The result was a year dominated by instrumental music. Jazz trios, electronic experimentalists, film composers, minimalist icons — apart from three tracks on the first album, and some choir vocals on the Steve Reich recording, not one of my favorite albums this year features traditional vocals. Partly that's just where my tastes have drifted, and partly it's that the human voice started to feel like an intrusion on whatever headspace I was trying to protect this year.
Album of the Year
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- Tom Skinner Kaleidoscopic Visions
Sons of Kemet hasn’t done much for me, and I’ve been consistently underwhelmed by The Smile. But I’ve found Skinner’s sophomore full-length to be a profoundly moving record, an arresting balance of compositional brilliance and off-the-cuff creativity. The production immediately grabbed me, while it took the music multiple listens to really work its way into my psyche. Rich, diverse, and simultaneously very familiar yet totally fresh. Skinner proves restraint is its own kind of virtuosity. If you’ve ever enjoyed a David Axelrod record, you will probably love this. I’ll be going back to it for years to come.
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- Tortoise Touch
It’s been nine years since The Catastrophist, and one of my all-time favorite bands returns having apparently spent the interim becoming even more Tortoise than before. There’s a sense that they have agreed to stop trying to prove anything, which paradoxically makes this their most confident statement since highwater mark TNT. Grooves that once seemed cerebral now feel inevitable, like math problems that solved themselves while you slept.
The Necks Disquiet
Over three hours of the amazing Australian jazz trio finding infinite variations on energetic stasis. Lloyd Swanton's bass becomes tectonic, Tony Buck's percussion suggests rainfall on a tin roof in some place you've never been, and Chris Abrahams makes the piano forget it has hammers. Ambient music for people who think ambient music is lazy, and jazz music for people who think jazz music is boring.
Oren Ambarchi, Johan Berthling & Andreas Werliin Ghosted III
This Australian-Swedish collaboration continues mapping terrain between krautrock's motorik pulse and whatever it is Ambarchi hears in his sleep. Their third album finds them tightening the screws rather than expanding the canvas, delivering disciplined minimalism that rewards patience and punishes the skip button. My favorite of their three albums, and on certain days I’d call it my favorite of the year.
Moses Yoofee Trio MYT
German composer/pianist leads his trio through electronic-tinged post-bop territory with regular detours into something stranger. Their chemistry is evident, the interplay intuitive, and they have one of the best drummers I’ve heard in a while. Kind of like they got into a room and said “Let’s just take the coolest 10 seconds Radiohead ever recorded and do that for a whole album.”
SML How You Been
On their second album in as many years, this LA jazz “supergroup” quintet funnels a series of live improvisations through a post-production blender to blur lines between live and in-studio, between jazz and electronic, between afrobeat and psychedelia. Utterly thrilling stuff.
Jeremiah Chu & Marta Sofia Honer Different Rooms
More a collection of motifs than songs, it plays like acoustic-synth Chamber music for people raised on Eno but educated by Feldman. Chu's piano and Honer's viola occupy adjacent spaces that only occasionally overlap — hence the title, which doubles as compositional method (they would track and edit their parts in adjacent studios and fly tracks back-and-forth). Musical alignment ebbs and flows, but when they do find each other, the recognition feels wholly earned and very unique.
Jasmine Myra Rising
I find this album by the British composer/saxophonist/flautist to be very healing; the six tracks seem born of a place of joy, peace, and love. Myra leads the album as a composer first and foremost, never letting her instrument overtake the band, suggesting a statement on cultural/communal harmony. Sneakily spiritual.
Gregory Uhlmann, Josh Johnson, Sam Wilkes Uhlmann Johnson Wilkes
These three LA studio session regulars make an electronic jazz record that sounds like a lazy Sunday afternoon feels: unhurried, dappled, alive to small pleasures. They seem to share an affinity for funneling their instruments through digital effects, but it’s never to excess. It announces the overall vibe in the very first notes and never leaves that space.
Okonski Entrance Music
Jazz keyboardist Steve Okonski takes the basic formula of the Vince Guaraldi Trio and tucks it into an LES nightclub after the crowd has gone home. There’s something so effortlessly cool about this album, like watching Down by Law for the first time when you’re 17 and intuiting there’s a whole world of hipness out there that you had a hunch about, but had yet to actually experience.
Floating Points Lazarus (OST)
Sam Shepherd scores some Adult Swim animated show I’ve never seen, delivering an album that may feel like a minor entry compared to his regular output, but also looser and more carefree than he’s ever been. A great argument for “Floating Points should try a rock record,” and a fun, lighthearted chaser after last year’s staggering Cascade.
Le Grand Partir Super Star
Who the hell is this band?! I have no idea! Some French experimentalists making whatever this is — call it afro-cuban-adjacent, or maybe math-Mande with commitment issues. The ambition occasionally exceeds the execution, but their reaching is half the pleasure. I wish I could be in a band JUST like this.
Anouar Brahem After the Last Sky
Apparently this Tunisian oud master is turning out his best work at 67? I’d never heard of him before, but this sounds neither nostalgic nor diminished. Terrific balance of “somber world music” vibes and Western jazz. Downright haunting at times.
Patricia Brennan Of the Near and Far
Mexican-born composer and percussionist Patricia Brennan has released an album that balances density and opacity against striking moments of openness and beauty. I'll often get lost in some passage with the feeling of "How did we get here exactly?" And then I'm released into these clear-eyed, exultant melodies. Surprises abound.
Steve Reich Jacob's Ladder/Traveler's Prayer
At 88, Reich has stopped adding and started distilling. The religious texts get the phasing treatment, the patterns phase and realign, and somehow it still sounds like discovery rather than habit. Minor Reich is still major almost-anyone-else. My favorite work of his since 2006’s Daniel Variations.
Johnny Greenwood One Battle After Another OST
Radiohead's guitarist continues his transformation into our most reliable film composer. The instruments all do what they tend to do in Greenwood's hands: they worry, they surge, they refuse comfort. But to my ears, this is the first soundtrack of his that stands on its own two legs without the movie playing on top of it.
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- Twice “Strategy” KPOP Demon Hunters OST
My daughter is old enough now that we’ve enjoyed lots of songs together, but this is the first one that she brought to me that I really responded to. The album was inescapable for her friends this summer, but leave it to me to hone in on this mid-album deep cut: Hooks are stacked on top of hooks to dizzying effect, to be periodically interrupted by an irresistibly sexy Prince-style keyboard chord. Brilliant pop songwriting.
Older records that dominated my year for one reason or another.
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- The Beatles In Mono [Box Set 1963-1970]
I was incredibly lucky to score a limited repressing of the Beatles' In Mono box set this year. Paired with the Anthology re-release and finally watching the Get Back documentary, my Beatlemania reached a fever pitch. The pressings are immaculate; hearing these songs the way they were originally mixed, in mono, on vinyl this clean, felt like meeting the band for the first time.
Tears for Fears The Hurting (1983)
I'd never actually listened to the Tears for Fears debut, and had no idea The Hurting was the missing link between post-punk anxiety and the moody pop band they became. My local record store owner pushed me to buy the half-speed master without having heard a note. This doesn't sound like "Everybody Wants to Rule the World"; it sounds like someone having a panic attack in a very expensive studio. Roland Orzabal was 21 years old and writing songs about primal scream therapy. Wild f’n record.
Tchaikovsky The Nutcracker (1892)
My kid was in The Nutcracker this year, which meant late-night rehearsals nearly every night for three weeks with the local orchestra on site. A piece of music I've known well for years became something else entirely; it's now a desert island pick for me, possibly my favorite expression of pure melody I've ever heard. Funny how context can do that.
Jameson Nathan Jones Somewhat the Same (2022)
Jameson Nathan Jones is a Nashville session guy who's played with everyone from Sturgill Simpson to Margo Price, and Somewhat the Same is his solo debut: instrumental guitar music that splits the difference between Bill Frisell's Americana and the contemplative side of Tortoise. It sounds like driving through open country with nowhere to be.
Bill Smith with Shelly Manne, Jim Hall & Monty Budwig Folk Jazz (1961)
Nels Cline highlighted this as a touchstone album, during his “What’s In My Bag?” clip for Amoeba Record. Folk Jazz is exactly what it says: West Coast jazz musicians playing folk standards with brushes and so much taste. The kind of record that makes you want to pour a drink and do nothing else. Transportive.
The Oscar Peterson Trio We Get Requests (1964)
We Get Requests is Oscar Peterson at his most crowd-pleasing, which means ridiculous virtuosity delivered with a shrug.
Radian & Howie Gelb Radian Verses Howie Gelb (2014)
Radian Verses Howie Gelb is a great record that no one's heard: Viennese post-rock instrumentalists backing a guy who sounds like Tom Waits if Tom Waits moved to Tucson and mellowed out (which is basically what happened).
There are a few releases that came onto my radar just in the last couple weeks that I’m still unsettled on, but that I think are worth at least one spin if you like any of the stuff from above:
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- Secular Music Group Volume 2
https://loveallday.bandcamp.com/album/volume-2
Audio Book Club Born Loser
Fergus McCreadie The Shieling
https://fergusmccreadie.bandcamp.com/album/the-shieling
There were a handful of solid B-grade albums which struck a chord for a few weeks, but sort of fell by the wayside as time went on. All great music, but slightly below the other stuff for one reason or another.
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- Ancient Infinity Orchestra It’s Always About Love
Charlie Crockett Dollar a Day
Cory Hanson I Love People
Billy Mohley (feat. Jeff Parker, Damion Reid, and Devin Daniels) The Eternal
Phi-Psonics Expanding to One
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- 2025 was the year I went full analog audiophile masochist. I dropped some significant coin on a fancy turntable/tone arm/cartridge, only to spend the next six weeks chasing ground loops and switching noise through my system like some kind of electrical detective. Turns out high-end permalloy cartridges and tube gear create the perfect storm for hum. After countless hours with a multimeter, resistor experiments, and learning more about grounding than any sane person should, I finally achieved those inky black silences. Between the analog warmth and digital curation, I took control of how I listen this year — and what I found was worth the effort.
Music I’m excited about as we’re getting into the new year…
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- Dry Cleaning Secret Love
The first A+ album of the year has already arrived, IMO. I had heard of them before, but never felt compelled to listen until I learned that Cate Le Bon had produced their new one. It would be easy to make the claim that this album plays like a Le Bon side project, except that their previous work makes it clear it’s more of a “match made in Heaven” scenario between band and producer; they play to each other’s strengths incredibly well.
And after spending the past year steadily recoiling from singers and their try-hard lyrics, Florence Shaw’s dispassionate musings on the numbing effects of algorithm-driven capitalism hit me right in the strike zone of my head space: Here’s a singer who gets me, who understands a certain lived experience in our modern age, and knows how to articulate it atop the spastic post-punk of her gnarly backing band.
International Anthem
Five of the albums I listed above came from this Chicago-based label that celebrated their 11th year in business in 2025 by rolling out one new album each month; four quarterly bundles of those same albums, beautifully packaged and pre-sold with a certain air of mystery and suspense; a bunch of vinyl represses of their best stuff from their archives (bearing the “IA11” graphic on the sleeve, for anyone keeping track); and a consistently active social media presence. Oh, and they happened to poach my beloved Tortoise from Thrill Jockey, too.
It’s difficult for me to fathom that an indie record label could function as anything other than a labor of love in our current distributed environment, but somehow, against the odds, I’m willing to bet this label actually turned a profit by tripling down on quality music sourced from a community of people they clearly care deeply about. I can’t wait to see what they release in 2026, and I’ll listen to every single album at least once.
https://intlanthem.bandcamp.com/
Peter Gabriel o\i
Following on the heels of 2024’s phenomenal i/o album(s), Gabriel is returning with the 2026 followup o\i. The so-called “Dark-Side Mix” of the first single “Been Undone” was released a couple weeks ago, and he plans to follow the same release schedule as i/o: A new single every full moon, an alternate mix every half moon (Dark-Side mixes by Tchad Blake, Bright-Side mixes by Mark “Spike” Stent), with the album proper arriving right at the end. This is a so-called “Blue Moon” year, with 13 full moons instead of the usual 12; so going by the lunar calendar, we can expect an album sometime between late November and late December.
PJ Harvey
In her most recent newsletter, she announced she’s back in the studio! No other details as of yet, but I love 2023’s I Inside the Old Year Dying (though I do hope she returns to a more conventional song structure, only because some of the best songs on the last one were dreadfully short).
My kid’s music
No idea what this might entail, but the connection we formed over KPOP Demon Hunters was incredibly fun. Here’s hoping she continues to introduce me to music that is both fun and interesting.
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- There’s so much great music being created right now, and the effort it’s taken for me to find stuff that sticks has been totally worth it. I still lurk OB occasionally, so keep posting your recommendations guys (especially Spenno, kreng, zeb, and Higgs).
