJ Haram, Muqata’a and others to remix and re-form. Both records contain the sounds of singing and dancing, teeming with life. While listening, one makes universal connections; emotion is unilateral and contagious. By the time one reaches “Those who chant do not die,” one may feel renewed empathy for those whose humanity has all too often been obscured by disinformation and lies. (Richard Allen)
Original Review
10) Macie Stewart ~ When the Distance Is Blue (International Anthem)
Blue seems to be the most commonly mentioned color in music. Joni Mitchell’s Blue, “Behind Blue Eyes,” “Kind of Blue,” and even the blues as a genre all exude a related kind of lonely sorrow (The Blue Man Group is an exception). The title of Macie Stewart’s latest record couldn’t be more fitting. It starts off almost drone-like, a call to no one but the desolate sky, but gradually expands as the album progresses. Strings, piano, voice, and even a field recording fill the void. As the album closes, the swell of sound fades as if being carried out to sea– another vast expanse, except this one is brimming with life. (Maya Merberg)
Original Review
11) Jake Muir ~ Campana Sonans (enmossed)
The bells, the bells, the bells. Enchanted by the sound of church bells in Germany, Jake Muir went on a pilgrimage across Europe to capture the sounds of bells, both programmed and played. For centuries, church bells marked the time; they warned of invasion; they rang as memorials and as celebrations. The more one hears such chimes, the more they fade into the background. Placing them in new frameworks, Muir restores their immediacy. In these soundscapes, the markers of time disintegrate into the eternal. With such barriers erased, the Divine is given an invitation to enter, to travel through peal and reverberation, to rest in tongues of flame. But one also hears the stories outside the story: the birds, the people, the spaces between the notes. In the end, even the ordinary seems hallowed. (Richard Allen)
Original Review
12) Katarina Gryvul ~ SPOMYN (Subtext)
The title means recollection, while the album addresses the manner in which entire histories are rewritten by the victors, who bury truths in mass graves and leave only palimpsests. The music is as dark as a Ukrainian blackout; Gryvul growls and sings her indignation over industrial beats and churning textures. As the invasion has continued, her music has grown ever more aggressive and angular; yet she is always focused, always in control. Gryvul wants to remember; she wants us to remember as well. SPOMYN‘s visceral power is its immediate draw, but its surprising intricacy inches forward the more it is played. In similar fashion, the re-telling of truths serves as their resurrection; for now, the collective memory can still be rebuilt. (Richard Allen)
Original Review
13) µ-Ziq ~ 1979 (Balmat)
Mike Paradinas’ 20th album as µ-Ziq (we think – and this number doesn’t include EPs or all his other aliases) is a link in a chain of releases for Balmat. Clearly a follow-up to 1977, but also an immediate precursor to Manzana (which helpfully opens with the track “1979”), this album is inspired by young Mike’s trips to the Spanish towns where his family came from. As might be expected from travels abroad around 7 or 8, there is a nostalgic sense of wonder and warmth here, principally founded on rich ambient synths with the occasional beat making an appearance and buried hints of voices and field recordings adding local texture. It’s very light in places, almost threatening to float away, which is just what we needed this year. Trying to recreate a journey abroad, by piecing together half-remembered impressions, may seem like an exercise in pointless nostalgia, but µ-Ziq crafts something special from these memories, something that feels built to Last. (Jeremy Bye)
Original Review
14) Concepción Huerta ~ El Sol de los Muertos (Umor Rex)
There is a sun within. As the darkness settles and distant stars mobilize for plunder, it turns the remnants of aeons of history into magma; through the wounds carved by astral machines upon the surface of the earth it pours, bellowing with the force of vengeance. Huerta’s subharmonic drones enact this epic mobilization, a shining underworld both shaped and revealed by extractivism, layers upon layers of dead matter rising all at once with sublime and violent beauty. It appeals to that cosmic dust unsettled by the force of capital, simmering in every body with the potential to call upon the long-gone ancestors of a Great Refusal. Our dead were the vanguard – it is up to us to become the liquid fire that will end an age in order to birth, for the first time, worlds within worlds. (David Murrieta Flores)
Original Review
15) Aho Ssan & Resina ~ Ego Death (Subtext)
Released via Subtext, our label of the year, Ego Death presents the full realization of a vital partnership years in the making. As longtime admirers of both artists, we hear Aho Ssan’s electronics and Resina’s cello and voice achieve a true re/combination, forging a shared language of synaptic crackle and corporeal resonance. Across eight movements, Resina’s cello and voice merge with Aho Ssan’s electronic framework in a profound act of artistic ego death, where neither voice dominates and a new, fluid intelligence is born. Yet, within this seamless synthesis, their distinct identities are not erased but heightened. The central spiritual query is posed not through words, but through this very alchemy: what is lost and what is gained when creative control is relinquished? The album proposes ego death not as an erasure, but as a resilient fluidity born from the void. In a world that demands constant performance, their synchronicity feels like a resonant act of resistance. Ego Death offers no final answer, only the powerful, shape-shifting proof of what is forged when the self dissolves. (Joseph Sannicandro)
Original Review
16) Kieran Hebden + William Tyler ~ 41 Longfield Street Late 80s (Eat Your Own Ears/Temporary Residence)
If we had a nickel for every time forward-thinking electronic producers in 2025 decided to grab inspiration from several decades ago – and release one of the albums of the year as a consequence – we’d have two nickels. Which isn’t a lot, but it’s weird that it has happened twice. Where Mike Paradinas made an album about family trips to Spain (see above), Kieran Hebden (aka Four Tet) leaps forward ten years or so, partners up with guitarist William Tyler and crafts an album inspired by listening to Americana on the radio. Does it result in an album heavily influenced by that sound? No, but there are faint traces throughout, giving the record a character all its own. It sits closer to Tyler’s Time Indefinite than Hebden’s output, but it doesn’t feel like either personality dominates the music, which is what collaboration should be about. (Jeremy Bye)
Original Review
17) Polje ~ Incomplete (Liky Pid Nohamy)
The liner notes say that Polje titled this album as such because he considers it “unfinished.” The artist, from Odessa, Ukraine, wanted to embrace “fragmentation” and “imperfection.” Fair enough, but to us this record sounds far from unfinished or imperfect. It is fragmented, perhaps, in all the right ways. Polje explores a few different ambient / electronic themes throughout the record, yet the tracks gel together remarkably. Incomplete takes a slightly experimental hand to the crossroads of ambient and electronic that is still accessible to anyone interested. If this is unfinished, we’ll be looking forward to the completed version. (Maya Merberg)
Ukrainian Field Notes XLIX
18) Natalie Beridze ~ Street Life
If Zavoloka’s Volya forged the noise of Ukraine’s 2013–14 Maidan uprising into a fiery, percussive chronicle, Street Life offers its atmospheric counterpoint. Beridze focuses on timbre and the granular—“Minute Portion of Matter,” “Irreducible Unit”—to create a work less about confrontation than about unity, memory, and the possibility of rebirth. The album ultimately seeks not spectacle but resolution, closing with “Symbol Inside,” its lone track with added instrumentation: an elegiac, transcendent gesture that suggests altering the voice of reality may yet alter reality itself. (Gianmarco Del Re)
Original Review
19) Hammock ~ Nevertheless (Hammockmusic)
There’s an inescapable weight of grief on Nevertheless, but this isn’t a bleak record, by any means. Yes, there’s loss and sorrow here, but it is a long, slow journey towards recovery and hope. The duo of Marc Byrd and Andrew Thompson have been making music as Hammock for over 20 years, so there’s a level of expectation when they release a new record, but also, we know we’re in safe hands. This is an album that has really stuck with us – they steer clear of any post-rock tendencies and focus on the gauzy, ambient side. Recorded for a friend who lost a son and a daughter to addiction, Nevertheless could be a spiral into despair, but its funereal drone does, in the end, lift the spirits. It’s the musical equivalent of Samuel Beckett’s I can’t go on. I’ll go on. (Jeremy Bye)
Original Review
20) Disiniblud (Rachika Nayar and Nina Keith) ~ Disiniblud (Smugglers Way)
Disiniblud is a new project founded by two musicians with very different artistic histories. Rachika Nayar and Nina Keith prove the value of collaboration with their debut self-titled album wherein they team up with eight different artists not counting themselves. The extra input doesn’t overcrowd the soundscape– rather, it evens it out. Each track has a slightly different vibe depending on its featured artist, so there is something for everyone on this record. Best described as a middle ground between Nayar’s background in post-rock lite and Keith’s foray into piano and woodwind instrumentals, Disinblud also doesn’t shy away from glitch, and sometimes it’s more ambient than anything else. At the same time, it’s never too heavy nor is it overly static. The power of collaboration works like checks and balances on this album, smoothing out rough edges and staying engaging all the way through. (Maya Merberg)
Original Review
Fri Dec 19 00:01:03 GMT 2025