#15: Standout Albums of 2025 so far
Some album recommendations from the past few months
It's been a while. After the year-end sprint putting together the top albums and electronic lists, music burnout hit hard. I had a whole list of EPs from the year and this playlist of 100 standout tracks that I wanted to write about but I just couldn’t bring it to life amid everything else happening.
I still stand by this playlist and I’ve had many friends tell me how much they love it. It’s a sampling of all the flavors 2024 had to offer and if you don’t have much time just stop reading right here, save this playlist, and listen through over the next week. Shouts to Sacre who shared the graphic used for the cover, don’t sleep on their album featured on the 2024 year end list.
Below you'll find a roundup of albums from the past quarter that broke through my mid-life malaise. I'll follow up with EPs/Singles/Mixes in a separate newsletter later this month—nobody has the bandwidth for all that at once.
After the albums, I’ve featured some picks for upcoming NYC shows worth checking out.
*Big Tip* Click the title to view this in your browser or open it in the Substack app, where you can listen along as you read.
Albums
Bassvictim - Basspunk 2
I was introduced to Bassvictim at Unsound Krakow last October where I was blown to bits leaving behind all the anxieties and stresses of adulthood and life for 45 minutes of unadulterated euphoria and bliss unlike anything I've felt in ages. (Read more about the performance and Unsound festival here)
Building upon their excellent debut, Basspunk 2, adds to the bass punk cannon with bombast defined by raw, irresistible, frenetic energy. This Polish-American duo crafts bangers that somehow feel both bedroom-recorded and stadium-ready with Maria Manow's vocals slicing through grinding basslines and frenetic beats with hypnotic swagger.
It's Electroclash reborn for the instagram age, part digicore tantrum, part Witch House séance, and yet wholly original.
Maybe witnessing these tracks live first colored my judgment, but months later, this remains some of the most infectiously joyful music I've encountered in a long time. If you’re new to the duo, start with the OG, Basspunk, which edges this out slightly overall.
Richard Dawson - End of the Middle
Richard Dawson conjures everyday magic from the mundanities of life in middle England, where wedding guests paralyzed by depression and bullied schoolboys are rendered in his unmistakable voice against sparse guitar and sudden clarinet eruptions. His characters, as always, are painted lucidly as songs leap across generations and middle age confronts mortality.
In a recent Bandcamp interview, he joked that he should print business cards with the title "Master of Song"—but in reality, this isn't such a stretch, as few could claim to match his skill in crafting accessible yet profound vignettes in such a beautiful manner.
Mark William Lewis - Sparkles 22-24
Mark William Lewis' new mixtape, Sparkles 22-24, brings to light previously unheard recordings from March 2022 to December 2024 but these aren’t just half baked sketches, they’re a refreshing collection of psychedelic slowcore and mellow atmospherics. The tracks flicker between distorted guitars, chilling harmonica, and sluggishly mellow dreamlike musings in the style of Dean Blunt, King Krule, Yves Tumor, or Nourished by Time.
DJ MC - I’m So Cold
I'm So Cold slices through the darkness like neon on a foggy night. It’s a brain-melting evolution of Chicago footwork that rivals Jlin or Jana Rush at their most diabolical. DJ MC weaponizes fleet-footed percussion into something wickedly aerodynamic and profoundly unsettling – a predatory juke monster that stalks the shadows between the outer limits of rhythm in 2025.
Blue jazz fragments and chopped dialogue on highlight "If You Want Some Juice" evoke the soundtrack to a noir film set in a haunted warehouse. Give this track a spin and you’ll know if you want to dig deeper right away.
V/Z - It’s Cold in Baltimore [Offen Music]
A mixtape of thrilling improvised chaos where Valentina Magaletti and Susumu Mukai abandon the refined collaborations of their debut for something far more untamed. Militant hip-hop drums collapse into shivery post-punk as ghostly radio transmissions slice through the mix. Each track a new urban hallucination swinging from poignant string arrangements to icy trunk-rattling bass lines on a dime.
Kathryn Mohr - Waiting Room [The Flenser]
Waiting Room haunts like a ghost trapped in an abandoned Icelandic fish factory (which is actually where this album was recorded), with Kathryn Mohr’s lone voice and skeletal instrumentation echoing through desolate concrete corridors. Gothic post-punk collides with Grouper-esque ambience as metallic frigidity strangles every note. It’s a disarmingly barren exploration where PJ Harvey-inspired guitar rumbles and electronic whirrs result in offputting beauty.
Gaiko - Gaiko [Nous'klaer Audio]
A debut that weaves left-field electronics, IDM precision, and DnB intensity into a tapestry that breathes with rare sophistication. Piano melodies cascade through atmospheric textures before dissolving into tight, propulsive beats—a push-and-pull balancing euphoria and introspection with unusual playfulness. “Dance music with a conservatory soul.”
Jules Reidy - Ghost Spirit
Constellations of fractal guitar flit about microtonal explorations and ethereal vocal wisps. Jules Reidy’s berlin-honed technical mastery transforms personal dissolution into transcendence and with each listen the textures bury deeper into your mind. This is guitar music at it’s most adventurous drawing from avant folk and minimalism alongside playful experiments with blurry pop melodies and sampling.
DJ Daria - Fairyhouse
Bored Lord under a new alias as DJ Daria, what more needs to be said. Big t4t energy and the perfect amount of funk and groove.
Ø (Mika Vainio) - Metri
If you found the Loidis album a bit lacking but want something to scratch a minimal itch, look no further than this heady remaster of a hidden gem from the early 90s.
X or Size - All Avail
An LP that trudges dance music's murky subconscious like a sleepwalker navigating a fog-drenched warehouse. Scuzzy, textured ambient house where dusty samples crumble under their own weight.
Josiah Wolfson plays in the territory of Huerco S, Actress, or Michael J. Blood but pushes beyond his influences into territory that's more groggy and loose limbed, crafting a slow-motion psychedelic journey for bodies on a slow arc toward the very edges of the dancefloor. "Anonymous AD" and the title track stand as particularly potent gateways to submersed trippiness.
Comechelet x ϙue - TIME [re.core]
Comechelet and ϙue submerge listeners in aquatic depths where time suspends itself between heartbeats and horizons. Swelling angelic synths rise and recede like tides against shores of absence while restrained trancelike elements create tension that never fully releases. For fans of the 3xl extended universe, theory therapy, mu tate, chantsss, purelink, etc
Voice Actor, Squu - Lust (1)
Voice Actor trade their debut's sprawling cut-and-paste chaos for a luminous 45-minute journey into reverb-soaked dreamscapes where vocals drift between hypnotic drawl and breathy not-quite-singing. Squu helps cultivate this new sonic architecture with textures that flow between Burial’s UK atmospherics, new age ambience, and cinematic Bjork-like avant pop.
U.e. (Ulla Straus) - Hometown Girl
Intimacy captured through distance, as if Ulla placed a tape recorder across her bedroom before vanishing into soft piano notes and wandering woodwinds. A lo-fi collection of dawn lit sketches that blur the line between ambient haze and jazz inflected pop as they dissolve into each other in melancholy bliss.
Kenny Segal & K-the-I??? - Genuine Dexterity [BackwoodzStudioz]
Head swirling, heavily swaggered abstract hip hop with beat chef Kenny Segal dripping screwed boom bap beats and stellar (often hysterical) features from Armand Hammer, Open Mike Eagle, ShrapKnel, and more.
Oklou - Choke Enough [True Panther]
I really wanted to like this album more than I did but it just hasn’t clicked like Oklou’s older projects. The husky edges of 2020’s Galore mixtape with its tastefully minimalist art pop and r&b feel sanded down and replaced with 2000’s pop and dance nostalgia courtesy of A.G. Cook and Danny L Harle. It’s still worth listening to for an interesting take on restrained hyperpop but I was just hoping for more.
Other Notable Albums
Anna B Savage - You & i are Earth
FKA twigs - Eusexua
It’s not MAGDALENE but FKA Twigs is always queen and everyone should at least hear this album.
Big love to big MIKE always, one of brooklyn’s finest and most consistent stewards of hip hop artistry
Edward Skeletrix - Museum Music
tunng - Love You All Over Again
One for the fans of Brat and 2024’s big pop girlies
Looking to dive into these albums? Check out this playlist featuring some highlights from them alongside exciting singles from the year so far.
Upcoming NYC Shows and Concerts
Thu Mar 6 [TONIGHT] SPIRIT OF THE BEEHIVE / Kassie Kurt / Polo Perks @Warsaw
Fri, Mar 7 - Ian Sweet @Night Club 101
Fri, Mar 07 - Friko / Peel Dream Magazine @ Music Hall of Williamsburg
3/17 - SahBabii @ Music Hall of Williamsburg
3/18 - Ela Minus @ Public Records
3/21 - Oklou @ Elsewhere Hall
3/22 - Maruja @ TBD (nYc location)
3/22 DARKSIDE, Kalia Vandever at Brooklyn Steel
3/25 - Astrid Sonne @ Pioneer Works
3/27 - Beak> @ Elsewhere
3/30 - Outline: Michael Rother plays ‘Neu!’ + ‘Harmonia’ / Thurston Moore / HTRK / Eiko Ishibashi @ Knockdown Center
4/1 - The Weather Station @ Bowery Ballroom
4/1 - Poppy @ Brooklyn Paramount
4/2 - The Weather Station @ Music Hall of Williamsburg
4/3 & 4/4 - FKA twigs @ Knockdown Center
4/5 - Nubya Garcia @ Music Hall of Williamsburg
4/12 - Mercury Rev @ National Sawdust
4/12 - Outline: Explosions In The Sky / Mum / Mae Fratti / There Gutting a Body of Water / UPSAMMY / Diles Que No Me Maten @ Knockdown Center
4/17 - Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds / St. Vincent @ Barclays Center
4/23 & 24 - Lucy Dacus / Katie Gavin / jasmine.4.t @ Radio City Music Hall
4/30 - 5/4 - Charli XCX @ Barclays Center
5/3 - Max Richter @ BAM’s Howard Gilman Opera House
5/3 - George Clanton @ Webster Hall
5/3 - Jane Remover @ Music Hall of Williamsburg
5/5 - SASAMI @ Music Hall of Williamsburg
5/7 Mei Semones @Music Hall of Williamsburg
5/8 - Kendrick Lamar / SZA @ MetLife Stadium
5/9 - Nils Frahm @ Kings Theatre
5/9/25 - Japanese Breakfast @ Brooklyn Paramount
5/9: C2C Oneohtrix Point Never, Nala Sinephro, Two Shell, Evilgiane, John Glacier @knockdown center
5/9 - SPELLING @ Music Hall of Williamsburg
5/10 & 11 - Japanese Breakfast @ Brooklyn Paramount
5/15 - Amyl and The Sniffers / Sheer Mag @ The Rooftop at Pier 17
5/16 - 5/18 - Fontaines D.C. @ Hammerstein Ballroom
5/17 - Geordie Greep (Black Midi) @ Brooklyn Paramount
5/23 - Of Montreal performing ‘The Sunlandic Twins’ / cumgirl8 @ Brooklyn Steel
5/29 - Pachinko / Alison’s Halo @ Brooklyn Paramount
5/31 - MIKE @ Irving Plaza
5/31 - SMINO @ Terminal 5
6/10 - Perfume Genius @ Brooklyn Paramount
6/25 & 26 - Godspeed You! Black Emperor @ Pioneer Works
That’s all for this one, thanks for reading and I hope you found some new music you love and/or some shows to check out. If you enjoyed this email please share it with a music loving friend and subscribe for more <3