2025 in Review
Here's my '2025 in review', I hesitate to call it the 'best of 2025' or similar because I think that using superlatives like that just make the lists below subject to aging poorly when I inevitably discover some other thing or change my mind about the value I've given something I've omitted here.
Everything is listed alphabetically
AlbumsPopular Music
This year a good pal of mine, Sean Goldring, who I had met through the local venue of Wharf Chambers had dropped a bunch of older records on Bandcamp. This release comprises of a pair of washed out fuzzy tracks that I think are emblematic of Sean's work. Hearing chemistry with his father on this record is also just heartwarming for me.
This is probably the best straight-up 'pop' record released this year, Jim Legxacy is one of the few people who have managed to pull off what I can see across a lot of 'underground' acts who pull from multiple influences; this record is one of the very few that actually acheive the synthesis of genres across the record. It's clear that Jim has actually lived and understands every style he utilises across the record, as opposed to other record where it feels like the aesthetic surface-level is what's being taken from genre / style.
Only a sick and twisted mind could imagine Calabria 2007 through a fairground organ. Through the whole piece we hear the idea of a 'global pop' through the lens of this highly-regionalised celebration of the Mummer's play which I think is an interesting concept. There's a woozy feeling across the whole thing too that leads to a bit of an unsettling tone but ultimately this is just good old fun.
It's hard to describe what Takemura does in his work I think, he often ends up making this sort of world that you picture yourself to be the size of a small insect in, there's an immense sense of scale and the cosmic in his work. Takemura is, I think, obsessed with the idea of childhood wonder and innocence in that way, but it never comes off as particularly trite in any of his work. Though I must admit using the text-to-speech voice that is associated with 'Carmen Winstead' took me out of a bit.
I was quite late to this one I think, it's right up my alley the obvious comparisions are to people like Arto Lindsay in his 'Noon Chill' era, or Arthur Russell's folky pop archival releases, or perhaps Richard Dawson. It does feel like Sam Amidon has created his own voice seperate to that though. Bit of a shame the album cover is relatively uninsipring because this is a truly lush listen.
School Fair are a band who I think could really make it properly big and this album is perhaps more mature than their previous Gorse on a Hill. Nothing not to like from an 'indie rock' perspective. Best guitar tone on record for a long time.One of the rare few instances of this poetic spoken-word delivery that really just works.
As a collaboration this makes a lot of sense as it comes to 'soft' sounding pop music, this album does end up cutesy sounding perhaps. It’s nice to hear Tenniscoats with the synth chops of Shabason, think it works nicely. Clearly a lot of lyrical similarities between Krgovich and Tenniscoats, feels similar to Tenniscoat’s collaboration with Jad Fair but much more sincere and soft. The My Bloody Valentine cover really seals this as something special.
It is perhaps a bit of a joke that there's a cabal of Danish female pop musicians releasing music that is extremely popular online, Smerz seems like another in that lineage. They take more from the Dean Blunt and Inga Copeland world than some of the other acts out of Denmark recently. What struck me most about this record is the restraint in production, especially around the vocals; the overproduction of vocals is one of my pet peeves in popular music right now.
Completely anachronistic glitch-pop, clearly inspired by the likes of Sweet Trip but wow they just pull it off incredibly well. Super clean and polished production all round.
Back in 2020 I was addicted to Iceblink's Carpet Cocoon for very similar reasons to liking this probably, very cozy and slightly melancholy album. Lots of soft blown wind, and to really hook me in a distantly sung song to round out the album. Similar to Foam this is a show that the more ‘ambient’ approach to music doesn’t have to be boring or formless.
I can't really comment too much on the current scene of internet-footwork but this seems like a pretty good show of collaboration by username. Big bass all the usual footwork goodies with insane samples some unreal and ethereal moments.
Can't remember where this one came up, maybe a YouTube reccomendation but this is a properly put together rock album with pretty mature sounding songwriting. Really a bit of a hidden gem, looks like the singer's been around since the 90s self-releasing music in Canada.
Unpopular Music
There’s a bunch to be said about labour here I think, how can we reconcile the tradition of the working song when our labour has turned to be mostly intellectual at least in the West and Global North? Perhaps something like this, Ciaran interprets these ‘old songs’ as if through a sampler. The cut-up half-remembered nature speaks to our cultural memory of these songs that were so important for people not so long ago.
I’m not sure I’m supposed to have this but it was the tour CD from Duncan’s trip to the US. It was split between this and his other release this year but I think this hit the spot for me a bit more, slightly more trashy sounding. Both are great though!
Schmid still baffles me to some extent but this album had a very intense psychoacoustic effect on me upon hearing it that made it ‘click’. I’ve always been interested in this idea of ‘sonification’ of mathematical ideas, I’ve never been one for topology but the concept here does interest me.
Through this record there are a bunch of hard cuts, it’s relentless and harsh as any noise wall. Equally this is the closest to reproducing a sort of head-tone that I experience at least with these sort of sustained high-pitch sounds of constructive / destructive interference (which I assume is mostly down to Vasco on the gaita de fole). We’ve heard a lot of music composed with the pipe organ ‘beating’ in mind but the relatively small-scale of this really cuts through any of the baggage the pipe organ as an instrument might have. The second side is much more focused on continuous sound and this effect is brought out more. Obviously Seymour as a player has a lot of focus on physicicallity and it shows here too.
van Houdt is definitely the best performer on record for Frey’s (piano) stuff. After having seen the Frey at 70 day at HCMF, I’ve always been a fan. There’s a stillness and gentleness to the title piece, but the performances of Klavierstück 1 and the Klavierstück arrangements are heavenly.
KD had a bunch of good releases this year but I think this one is probably the one I’d say shows Kieran’s style the most. It’s pretty straight jazz with some fairly recognisable songs, in this you can see his style seperate from the solo monophonic guitar. I think this is probably the Daly record I reccomend to people who want to understand him.
Luciano is one of the few people on the circuit who I feel has the gall to question music in a way worth consideration, there’s a real theoretical bent to what he puts out. Seeing him play live invites you into this questioning.
I won’t pretend to care about the intricacies of the arrangements for just intonation versions of Bach. Presented are some adaptations of solo violin pieces of Bach that have had a second violin part added and the harmonic potential here has expanded too. It’s an interesting way to hear Bach outside of what I think can be quite a chinkstrokey purist scene around the composer.
Hannah is a real trooper of the scene, and I think a quite underrated one. Between even just this this and the Christian Rock stuff there’s already a strong body of work. Hannah’s work as a poet shines through, plus the instrumentals are really well executed weirdo appalachian-style black metal. The obvious comparision is perhaps Caroliner but this is more brooding than that, more sinister but there are still moments of levity to keep it from being too stern.
I couldn’t care less about the Weeks interludes (this is something that Another Timbre seems to insist on doing for a lot of releases, for some reason) on this album but what you have here is a plain and simple set of good recordings of 16th century Belgian music.
It’s hard to make this sort of autobiographical / autofictional stuff work, but Russell captures the home counties suburban dread, it feels very current; extremely personal as well. The phrase ‘Back to the Womb’ ends up having this mythical quality across the work in a really literary way, slightly eldritch perhaps.
There have definitely been a couple of attempts at bringing ‘sound poetry’ into the digital world (also of note is Kieran Daly’s new release) but I think Hao’s take on this album is one of the few that succeed in an interesting way sonically (there’s only so much default text-to-speech one can take). Because it chooses to approach tweaking more technical parameters in the mechanical speech the work takes on an uncanny quality where strange modulations in the vocals occur that aren’t really possible for a human to achieve.
I think what draws me to [ahmed] over my distaste for the old ‘free jazz’ is that they’ve kinda dissolved the egotistical nature of some other bands. There really aren’t many full-sized jazz bands going in the UK that have this sort of energy and hype behind them. I don’t want to be too negative about contemporary jazz anyways, here’s a band that’s full of energy and doing something that is direct and immediate.
Gigs
I am so happy we could get the crew from Aloe Records & Zoomin’ Night over, and it was perfect timing for them given their recent hype. All three of the musicians have such a refreshing take on music. Yizhou said that Wharf Chambers was the biggest soundsystem he’d played on in his life! Something about the Beijing scene of musicians lets them use space in such an interesting way, perhaps because of the lack of it back home.
Yizhou asked me for a couple of glasses, so I went behind the bar and got a couple of straight half-pint glasses he was using with a stirrer bars and ping-pong balls. He asked me if he could buy them! Some talk later and he had taken ownership of them. They seem to have made it back to China!
This gig ended up being some inspired curation from me I think, Shuoxin Tan joined last minute to the bill and really ended up rounding out the whole thing. Yan Jun stayed at my house two nights and we had some nice food as well as him constantly stocking me with tea in the daytime.
Overall though we saw such a good range of performance on the night, from Lewys’ dance-comedy-soliloquy, Lovely Honkey’s self-deprecating cut up tape with a side of daytime TV and grime, Kieron’s synth work, Shuoxin Tan’s minimal laptop work, and Yan Jun feedback-heartbeat body control.
Kieran Daly is a legend in every way, nuff said.
The Haptic lot are proper gents and this was just a gig that went smoothly, great music was played, good conversation was had. I played a nice set, Hell on Hearth played a set based on a second-long sample, and Haptic were just beautiful.
Just a good old bit of fun. Adam brought some Velvet Underground jokes, and explained them until they weren’t funny anymore. I was also really struck with Robin’s performance, there was a such a conviction to his concept of ‘rummaging’. When his hands turned black from a disintegrating shoe would have been when I felt a bit icky and stopped but he carried on for another 10 minutes or so
Not much to say about this, a bunch of musicians I’d wanted to see for a while. Met a lot of people who I’d only talked to online for a while. Hung out with Rory Salter and Julian Weaver a bit. Saw Vanessa Rossetto and Pat Thomas play some amazing sets, as well as a handful of other interesting music. Kinda shows what a music festival for this sort of stuff could be with a bit of money behind it eh.
Popular Music got in touch asking for a Free Music Lessons Gig, but I don’t put on bands for that act. I was looking for support slots with Clothes Horse, one of my other bands so I agreed to organise the gig, I’m so glad I did in the end! Zac and Prudence put on such a good show! Also we had a supergroup of Sean Goldring, Rose Ho, and Sean’s Dad Joe Goldring (who was in Swans back in the 90s) put on a banger of a set. Just one of those gigs where you’re reminded why you are invested in music, community and artistry coming together.
Me and Will Burroughs set up an ‘experiment-all’ open mic night earlier this year and it’s been amazing to see the response from the community. Within the year we’ve seen a lot of people get on stage for the first time in front of people and perform some truly engaging and exciting acts. More next year, stay tuned!
Books
I read these books this year:
- David Foster Wallace - Infinite Jest
Don Delilo - Mao II
Italo Calvino - If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller
Thomas Pynchon - Gravity’s Rainbow
Rafael Chirbes - On the Edge
Olga Tokarczuk - Flights
Italo Calvino - Cosmicomics
Mary Shelly - Frankenstein
and I am currently reading: Thomas Pynchon - V
Breweries
Having the chance to visit these breweries in Belgium was amazing and truly special, seeing how some of the greatest beer in the world is made and meeting some of the staff and patrons was a highlight of my trip to Belgium. There I tried Oerbier for the first time which was truly special.
It’s not often that you step into somewhere that makes you feel truly at home, me and my brother visited St Mars of the Desert in Sheffield and after sticking our head through the black curtain at the entrance were immediately greeted with open arms. The husband and wife who run the place are amazing and the beers they produce are both world-class and idiomatic. It’s definitely worth a visit if you’re in the area.
Baron is by far the best brewer of the modern style of hazy IPA in the UK, having it so close to your hometown means you need to visit it every now and then right? Always a great time with usually my brother and Mum. Nothing phoned in here with the beers, it’s clear there’s passion.