Top Albums 2025
HIP-HOP
10 - No I.D. & Saba - From the Private Collection of Saba and No I.D.
9 - Clipse - Let Got Sort Em Out
8 - Tyler the Creator - Don’t Tap the Glass
7 - Freddie Gibs & the Alchemist - Alfredo 2
6 - Open Mike Eagle - Neighborhood Gods Unlimited
5 - Armand hammer - Mercy
4 - MIKE - Showbiz!
3 - Earl Sweatshirt- Live Laugh Love
2 - Billy Woods - Golliwog
As prolific as Billy has been - he continues his streak & has generally improved with each successive album. Golliwog is his 9th and most experimental album. The title, Golliwogg, refers to the racist, blackface caricature doll that was widely popular in Britain and parts of Europe in the late 19th and early 20th centuries - and it sits at the core of the album’s themes - how black identity has been flattened into grotesque symbols for mass consumption & black suffering turned into product, spectacle, and commodified art.
1 - De La Soul - Cabin in the Sky
De La Soul’s Cabin in the Sky is a celebratory album, created in tribute to Dave Jolicoeur (Trugoy the Dove / Plug Two) who passed in 2023. Similarly to Tribe’s last record “We Got It from Here… Thank You 4 Your Service” (in the wake of Phife’s passing), Trugoy was actively involved in the album’s creation before his death, lending the project a sense of continuity rather than absence. Features include Nas, Q-Tip, Slick Rick, Common, Black Thought, Killer Mike and production from Pete Rock & DJ Premier. The result is a record that comfortably stands alongside De La Soul’s original imperial run.
POP / ROCK
12 - Caroline - Caroline 2
11 - Stereolab - Instant Holograms on Metal Film
10 - Ryan Davis & the Roadhouse Band - New Threats from the Soul
9 - Bad Bunny - Debí Tirar Más Fotos
8 - Djion - Baby
7 - Panda Bear - Sinister Grift
6 - Big Thief - Double Infinity
5 - Alex G - Headlights
4 - Juana Molina - Doga
3- Deftones - Personal Music
2-Cameron Winter - Heavy metal
Cameron Winter is one of the most compelling songwriter to emerge in the last couple decades. His lyrics are truly singular - but the closest parallels I can draw are Jeff Mangum’s raw, unfiltered emotional density, crossed with the chaotic absurdism of mid-’60s Bob Dylan, with a splash of Spencer Krug’s yelping allegorical writing. At just 23 years old, Winter’s debut solo album, “Heavy Metal”, presents him as a fully formed artist — one who feels less like a promising newcomer and more like someone actively pushing songwriting into unfamiliar territory.
1-Geese - Getting Killed
Easily the greatest rock album of the 2020s so far. Released only around 9 months after Cameron Winter’s solo record - and despite the mountain of hype - it surpassed all expectations I had for it. The leap from “3D Country” they took here is astronomical. With Kenny Beats on the boards, the soulful swagger compliments the noisy barages. Winter’s vocals range from crooning to strained shouts & the lyrics are still often absurd - but a bit more biblical, and a bit more patient & repetitively paced. To me, this is a breakthrough in rock music on the level of a “Nevermind” or an “OK Computer”, and it’s been very cool seeing the rock vets pay tribute, such as Patti Smith and Nick Cave - the later describing his experience of hearing it as, “all worry is laid to waste. The endorphins rushing wild from the freezing water, the music pounding through my body, the caffeine, the fucking ducks and the God-roiling sky – no what-ifs, no yeah-buts, no what-abouts, no caveats, at all. I am made happy, and that happiness is entire and incontestable. And all the way home….”
ELECTRONIC
5 - Carrier - Rhythm Immortal
4 - Burial - Comafields / Imaginary Festival
3 - Voices from the lake - II
2 - Barker - Stochastic Drift
1 - Djrum - Under Tangled Silence
Djrum is the solo project of Felix Manuel, a prodigy pianist / harpist and electronic musician. “Under Tangled Silence” is an album that was 8 years in the making, & a difficult one at that to say the least. During the 2020 lockdown he had a hard-drive failure that erased much of the work, followed by a period of psychological collapse. The Patti Smith quote, “We go through life. We shed our skins. We become ourselves.” looped in his head as he reconstructed the album. The result is a record with a fluid improvisational form, blending IDM, textural layers, jungle breaks, minimalist instrumental writing into a cohesive whole that feels fundamentally concerned with creative transformation and rebirth.
EXPERIMENTAL
6-Oren Ambarchi, Johan Berthling, and Andreas Werliin - Ghosted III
4 & 5 - Jefre Cantu-Ledesma - Gift Songs & September
3 - M. Sage - Tender / Wading
2-Oneohtrix Point Never - Tranquilizer
OPN’s 11th album is his best since 2015’s “Garden of Delete”. While his previous couple albums were sort of a sampling of all the areas his music has explored, “Tranquilizer” feels like a culmination of all of these explorations - integrated into it’s own kaleidoscopic world of sound.
1-Los Thuthanaka - (Self-titled)
This self-titled debut album from the Bolivian-American sibling duo Chuquimamani-Condori and Joshua Chuquimia Crampton draws on traditional Andean music from their heritage, fused with lo-fi experimental electronic production. The repetitive Andean dance rhythms are layered together with sampled vocals, synths, & what sounds like shitty keyboard presets (such as the “DJ sounds” you might find on a Yamaha keyboard). It’s chaotic & dense - but once you surrender to the trance of it, it’s ultimately rapturous & transcendent.
JAZZ
9 - Sylvie Courvoisier & Mary Halvorson - Bone Bells
8 - Kneebody - Reach
7 - Charles Lloyd - Figure in Blue
6 - John Scofield & Dave Holland - Memories of Home
5 - Nels Cline - Consentrik Quartet
4 - Brad Mehldau - Into the Sun
3 - James Brandon Lewis - Apple Cores
2 - Mary Halvorson - About Ghosts
1-Ambrose Akinmusire - Honey from a Winter Stone
“Honey from a Winter Stone” is work that Ambrose Akinmusire has described as a “self-portrait in sound.” Across the album, he blends improvisation with contemporary composition and spoken word, shaping pieces that are largely open-form and unfold slowly and cinematically. The record straddles the worlds of jazz, modern classical, and hip-hop, moving seamlessly from one to the next.
CLASSICAL
8 - Clarice Jenson - in holiday clothing, out of the great darkness
7 - Vanessa Wagner / Phillip Glass - Philip Glass: The Complete Piano Etudes
6 - Meredith Monk - Cellular Songs
5 - Steve Reich - Jacob's Ladder / Traveler's Prayer
4 - John Field / Alice Sara Ott - John Field: Complete Nocturnes
3 - Thomas Ades - Ades, Marsey and Leith
2 - Arvo Part / Paavo Jarvi & Estonian Festival Orchestra - Arvo Part: Credo
1 - Tristan Perich & James McVinnie - Infinity Gradient
Infinity Gradient is Perch’s most ambitious work to date - an hour-long symphony in seven movements for organ (played by James McVinnie - a truly virtuosic organist) and 100 speakers playing programed 1-bit audio. This was recorded live at Royal Festival Hall with the 100 speakers are set across the stage – four giant subwoofers, 24 medium-sized speakers, and 72 small speakers & the 7,866 pipes of the organ as the backdrop behind that. When speaking about this duet symphony of sorts, Perch described the project’s conception saying, “When you press down a key on a pipe organ, it lets air into the pipe, which creates sound. Each pipe is either in a state of making sound or being silent. There is no decay, nor any obvious change to the sound until the key is released”. In this way it shares the ‘on-off’ binary element of the 1 bit-preprogramed signals. “Infinity Gradient” is Perch’s greatest achievement yet - it build’s on previous works (such as “1 Bit Symphony” & “Open Symmetry”) and turns it into something much more grand and emotive.
Honorable Mentions:
Hip-Hop:
Nas & DJ Premier - Light-Years
McKinley Dixon - Magic, Alive!
R.A.P. Ferreira, Kenny Segal - The Night Green Side of It
Doseone & Steel Tipped Dove - All Portrait, No Chorus
JID - God Does Like Ugly
Kenny Segal - Kenstrumentals Vol. 5: Winter Tours
MIKE & Tony Seltzer - Pinball II
Navy Blue - The Sword & the Soaring
Electronic:
Purelink - Faith
Andrea - Living Room
Nick Leon - A Tropical Entropy
Real Lies - We Will Annihilate Our Enemies
SHERELLE - WITH A VENGENCE
Kieran Haden & William Tyler - 41 Longfield Street Late ‘80s
Pop / Rock:
Sudan Archives - THE BPM
Sam Amidon - Salt River
Oklou - Choke Enough
PinkPantheress - Fancy That
Kelela - Into the Blue Light
Cass McCombs - Interior Live Oak
Jenny Hval - Iris Silver Mist
Billy Strings & Bryan Sutton - Live at the Legion
Nourished by Time - the Passionate Ones
Model/Actriz - Pirouette
Snocaps - Self Titled
Annahstasia - Tether
Guerrilla Toss - You’re Weird Now
Bon Iver - SABLE, fABLE
Metal:
Igorrr - Amen
Sumac & Moor Mother - the Film
Deafheaven - Lonely People with Power
Spiritbox - Tsunami Sea
The Acacia Strain - You Are Safe From God Here
Ambient / Experimental:
Kali Malone & Drew McDowall - Magnetism
Blue Lake - The Animal
Blue Lake - Welt
Hayden Pedigo - I’ll Be Waving as You Drive Away
Horse Lords & Arnold Dreyhlatt - Extended Field
Ches Smith - Clone Row
Wait McClements - On a Painted Ocean
The Necks - Disquiet
Kelly Moran - Don’t Trust Mirrors
Oren Ambarachi & Fredrick Rasten - Dragon’s Return
F.S. Blumm & Nils Frahm
The Dwarfs of East Agouza - Sasquatch Landslide
William Tyler - time Indefinite
Rafael Toral - Traveling Light
Post-Rock:
Mogwai - the Bad fire
Tortoise - Touch
Jazz:
Kurt Rosenwinkel & Jean Paul Brodbeck - The Brahms Project
GoGo Penguin - Necessary Fictions
Cecile McLorin Salvant - Oh Snap
Matthew Halsall - Bright Sparkling Light
Aaron Parks - By all Means
James Brandon Lewis, Aruan Ortiz, Brad Jones, & Chad Taylor - Abstraction Is Deliverance
Jeremiah Chiu & Marta Sofia Honer - Different Rooms
Ethan Iverson - Live at Smalls
Steve Lehman - the Music of Anthony Braxton
Sam Yahel - Quiet Flow
International:
Ichiko Aoba - Luminescent Creatures
Natalia Lafourcade - Cancionera
ROSALIA - LUX
Shakti - Mind Explosion
Buds:
Conglomerant - BOYFRENZ
Matt Bachman - Compost Karaoke
James Krivchenia - Performing Belief
Hagalaz - Songs to the Sky at Night