I mostly listen to “electronic music”. As a genre it’s both broad and needlessly vague. Apple Music has it as a featured genre though they also have “Dance” and a good chunk of new releases under Electronic show up in Dance, though most Dance doesn’t show under Electronic. There is no genre for “Ambient”, which falls under Electronic if the artist is big enough, and there are separate genres for Amapiano and Afrobeats which, arguably, are also electronic.  

A vast spectrum of music on an arbitrary scale of electronicality.  

Playing my library on random you’d get quiet Japanese environmentalism straight into a ballroom-classic referencing banger making excessive use of, uh, Sweet Pussy Pauline’s “Work this Pussy” vocals. Somewhere in the middle of that is the Metroid Prime soundtrack^<1> (dril). This is the baseline context for what I like and what I think are my favourite releases of the year. There were a lot!

Though before I get into the list there’s one article from The Onion, from 1997!, that I kept thinking about: U.S. Dept. Of Retro Warns: 'We May Be Running Out Of Past'. Retro feels even more collapsed in 2025. Electronic music, especially on the dance/bass side, is going through an identity crisis. So much of the music, and trends, of 2025 were backwards facing attempts at nostalgia or reinvention. It’s a sign of the times, I guess. Who knows what 2026 will bring.

tl;dr my picks (in no particular order):

Lust (1) - Voice Actor and Squu
Lifetime - Erika de Casier
Data - Slikback
Foundations - DJ Q
Rhythm Immortal - Carrier (Modern Love)
Pulse Archive - Peverelist
ex_libris 001, ex_libris 002 - ex_libris
The Seduction Of Silence (Remastered Edition) (Part 2) - Intrusion
Tracey - Tracey
Burbujas - Daniel Pineda
The Flirt - Ploy

Lust (1) - Voice Actor and Squu (Stroom)

In the latter part of 2022 Stroom released the debut of Voice Actor, Sent From My Telephone, as a 108 track, 4 hour 18 minute, digital only album. An all over the place ambient compendium with tape loops, field recordings, musical interludes, fuzzed out backgrounds, and quiet ambiance, all connected by a singular, spoken word voice. A woman’s voice, seemingly reading diary excerpts. Sometimes poetic. Sometimes mundane. Sometimes spoken as whispers, almost to the point of ASMR, where the words merged into the background loops.

It was a hit with ambient heads. Boomkat named it their #2 album of the year. And no one knew anything about the project. There were retailer write-ups (which were often wrong) and a single bit of marketing copy from Stroom itself, though there was no press, no tour dates, no info to go on beyond the music itself. That added to the mystique. As did the audacity of it being 108 tracks.

Fast forward to January 2025 and a follow up was released, Lust (1), this time in collaboration with Welsh musician Squu. In many ways a more conventional affair: only 45 minutes long, across 14 tracks, some with a persistent beat. It was more consistent in style, dub-like, yet through it all that same voice uttering about things even less decipherable than before. There’s a reading of an online comment about Barbara Walters interview with Dolly Parton? Something about a dream?  

Coming out in January it held presence for the whole year. A hypnotic dream, perhaps helped by the mystery of it all. Yet when some of the veil was lifted in a First Floor interview nothing was lost. There was the revelation that Noa Kurzweil, aka. Voice Actor, is an Israeli living in the UK. Which was briefly touched on and can be, uh, uh…. Moving On, Moving On.

As an aside, if you do like any of this electronic music I highly recommend subscribing to First Floor. It’s a substack, which yeah I know substack, from Shawn Reynaldo who used to run an excellent radio show on Red Bull Radio with the same name. A lot of good music recommendations, and weekly features including interviews.

Lifetime - Erika de Casier (Independent Jeep Music)

Much like Voice Actor, Erika de Casier’s music feels like you’re going through her diary. Her late-90s MTV R&B influences, by way of rural Denmark, have been apparent since 2019’s Essentials. She has been lauded as a singer and songwriter, though these last few years she has become much more accomplished, and confident I’d say, as a producer. Whereas previously she split production credits and had co-producers, most notably with Nick León^<2>, Lifetime is 100% produced by Erika de Casier herself. And it looks back further into the 90s, taking influence from the era of (I loathe the label) trip-hop and Enigma-esque new age and Madonna’s “Frozen” and other early to mid 90s sounds. Gregorian Chants wouldn’t have been out of place here.

It’s expertly crafted. A quick half hour effortlessly drifting across 11 songs, each one a potential alternate universe radio hit. Everytime I go back to it I have a new favourite. “Delusional”, with its hooky chorus, was the first stand out, “The Chase” with its waiting on the phone pace, or “Seasons” built on those cinematic strings, and my current favourite “December” with its synth backing chorus and, like, pan flute flourish? Like I said: Enigma.

I do realize that for someone that favours electronics over anything else, especially vocals, that my first two picks put a vocalist in front. There has to be a certain magic to it, one that’s hard to conjure, that gives the songs that appeal. I can appreciate a good pop song, though it’s really difficult for a pop artist to maintain my interest over the course of an album. I tend to approach from a production first point of view and it’s the highest of compliments to say that Lifetime not only held my interest, it kept me invested, and it made for great background tracking.

Data - Slikback (2025, Tempa)

After almost a decade of silence, legendary London record label Tempa returned in 2025. Tempa basically defined dubstep, the blend of two-step/uk garage with soundsystem culture, with releases from Horsepower Productions, Skream, Coki, and others in the early 2000s. Midnight Request Line, Skream’s classic, was a Tempa release. Two Tempa records feature on RA’s Best Albums of 2000-2025.

And it was a productive return. By my count: 8 stand-alone EPs, one highly regarded album, and an archival release, all carrying the torch of the Tempa sound though with modern 2025 sensibilities. You have the new-school USA-based simulacra from Carré and Introspekt (with the aforementioned album, Moving the Center); the tech-step cross-over styles from Beatrice M.^<3>; one of the OGs, D1, with a new release; and several others, including 96 Back with this killer.  

For me it was the very first release of this revival, Data, that hit the hardest. Slikback, who also had a solid album for Planet Mu this year, took the Tempa formula and hit it with a sledgehammer. The Kenyan (apparently now Poland based) producer has a long history of aggressive mixing of club styles. His first two EPs, on a then-still-new Hakuna Kulala (a Nyege Nyege Tapes^<4> offshoot), are still fresh and mind-blowing 7 years later. Their success brought a lot of attention to the ascendant East African experimental electronic and club scene, and established Hakuna Kulala as an essential label.  

Across the three tracks on Data there are trace elements of footwork, jungle, hardcore, trap, ambient washes, and the expected dubstep. It fuses them all into a barrage of non stop pressure. It doesn’t sound like anything on Tempa, it sounds like everything on Tempa. The EP isn’t easy-listening. I find it rewarding. Mileage might vary. Sometimes my ADHD mind wants to get bombarded.

Foundations - DJ Q (Local Action)

And sometimes it’s simple. Singles “Gunshot!” and “Leave Me Now” came out last year, and a year on feel overplayed. The UKG revival from a few years ago is waning, in favour of (see above) dubstep and future garage revivalism. And this is proppa’ UKG. A dance album with zero filler. 8 tracks at 26 minutes. Feels like I’ve heard it all before.  

And sometimes the formula is simple: fun and hooky. It’s impossible to not tap your foot to “Leave Me Now” when it comes over your desk speakers. Head nodding to “You Could Be The One.” Shaking the shoulders and headphones to “Let You Go”^<5>. Maybe it doesn’t have the cross-over appeal of Sammy Virji’s Same Day Cleaning, which I honestly found boring, but it has classic bangers that aren’t going to age and are going to get spun when UKG gets its fifth or sixth revival in a few years time.

(And just last week an (Apple exclusive?^<11>) DJ mix of the album, with some other contemporaneous UKG, was released breathing new context to Foundations).  

Rhythm Immortal - Carrier (Modern Love)

After many years releasing UK techno as Shifted, initially anonymously, and before that years making D&B in the early 2000s as part of (then) group Commix, Guy Brewer must have gotten sick of genre conventions. Starting fresh as Carrier in 2023, Brewer was still interested in rhythm though at a level of precision and execution beyond any genre’s beats per minute expectations.

Had I written a list like this before his self-released EPs would have featured prominently for three years running (this year included.) They are bare, almost ritualistic, though with a sense of impulse often drawing comparisons to T++. Fantastic on their own.

And as much as I liked this year’s Tender Spirits EP, his debut album, for Modern Love, in his third year as carrier takes the prize. It builds on all the self-released work and stretches it out. The rhythms are there, though maybe a little more subtle, a little more fuzzed out, as if they’re playing off an old tape recording. There’s more background ambiance. Time has slowed^<6>. Perhaps it’s not surprising that Voice Actor shows up as a feature here.

The word I keep coming back to is “impulse”. There’s a kind of world building to the music here and this sense of traversing it. Carrier is taking you on a tour. A sparse world, its heart beating, with synth drones at the end, fading as you leave orbit.

Aside number two, I wish I could include some album art here but I’m writing on the most basic of free tiers on buttondown which doesn’t include images. I have a hacky way to get around that though it’s not worth the effort. If you do enjoy anything here, consider posting a link back from your site and/or feed, or forwarding this email to someone you think would like it. I always hate to ask but it’s been 2025, we’re all struggling, and a little motivation always helps.

Pulse Archive - Peverelist (Livity)

Apple Music says I’m one of Peverelist’s Top 100 listeners in 2025! That’s high!  

For 15 years Peverelist has been running the excellent Livity Sound label. One of those labels where every release is worth checking out. After years silent, likely lost in the administration of it, the once legendary dubstep producer (Roll with the Punches) returned in 2023 with a 4 track EP called Pulse. It could loosely be defined as UK techno. Or more specifically, Bristol techno. Though the influences, subtle and restrained, of many variations of bass music show up in the series.

Over the next two years 5 Pulse EPs were released, bringing a total of 20 Pulse tracks. It’s a testament to the consistency and quality of all that music that some of the last tracks on the final EP are my favourites. “Pulse XIX” being the best of those with its propulsive beeps and dub-techno tensions. One of my favourite EPs of the year.  

The period at the end of the sentence was the release of all the Pulses as a single compilation, with a bonus alternate mix. The Pulse Archive is not sequential, it has been reordered by Peverelist giving the entire playthrough a different feel. I assume it’s a DJ’s sense of changing the pace, though I have not read, or looked into, why this order. Maybe there’s a secret numerical code. Maybe I need to listen to it even more to decipher it. A monumental two and a quarter hours of this very idiosyncratic Bristolian techno. And jungle. And dub.  

ex_libris 001, ex_libris 002 - ex_libris (ex_libris)

Circa 2006-2009, the huge influence London (and Bristol) had on electronic music led to some fantastic cross-North Sea mixing with Dutch musicians. On the one side you had Martyn whose Great Lengths, to this day one of my favourite albums, was very much a UK dubstep album that happened to be made in the Netherlands. On the other side you had Dave Huismans who, under the name “A Made Up Sound”, was making minimal Detroit-indebted Berlin techno. When those early releases made waves in the UK’s scene Huismans connected with Bristol’s Pinch and his, still relatively new, Tectonic record label. Much like Tempa, Tectonic was hugely influential in the UK bass scene in the mid 00s, featuring (again) Skream, Digital Mystikz, Loefah, and others.

With Tectonic, Huismans released under the 2562 alias. I loved 2562. Unbalance is my personal favourite, but 2008’s Aerial is regarded as one of the greats in the genre. And many genres. The half-step influence is there, that dread, though it’s also Basic Channel, also dub techno. I’ve been listening to it again lately as I go through this list and it holds up remarkably well. RA had it at #93 of the best electronic albums of the last 25 years.

By the mid-2010s, Huismans’ output as 2562^<7> and A Made Up Sound slowed, and then stopped altogether. In 2025 he made his return in a big way. First as ex_libris with a pair of EPs, then a full-length as In Transit, on FELT, a much more ambient excursion, and then showed up as 2562 once again in Tectonic’s 20th anniversary compilation leading to an archival release of Lost Dubs 2006-09.

In my mind I like to imagine that Pinch contacted Huismans for the 20th anniversary and faced with the weight of the passage of time, and knowing he’s not getting any younger, just said “fuck it” and released all the stuff he’s been working on.  

Whatever the truth, I’m glad he’s back. And while ex_libris has more of the A Made Up Sound lineage, rather than 2562, it retains the precision that Huismans has been known for. Though it feels a lot warmer. It sits somewhere between his classic techno and the more ambient turn as In Transit. #32 (Walrus) is basically tropical by comparison.

The Seduction Of Silence (Remastered Edition) (Part 2) - Intrusion (Echospace [detroit])

Fluxion’s Haze on Vibrant. The sorta-dubby stylings of Squu with Voice Actor. Hiss is Bliss with some fantastic singles. A pretty good album from Mike Schommer, and a return from Canadian Deadbeat on Echochord. A solid remaster of cv313’s Dimensional Space. And Paul St. Hilaire w/ The Producers, an inversion of the classic Rhythm & Sound w/ The Artists, and an album on many best-of lists (with Cousin and Priori^<8> doing their best dub-techno impressions).  

Dub techno is having a moment! A third wave, for better or worse.  

Yet despite all this output nothing compares to the second wave classic, Stephen Hitchell's 2009-ish turn as Intrusion with the full length Seduction of Silence. This is an album that shows up on my Apple Music all time replay list. In 2025, it got a much needed remaster and reprint.

Some of my favourite Intrusion works were off the album, restricted to some obscure releases and a “various artists” release called Lo-Fi Soundsystem. As far as I know, it never had a streaming run or even any acknowledgement since its initial release.  I think I have a .flac of it somewhere?  

So I was really excited to see those asides compiled into a sequel of sorts, The Seduction Of Silence (Remastered Edition) (Part 2), and remastered by Pole (who also did the previously mentioned CV313 remaster.) 15 years on the rhythms and vibes of “De Lion’s Den” take me to empty beaches in the winter, and “Under the Ocean” onto nighttime train rides back. These sounds are permanently etched into my brain. They are connected to a very specific time of my life, full of warmth and solitude, and I loved being able to travel back there again in 2025.

Tracey - Tracey (AD 93)

Not a lot to go on here. The bio is listed as “two friends making music.” They have a website that tells you everything about their aesthetic without telling you anything about Tracey. They’re anonymous yet their debut is on AD93, Pitchfork’s label of the year, so they are connected and have some production experience. They have Riko Dan throwing down bars on “Sex Life”, a track that wastes no time in establishing itself with cut up vocals shouting “all I want to do is fuck” before repeating “fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck” over a deep, deep bass. A warm melody plays, sound design pops and crackles, Riko Dan comes in, squeaking bed sound effect loop, “I like it rough rough rough rough rough rough rough rough rough”.  

It keeps you guessing. It shouldn’t work. It bangs so hard. This is the track, yet the rest of the EP keeps you guessing even more.  

It gets soulful before falling into its own noise. There’s a ballad, with a soft, aetherial voice that makes you question if it was the same person as on “Sex Life”. Then it ends on something of an alt-rock song that builds up with a synth into a guitar solo crescendo??

On each track you can pull the threads and make comparisons to other trends, styles, and artists – I often see comparisons anywhere from Two Shell and Charli XCX to PC Music to Tirzah and Andy Stott (?) – yet as a whole the EP is singularly unique.  

Burbujas - Daniel Pineda (Einhundert)

I miss Nguzunguzu. After 2013’s Skycell the duo returned in 2021 for one single with a video, the biggest of teases, before disappearing again. While MA aka. Asmara aka. Asma Maroof, and NA aka. Daniel Pineda, have been active as solo artists and producers, there’s some je ne sais quoi that happens when they collaborate. Unfortunately, I’m still waiting for that return.

Under her real name, Asma Maroof is known for her commercial and installation work, fashion shows and such, an experimental jazz album, and most notably as a frequent producer for Kelela including the fantastic, revisiting it now, Aquaphoria mix. Kelela had her own jazz turn this year.

As Daniel Pineda he’s collaborated on the same commercial work with Asma Maroof, mixed that same experimental jazz album, and founded DISE Records collaborating with 45Diboss. However when it came to any individual releases, or even remixes or bootlegs, everything was always under the NA DJ/DJ NA/NA moniker. Until this year.

Apparently motivated by the birth of a child, and seeing his newborn reacting to the vibrations from his studio, Pineda had newfound motivation to create and release music. Burbujas is his first “official” solo release since 2016’s Cellar on Fade to Mind, which by contrast had a darker and more aggressive sound. The club progeny is still here, as in the opening track’s footwork-esque pace, though lighter, more playful. As alluded to by the EP’s name, melodies and synths and horns and cut up vocals bubble out of the bass and drum patterns. It’s a fun little EP and I hope it starts a revival. Though 15 years on I’m still holding out for a proper Nguzunguzu LP. One can hope.

The Flirt - Ploy (Faith Beat)

Though not often on my radar, there always seems to be one or two releases from the house realm that make an impact on me in a year. And this year it was from Ploy?? The Bristol^<9> experimental techno guy? The guy that released polyrhythmic tekkers for Hemlock, the guy that was Intrigued by the Drum for Timedance, and started out on Hessle Audio?

Not long ago he released one of my favourite tracks of 2023: Crazy BBY. The signs were already there. Finally, the EP closer, was showing signs of a house infection. Since then his music veered more and more into tech-house. This year’s It’s Later Than You Think, for Amsterdam’s Dekmantel (who had a great run this year and might be collectively my favourite label of the year), was a fantastic dance album in its own right. An “album” for the DJs, late night parties, and big rooms.

And a mere three few months later Ploy dropped any pretense of techno and released The Flirt, a five track EP that is pure house. Just listen to something like Woman Thank You and try to not get your ass shaking and head nodding. I think with a lot of house music it’s easy to fall into cliché, which is why a lot of it is really banal. The kind of house I do like often ends up being created from those coming in from outside its bubble. Ploy did that, bringing in some of those post-dubstep production chops to make something fun and danceable. That’s the spirit of house, IMO, formed in gay and POC clubs in Chicago in the 80s, post-disco.

Lastly, here’s some bonus 2025 releases that I enjoyed a lot bringing the total list to 26. No specific order:

Romance in the Age of Adaptive Feedback - Unspecified Enemies (Numbers)
False Aralia (multiple releases)
Underloop - Lukid (Death Is Not The End)
Tranquilizer - Oneohtrix Point Never (Warp)
Life’s A Zoo - VHS Midnight Style (Mutualism)
City of Clowns - Marie Davidson (DEEWEE)
Crystal Cell Energy - VRIL (Kynant)
Aoyama Nights - Mariko Katsuragi (Memme Vaev)
Voice Wave - Pacific Coliseum and Teen Daze (Noire & Blanche)
Nept Polarisation - Xenia Reaper (XENOPLEX)
Locket - Shell Company (Accidental Meetings)
Implosion - The Bug and Ghost Dubs (Pressure)
SECULAR MUSIC - SEL.6 (Impacto)
Suspension of Belief - gyrofield (Kapsela)
Lick The Lens – Pt. 1 - Oli XL (Warp)

1. Metroid is on my mind lately, having beaten Metroid Prime 4 recently, and while I’ll save my thoughts on it I’ll say the (very prog??) soundtrack was one of its better aspects.
2. Beatrice M. had a prolific year: I preferred her go on Tectonic over her Tempa appearance.
3. Including one of the bigger singles of last year, “Bikini”, which was featured on Nick León’s album this year.
4. A label also known for its festival, Nyege Nyege Music Fest, whose most famous alumni is probably… Zohran Mamdani?
5. Features Jack Junior who had one of my earlier UKG revivalism favourites in the Sonic the Hedgehog garage vibes of “Tell Me.”
6. Not the only record released on Modern Love this year that feels like time has slowed: Debit - Desaceleradas.
7. 2562 followed it up with two more albums including Fever, a very different concept album which I loved, though these might be mired in some rights issues or something? They don’t seem readily available anymore.
8. Priori, and Cousin for that matter, didn’t make this list but it’s been a hugely productive year for the Montreal producer, label head, and collaborator, and he features on a lot of my “almost favourites”.
9. A whole lot of Bristolians on this list, and I didn’t even count Hodge who had some pretty good singles this year too.
10. Sorry, I went off. 4000 words? This likely gets cropped in your email client of choice but if not: thank you for being here and I hope you have a wonderful 2026.
11. I link to Bandcamp a lot here and had purchased a lot of music before, though times have been tough and lazy so Apple Music has been my primary go to. Try to support artists directly, I tell myself.