I’m not sure what’s more concerning, that, without checking, I can’t remember all the albums which made my Best Releases Of 2024 list, or that it seems only yesterday that I was writing that column.

From now on, instead of restricting myself to albums, I’ve decided to expand the criteria to live performances, live albums and reissues. And only certain reissues apply. Timeless by Goldie would make the list, but doesn’t everyone already have a copy of that? So, I’m only featuring reissues which I haven’t heard before. More interesting for me certainly, and maybe for you too.

Allowing the riff raff (such as YouTube videos) to encroach on one of the album’s last remaining refuges of exclusivity (okay, a tad dramatic, as I’m just referring to this blog) is another attack on the format. This is a fitting capitulation to mainstream culture where consumption preferences are indicative of attention spans shorter than a Goldfish. Few people listen to albums anymore. It’s mostly digital track downloads and curated playlists made up of flac and mp3 files. Even those at the vanguard of the futile resistance – vinyl enthusiasts – have their digital libraries, so we can’t be that dismissive and snobbish. Hypocrisy solves nothing.

One thing does remain the same, there’s no hierarchy to this list, it’s remains in alphabetical order. You really have to laugh at the staffers of these music websites that likely spend an inordinate amount of time debating, texting and emailing each other with pretentiously worded justifications of how to correctly order the site’s best albums of the year. Credit to Boomkat for not succumbing. I fully appreciate that they’re losing out on traffic (and advertising revenue) by holding out, but at least the process of browsing their website isn’t cheapened with cynical clickbaitish bloated end of year lists*.

*Really? A list of hundred albums? Who has time to listen to, or even sample, that many? We’re all too busy surviving. Also, do that many deserve to make a best-of-year list? Does the hundredth best player on Real Madrid’s books sniff the first eleven?

I’ll post my favourite songs of 2025 in-between Christmas and New Year. Normally I’d look to say something conciliatory about the New Year arriving. But I’m thoroughly jaded and over optimism for the sake of it now as things get perpetually worse and mediocrity becomes more expensive. “The rich get richer, that’s the law of the land” as a character in a brilliant movie once said, and it sums up the grim direction of travel. The tech feudalists, corrupt heads of state and crypto bros are scamming away our remaining wealth through government capture, and it manifests in crippling interest rates on our mortgages (if you’re lucky to have one), Avocados costing £2.50 each, Twix bars that perpetually shrink in size and a political class, populated by the worst people imaginable, who protect forms of elitism by appealing to the idiotic dross in our society by throwing red meat at their mis-founded phobias.

Music won’t save us from this decline, but, to quote Terre Thaemlitz, it’s an oasis from suffering. Unless you were gouged just to see a tawdry Oasis reunion concert. I’m convinced this wouldn’t have happened if Brexit hadn’t. All we need now is more nostalgia for things not as they truly were, but how we wish to remember them – a Blur reunion tour with Alex James product placing his gut-rot wine to the punters, while cosplaying his decadent Tory, Grouse beating, tweed wearing lifestyle. The latter was an idea which he shamelessly stole from a sarcastic, ghastly song penned by his more talented bandmates that went to number one in 1995 and remained there too long. If we get a Blur reunion tour there’ll be no hiding from the stark reality that UK has vaulted the shark and completely atrophied creatively, emotionally and intellectually.

Decius – Vol II (Splendour & Obedience)

Fat White Family’s Lias Saoudi fuses Erasure, Soft Cell, Factory Floor and Warm Leatherette to create grimy camp as fuck club music with heavy phone breathing vocals. Marc Almond surely owns this, right? Worth getting the vinyl copy for the ‘We Carry Our Flamboyance As A Warning’ bumper sticker.

DJ Sprinkles – Queerification & Ruins; Collected Remixes (Expanded Edition)

Originally released in 2013, this gets a welcome Bandcamp refresh. Tunes for the comedown in the wee small hours. Sampling and remixing are undervalued skills, and within the house genre nobody does it better than Thaemlitz. Ducktails’ “Letter Of Intent”, “Shishapangma” by Simon Fisher Turner, “Lockdown Party” by The Mole, Will Long’s “Time Has Come” all benefit from the Sprinkles treatment, but Lost Dancefloor is a stand out. It’s thirteen minutes of the deepest puritan blissed out house of house Sprinkles is revered for.

Duval Timothy – You Go To The Middle Of Nothing

When you have two releases make this list, that’s some going, even if it’s on some random blog. Various piano layers intermingle expertly. Trust me, it sounds as though it shouldn’t work, but it results in instant earworms. Slight gripe here, it’s a limited vinyl only release. C’mon now Duval, or should I call him Timothy? But that’s his surname, so it seems impersonal, even disrespectful? Anyway, confusion over how to address the man aside, give more of us a chance to purchase your music amigo. This deserves a wider audience.

Duval Timothy – Wishful Thinking

Sixteen uplifting vignettes tethered to mundane elements of everyday life “Dad”, Grass”, “Cement”, with the vast majority being three minutes or under. Mostly piano, with some string, brass, random electric flourishes, and indeterminate voices and conversations, which sound distant, thrown in to create a library music effect at times. This one is more readily purchasable, thankfully

Gillian Welch & David Rawlings – Tiny Desk Concert

These Tiny Desk sets are all gems. This one was my favourite from this year’s batch. Welch’s voice has always been irresistible, so learned yet delicate, and Rawlings can pick it with the best of them. This is country music in its best form, rooted in folk and performed acoustically.

Hugh B & The Modern Pop Ensemble – Live From 71

Late addition to the list. Divine instrumental dreampop set from a good bunch of Aussie lads recorded for Do You Radio. The sesh includes a lovely cover of Stereolab’s Brakhage and various cuts from Hugh B’s excellent album Brainwashing. Also comes with a nifty video that has a VHS recording type filter, which fits the set’s vibe.

KiF Productions – Still Out

There have been a few attempts at reimagining or repackaging the Chill Out template; samples of song snippets and random, occasionally obscure, cultural references with a hyper personal context to the author. There’s the stuff you expect; the Canadian Loon call made famous by 808 State, creepy and squalid sounds from nature and snippets of sampled dialogue that become sinister seated in this context, there’s even a sample that sounds suspiciously similar to an instrumental of “Pigs” by Robert Wyatt. Most importantly it feels as organic as the original, and sounds how an autobiographical acid trip through rural England might, which is kind of the point.

Los Pirañas – Una Oportunidad Más de Triunfar en la Vida

In English the album title means “One More Chance to Succeed in Life”. The finest Colombian vibes percolate as soon as the first track begins. It’s gotten even more engaging now with December’s cocktail – cold, windy, wet and dark – attempts to immiserate. This transports you to memories of better times and or to the allure of sunnier climes in the future.

Múm – Yesterday Was Dramatic – Today Is OK (Reissue)

Turns out Björk isn’t the only music to come out of Iceland. Without checking I assumed that it was another one of Richard D. James’ efforts released under another of his many pseudonyms. It’s been reissued a bunch of times since it first appeared in 1999, but until this year’s reissue I’d never encountered it. Very much a product of its late nineties’ context – fragments of fast drum programming fused with lullaby melodies are odes to the Richard D. James Album and I Care Because I Do. Tonally it’s very Boards of Canada in places.

Various Artists – TV, Anime & Manga New Age Soundtracks 1984-1993

Since that Sochi Terada reissue, I’ve taken every Japanese anime or videogame music compilation I can find. What really impresses is the variety here; the thunderous percussion and choir on “Kaneda” by Geinoh Yamashirogumi from the movie Akira, the Blade Runner-esque “Gishin Anki”, listen to it blind and you could mistake “Tassili N’Ajjer” for a Jon Hassel offering or “Hei (Theme of Shikioni)” which features a lovely high pitched Kawala (I think). Interesting that the album title plumps for “New Age”. Traditional sounds were lent on thirty years ago to fashion instrumentals that felt contemporary then and do so in 2025 – or maybe we just haven’t truly progressed since?