Singles going steady - new music reviews
This week on the Substack I did something a little different: 13 pictures from the Sublow don Jon E Cash, with his own commentary. I hope you enjoyed it. And thank you very much to Anna Jane McIntyre and Jon E Cash himself for his help.
The pictures looked so lovely that I decided to leave off the usual track reviews and extras, so that the post would be beautiful, clean and uncluttered. But I did write them and would like to share them, so here you are, a singles club to end the week. (And, yes, I know the idea of singles is very 1995 but so too am I, sometimes.)
Also, an announcement: on Wednesday December 17 I will be announcing the Line Noise artist of the year for 2025. I have interviewed the artist in question and will be releasing both a podcast and an edited text version of the interview on the 17 itself. (Paid subscribers will get the full interview a few days later.)
I’ve actually been pretty pleased with the electronic albums that have been turning up near the top of the end-of-year lists. I don’t necessarily listen to Los Thuthanaka or aya’s hexed! a great deal - they require real concentration and their own moment in time - and I haven’t written about them here. But both records are bold, bizarre and full of weird emotion, which is what a great album should be.
You could say the same about Barker’s Stochastic Drift, Djrum’s Under Tangled Silence and Blawan’s SickElixir too, all of which have come near top of the 2025 lists, although I have listened to those three a tonne, while Nick León’s A Tropical Entropy is a brilliantly thoughtful album that is alive to the world around it.
As for Oneohtrix Point Never’s Tranquilizer, I made my views about that album pretty clear in a recent post, reaction to which has been very mixed. A fair few people have agreed; others got genuinely angry.
None of these are my artist of the year, though. I wanted to put the spotlight on an act that released some devastating music this year but which hasn’t featured in the best-of lists. All will be revealed soon….
And in the meantime, do enjoy my track reviews.
Some listening
There is an exquisite control to Sully’s productions, the extreme beat and bass science of someone who is confident enough to allow chaos into his darting drum & bass, confident that he can bring it all back into line.
On Lies, for example, the middle section sounds like a drum solo from the inter-dimensional Muppets, each hit perfectly attuned but surprisingly free. Sully, who is one of the best drum programmers in the land, has kind of been here before - on Poison, for example - but never quite to this level of art.
The song is a gorgeous head scratcher that defies the limits of physical skill, without ever succumbing to cold, robotic perfection - a blast, in other words, and one of many on the producer’s new EP, The Still. Is there a prize for best snare drums of the year? Well, there is now and Sully has waltzed off with it.
Honeydrip - Dutty Business (Anna Morgan remix)
If any budding remixers are ever at a loss for inspiration, then making a song sound like it is being born aloft entirely on funny spring noises is always a GOOD THING.
That isn’t all Anna Morgan has done on her remix of Honeydrip’s low-slung and catchy Dutty Business, of course, but Christ does the new version wobble along with glee, its fundamental elasticity anchored by a kick drum strike of titanium weight and a bass line that threatens the foundations. Catchy, tough and weird - the perfect combination.
My Bloody Valentine x Boards of Canada x Sisters of Mercy = TAKE MY MONEY. But this, oh yes, is the marvellous world that TVAM inhabits on The Words, the first single to be taken from Joe Oxley’s third album, Ruins.
This is one of those songs that seems to skulk along the dividing line between under and over ground: kind of mushy in the vocals and basic in the drum programming but with hooks that bury themselves deep into the cranium and a synth line that could light up a disco scene in The Lost Boys (is there a disco scene in The Lost Boys? I feel like there must be). TVAM: the 1980s called and they want their big music back.
Water From Your Eyes’ album It’s a Beautiful Place is one of the finest releases of 2025 and Playing Classics is one of the best songs, the kind of indie dance-floor anthem that makes me wish I could still attend Meltdown at the Norwich Waterfront. (If you know, you know.)
So what could be better than a 10-minute version of Playing Classics, which appears on the band’s new It’s Beautiful EP? Not a lot - except, it turns out - the new version of Born 2 on the same EP, helpfully titled Born 4, which turns the original’s guitar thrash into an incredibly elegant and very woozy electronic pop song. It is utterly gorgeous, showing the fast-paced creativity of a band at full flow.
Nurse With Wound and Diarmuid MacDiarmada - Monotony Meltdown
Hat tip to Eoin Murray and his Anois, Os Ard newsletter for this tip, in which experimental music travellers Nurse With Wound and Diarmuid MacDiarmada team up for eight songs of Krautrock magik, psych sprawl and existential grooves.
The album, Lung Oysters, is released by Arcana Hiberia, a label devoted to “the cultivation and preservation of weird and wonderful Irish things”, which leads me, on Monotony Meltdown, to anoint the duo as the Celtic Can, with only the slightest trace of embarrassment. If you consider Stereolab’s best music to be their two collaborations with Nurse - as a surprisingly large amount of people do - then Lung Oysters is definitely for you.
Verde Prato + Jon Aguirrezabalaga - Un Nuevo Comienzo
The quiet powerhouse collaboration of Verde Prato and Jon Aguirrezabalaga unite on the soundtrack for Singular, a psychological thriller from Alberto Gastesi.
Un Nuevo Comienzo is a masterpiece of uncanny vocals and instrumental loom that sits at the bittersweet spot between creepy and beautiful, like a weirded out 1950s doll that you can’t look away from. I haven’t seen the film but if it is anything like as powerful as the soundtrack, then I really must.
Lucas Kid, MC Marsha, Biel do Anil - Bota Bohla
The fourth edition of Tratratrax’s no pare, sigue sigue compilations is both the most full of international names and probably the weakest to date. And I’m still not sure if these facts are connected. Bota Bohla, by the Brazilian get together of Lucas Kid, MC Marsha and Biel do Anil is the pick of the record, a great rush of tangling rhythms, rave keyboards, Percolator-style blips and catchy vocals that seems forever on the verge of slipping fatally out of time but somehow never does, a whirling cape of barely contained creativity.
Aphex Twin - Zahl am1 live track 1c f760m1 unfinshd
So Aphex Twin is Father Christmas and also just a normal dude on holiday with his girlfriend.
Richard D James uploaded two new tracks to his user18081971 Soundcloud account this week, ambient and beat-y mixes of Zahl am1 live track 1, accompanied by a picture of him and his love in the sea off the Isles of Scilly
The ambient mix of the song is lovely and wending, James’ typically brilliant skill with a warped melody in plain view. But I prefer it’s the beat version, in which he adds a clipped, almost Jersey Club, type breakbeat to proceedings, the results between rave nostalgia, future-looking sounds and - for some reason - P-Funk.
The news that Zora Jones - who I learned this week was once a professional horse rider - is back, with a new album all recorded, is most welcome indeed. She’s also done a totally brilliant mix for Mixmag, which shows where she is at in December 20205. A lot of the ZJ faithful producers are there - Mike Q, DJ Sliink etc. - but the absolute highlights are the new bits of Zora Jones’ own music, which points to an amazing new album. I’d also say the mix sounds a little lighter and more melodic than in the past - although that might be my imagination.
Things I’ve done
Line Noise podcast with Modeselektor
A few weeks ago I spoke to seasoned German duo Modeselektor about their recent DJ Kicks album, banging Beirut, changing studios and the curse of phones in clubs.
5 razones para ver Water From Your Eyes
Water from Your Eyes son absolutamente geniales; tocarán en Barcelona, Madrid y Lisboa esta semana; aquí hay cinco razones por las que deberías ir a verlos.
Things other people have done
As an open-minded music fan, I had always thought I was into free jazz. Until this excellent Guardian piece by Alexis Petridis made me consider what free jazz I had actually listened to, with the answer being not much. Thankfully, Petridis also supplies the answer to this conundrum, with several suggestions (via Thurston Moore and Smalltown Supersound boss Joakim Haugland) of free jazz albums to open up the mind, as Alexis goes on his own journey into the world’s wonkiest genre. Music journalism that is genuinely useful and totally entertaining.
The Playlists
Available via Apple Music: The newest and the bestest and The newest and bestest 2025.
And Spotify (for the moment): The newest and bestest 2025 and The newest and the bestest.
Paid subscribers get bonus podcasts, you know.