Here is my top albums list for 2025. I always try to post these on New Year’s Eve, and I actually had this (mostly) done by then, but I wanted to give some of these an extra listen or two, and I also had some challenges sitting down to write about this year in music.
Not because it wasn’t an excellent year for music: so many really choice, innovative, and beautiful records were released this year (and I especially recommend #s 1-50: any of these could have been in the top 20 for many of my previous lists) — but rather, one of my four favorite musicians of all time passed away on the day of the winter solstice, right before the end of the year.
Ken Downie of The Black Dog had been producing top-notch electronic music for 35 years without rest. I discovered his and his bandmates' work in 1993 when I first started DJing and became an immediate and lifelong avid fan. I played him in my first DJ set ever, and then the next hundred lol, and I sampled his work in the music for my former band Shh Ores. His music is spiritual, cerebral, defiant, probing, singular, pretty, trickstery, and most of all synaesthetic — bridging the senses and diverse planes of consciousness and meaning on a level I could only compare to Alan Watts, Van Gogh, or Virginia Woolf. And he was as prolific and devoted to his craft as these masters: browsing my best-of lists, he is always featured at the top, often with 2–3 new albums every year. Check out numbers 10 and 24 this year: I’m so sad these turned out to be the pair of wings to his swan song.
Not exaggerating, I own twice as many records by The Black Dog as any other artist in my collection and have spent more hours of my life listening to them than anyone. As the founding member and heart of the group, Ken Downie’s loss leaves a hole in the musical world that can never be filled, but which will always circle back out to us and fill our lives with beauty, depth, and brutal (his favorite artistic style this past decade: he clearly was fighting death as passionately as he created art and lived life) light. Long live The Black Dog — I’ll miss new music from them so much. Favorite albums of theirs: “Bytes” (1993), “Music for Adverts (& Short Films)” (1996), “Radio Scarecrow” (2008), and “Post-Truth” (2018) \\ Favorite songs: “Xeper”, “No Lamers”, “Train by the Autobahn” and “Solipsism”. RIP, Lion of Electronic Music.
AOTY LIST:
1. Oneohtrix Point Never - “Tranquilizer”
2. Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith - “Gush”
3. Milkweed - “Remacéla”
4. Lucrecia Dalt - “A Danger to Ourselves”
5. Ethel Cain - “Perverts”
6. Sorry - “Cosplay”
7. Haley Heynderickx & Max Garcia Conover - “What of Our Nature”
8. Loscil - “Lake Fire”
9. Mark Pritchard & Thom Yorke - “Tall Tales”
10. The Black Dog - “Loud Ambient”
11. Sharon Van Etten & the Attachment Theory - “s/t”
12. bdrmm - “Microtonic”
13. > Gigi Perez - “At the Beach, in Every Life”
14. > Georgia Knight - “Beanpole”
15. Chad VanGaalen - “A Scent of a Mountain”
16. > Two Steppes - “Bowl of Flowers”
17. > The New Eves - “The New Eve Is Rising”
18. Full Moon Bummer - “First Night of Summer”
19. > Herumic - “Seeking Darkness”
20. Amulets - “Not Around But Through”
21. > Test Patterns - “Myopia”
22. Hilary Woods - “Night CRIÚ”
23. Pulp - “More”
24. The Black Dog - “My Brutal Life”
25. Marie Davidson - “City of Clowns”
26. Austra - “Chin Up Buttercup”
27. Ruby Haunt - “Blinking in the Wind”
28. Backxwash - “Only Dust Remains”
29. Circuit Des Yeux - “Halo on the Inside”
30. Perfume Genius - “Glory”
31. Claire Rousay - “A Little Death”
32. Yasmine Hamdan - “I Remember I Forget”
33. Dutch Interior - “Moneyball”
34. Maria Somerville - “Luster”
35. Obongjayar - “Paradise Now”
36. > The Boland Underground - “The Laughter & The Pain”
37. Activity - “A Thousand Years in Another Way”
38. > Kissing other ppl - “s/t”
39. Big Thief - “Double Infinity”
40. Tiny Vipers - “Tormentor”
41. Anna von Hausswolff - “Iconoclasts”
42. Horsegirl - “Phonetics On & On”
43. Saintseneca - “Highwallow & Supermoon Songs”
44. Melody’s Echo Chamber - “Unclouded”
45. The Antlers - “Blight”
46. Alexandra Savior - “Beneath the Lilypad”
47. De La Soul - “Cabin in the Sky”
48. Cuneiform Tabs - “Age”
49. No Joy - “Bugland”
50. Ethel Cain - “Willougby”
51. Amateur Hour - “Går I Kras”
52. > Snocaps - “s/t”
53. Nyxy Nyx - “Cult Classics Vol. 1”
54. Stereolab - “Instant Holograms on Metal Film”
55. > Dead Gowns - “It’s Summer, I Love You, & I’m Surrounded by Snow”
56. Bitchin Bajas - “Earthen See”
57. Panda Bear - “Sinister Grift”
58. Sontag Shogun & Lau Nau - “Päiväkahvit”
59. Jeanines - “How Long Can It Last”
60. Preoccupations - “Ill At Ease”
61. Geese - “Getting Killed”
62. Lee Ranaldo & Michael Vallera - “Early New York Silver”
63. > Rude Films - “s/t”
64. > Cameron Winter - “Heavy Metal”
65. Sweet Megg - “Never Been Home”
66. > Peace Museum - “Vol. 1: the bleachwipes”
67. > Mossy Place - “Miscellaneous Weather”
68. Little Simz - “Lotus”
69. > Yung Abes - “Apertura.”
70. > Double Virgo - “Shakedown”
71. Oldstar - “Of the Highway”
72. > Lookers - “Deeper”
73. Gentle Millennials - “Fantastical Waves, Delusional Surf”
74. Test Patterns - “Panpsychism”
75. Juana Molina - “Doga”
76. Quade - “The Foel Tower”
77. > They Say Stories - “Daydreams Will Do”
78. Just Mustard - “We Were Just Here”
79. > Poor Creature - “All Smiles Tonight”
80. Bar Italia - “Some Like It Hot”
81. Ryan Davis & the Roadhouse Band - “New Threats from the Soul”
82. Aya - “Hexed!”
83. Living Hour - “Internal Drone Infinity”
84. > Roseblood - “s/t”
85. Jay Som - “Belong”
86. The Besnard Lakes - “… are the Ghost Nation”
87. Jesse Sykes & the Sweet Hereafter - “Forever I’ve Been Being Born”
88. Florist - “Jellywish”
89. Swans - “Birthing”
90. Kieran Hebden & William Tyler - “41 Longfield Street Late 80s”
91. FKA Twigs - “Eusexia”
92. > Pôt-Pot - “Warsaw 480km”
93. Fadi Tabbal - “I recognize you from my sketches”
94. > Amanda Mur - “Neu Om”
95. Prewn - “System”
96. Mess Esque - “Jay Marie, Comfort Me”
97. > Gelli Haha - “Switcheroo”
98. Beirut - “A Study of Losses”
99. > Facing - “Temporary Bodies”
100. Wednesday - “Bleeds”
101. Cosey Fanni Tutti - “2t2”
102. Eera - “I’ll stop when I’m done.”
103. Gabba Delic - “Vienna Waits for No One”
104. Black Moth Super Rainbow - “Soft New Magic Dream”
105. Rosa Anschütz - “Sabbatical”
106. Mae Powell - “Making Room for the Light”
107. Tim Hecker - “Shards”
108. Yeule - “Evangelical Girls is a Gun”
109. The Warlocks - “Manic Excessive Sounds Of”
110. Snakeskin - “We Live In Sand”
111. Kelly Moran - “Don’t Trust Mirrors”
112. Yullola - “Strange Serenity“
113. Valerie June - “Owls, Omens, & Oracles”
114. Jefre Cantu-Ledesma - “Gift Songs”
115. Yara Asmar - “Everyone I Love Is Sleeping”
116. > Hannah Jagadu - “Describe”
117. Ask Carol - “Desert”
118. Xexa - “Kissom”
119. Public Memory - “Public Sword”
120. Park Jiha - “All Living Things”
121. Lyra Pramuk - “Hymnal”
122. > Disiniblud - “s/t”
123. Wiccan Phase Springs Eternal - “Mossy Oak Shadow”
124. Tony Njoku - “All Our Knives are Always Sharp”
125. > The Witches’ Hymnal - “s/t”
126. Scott McMicken & the Ever-Expanding - “New Purple Dress”
127. Hearts - “Laguna Road”
128. H. Pruz - “Red sky at morning”
129. Lifeguard - “Ripped & Torn”
130. IE - “Reverse Earth”
131. > Daily Toll - “A Profound Non-Event”
132. Golomb - “The Beat Goes On”
133. Lia Kohl & Zander Raymond - “In Transit”
134. > Neon Hologram - “Vaporwave Tactical”
135. Darkside - “Nothing”
136. Teethe - “Magic of the Sale”
137. Great Grandad - “Patience, Moonbeam”
138. Miki Berenyi Trio - “Tripla”
Favorite EPs:
1. Waylon Wyatt - “Out of the Blue”
2. Bar Italia - “Rooster”
3. Dorothy - “Sea Songs”
4. Richot Textiles - “ii”
5. MJ Lenderman & Wednesday - “Guttering”
6. Vera Sola - “Ghostmaker”
7. Kelly Lee Owens - “Kelly”
8. Helado Negro - “The Last Sound on Earth”
9. Oh, Rose - “For Art”
10. Low Healer - “Hold Music”
11. Semisoft - “s/t”
12. The Albert Square - “Swallow You Whole”
13. Winter Drones - “The Lights Burn Brightly Outside”
13. Dean Blunt & Elias Rønnenfelt - “Lucre”
14. Art Star - “Big Mouth Singers”
15. TTSSFU - “Blown”
