Top 20 electronic music albums of 2025: Soulwax crank up their happiness machine

This is part of a series, posting between 30th December 2025 and 3rd January 2026

Soulwax: All Systems Are Lying (Deewee / Because)

Here's another Top 20 Banger – one of my absolute favourite electronic music albums of 2025.

Nuclear oblivion is upon us, the government is going to deport trans people to the moon, and all the CEOs are snogging the wrong people at Coldplay concerts. The world has gone to hell in a handbasket. But all will be okay because Soulwax are back.

This is unashamedly a pop album. “Pop” in the sense of music style, and “pop” as in a graphical punch that hits you between the eyes. A Lichtenstein BAM! There are plonky pianos, daft synth fills, giddy bongos, sparky acid, and a track called Constant Happiness Machine.

Just listen to that wriggly acid bass on the dizzy title track All Systems Are Lying. It’s massive. It’s like Daft Punk on a week-long bender. It’s like Giorgio Moroder farting down a plughole. It’s like… wonderful.

The Dewaele brothers describe this as “a rock album made without any electric guitars.”  Like Led Zep with zaps. And yet despite its flairs and flourishes, there’s a simplicity at the heart of Systems. Modular synthesisers, live drums, some studio gubbins, but not a whole lot more. It’s the ideas that keep things busy.

The early Romans didn’t have a name for January and February. Do me a favour. During the dizzly misery of the coming winter weeks, during that long characterless slush before the flowers start budding again, pop this album on your record player and/or streaming device. Add a burst of Soulwax colour to your grey life.

Hell can keep its handbasket. It's just nice to have Soulwax back.

See all of my Best electronic music albums of 2025

Top 20 electronic music albums of 2025: Rainy Miller finds his catharsis in Joseph

This is part of a series, posting between 30th December 2025 and 3rd January 2026

Rainy Miller: Joseph, What Have You Done? (Fixed Abode)

Welcome to my top 20 favourite electronic music albums of 2025. These top 20 bangers are in a randomly selected order. No countdown, no number one, just 20 outstanding slabs of bleepy brilliance.

First to pop out of my tombola of top tunery is Preston's Rainy Miller. His latest album's name indicates the concept at work here: Joseph, What Have You Done? Overtones of Christ’s words “My God, why have you forsaken me?”

Joseph is almost uncategorisable. Sometimes it’s industrial noise, sometimes is folk whimsy, it’s confessional and reflective yet lacerated with Miller’s harsh “Northern gothic” aesthetic. And lacerated is the word.

The best representation of the yin and yang of this albus his Vengeance, his collaboration with High Vis vocalist Graham Sayle. For this piece, a pop hook vocal insists on holding its footing despite every attempt to get knocked down by a powerful avalanche of distorted drums. Think razor-wired Modeselektor. It’s brilliant.

There’s grave digging, A-roads, self-destruction, a Derbyshire dam, the documentary Searching For The Wrong-Eyed Jesus, a crucifixion witness,  and tracksuited teens. None of this is random: it all flows from the very gut of Miller. In my Electronic Sound interview with Miller in May 2025, he called the album a “catharsis”. Something that he had to do.

Don’t be fooled. This is not a religious album. It is about eternal themes and storytelling. And making a crap load of noise that is unlike anything else in this Top 20 Bangers list. Rainy, we see what you’ve done.

See all of my Best electronic music albums of 2025

Best electronic music albums of 2025: here's what I found in the Upside Down

This summary is part of a series, posting between 30th December 2025 and 3rd January 2026

We have almost finished the first tier of the best electronic music of 2025. One final summary blog post before we go to the Top 20 Bangers of the year. I say "we". It's me doing the work. You're just sitting there in your balloon-back armchair scoffing Pringles with half an eye on your Snapchats. This lot is filed under 'assorted', which is terribly helpful of me.

Anthony Naples – Scanners (ANS)

The sixth album from Incienso label boss Naples is a neat affair. Glorious head-bobbing house music, deceptively complex with a lot of production tweakery beneath those chilled vibes. In fact, the creation of Scanners followed an abandoned album edit with much bigger floorfillers. I'm glad we got this mellower cut.

Barry Can’t Swim – Loner (Ninja Tune)

A second album from the most summery, shiny DJ this side of the Shetlands. He's like Bonobo doing the Chemical Brothers, and whereas tracks like his O'Flynn collaboration Kimpton aren't ploughing new ground, it's all so very satisfying. A thoroughly entertaining listen. Barry's gonna work it out.

Carrier – Rhythm Immortal (Modern Love)

Modern Love spoil us yet again with a debut album of pitch-black ambient dub cuts. Found-sound clanks and clunk reverberate within expansive pools of sinister frequencies. It's like Photek has got lost in the Upside Down. The rhythms are truly immortal. There's an appearance from Voice Actor, who can be found elsewhere in this year's Best of 2025 lists.

Ehua – Panta Rei (3024)

I love the start of this album. Its shuffling, tentative stumbles make it feel it's crawled out of a London manhole in preparation for a chaotic night out full of skewed, tangled club tunes and lolloping electro. It's like she's lovingly assembled a music studio, then tipped everything out of the window: one of the most original albums in this year's roundup.

Introspekt – Moving The Center (Tempa)

Dubstep is alive, and it takes the form of this in-your-face debut album from Introspekt. I've tested the bass on my wub-ometer and it passes muster. She counteracts the shivery UK bass feelings with well-selected vocals: a gasp here, a scrap of lyrics there. "Dubstep" is reductive for such a sharp and varied selection: all of bass music is here.

Marie Davidson – City Of Clowns (Deewee)

I'm going to be controversial here. I think every major city should be home to at least fifteen thousand clowns. Clowns at the bus stops, clowns in the vape shops, clowns on yer mam's downstairs toilet. Clowns everywhere. Davidson's latest album is a tremendously fun parade of characterful electro and frisky dance pop. With Soulwax on production, this is a corker.

Nick León – A Tropical Entropy (TraTraTrax)

What do you do after winning Resident Advisor's best track of 2024 (for Bikini)? You produce this hazy collection of wonky dembow pop. Grab your suntan and your best flip flops: the South Florida vibes are strong. He's not alone in this party atmosphere: there are guests galore, including 96 Back, DJ Python, Loraine James and Chanel soundtracker Ela Minus. 

TurquoiseDeath – Guardian (Phantasia)

The bluey-green one completes his Univa trilogy with a transportive sweep of golden drum 'n' bass. It evokes the smokiest and most elevated moments of the genre, and isn't afraid to lay on a phat four-to-the-floor either. The album also represents the death of the TurquioseDeath project – I hope he resurrects himself, turquoise, maroon, puce or otherwise.

See all of my Best electronic music albums of 2025

Best electronic music albums of 2025: saw waves, queer life, and a steamy greenhouse

This summary is part of a series, posting between 30th December 2025 and 3rd January 2026

Here are some experimental highlights of 2025, and you can tell these albums are experimental because their titles contain words like "vortex" and "tranquilizer". This next bit will only make sense after you've read the text below. Altogether now: Bring our your dead! Bring out your dead!...

Aleksi Perälä – Vortex 1–4 + Cycles 0 (AP Musik)

If you ask Google how many albums Aleksi Perälä released in 2025, Google will explode. Fact. On New Year's Day, he released the understated Cycles 0. Then in the second half of the year, he released 15 albums all called Grace. The series mapped an electronic geography, from simple saw waves to Indian percussion. The whole thing was enchanting and you need Perälä in your life.

Dale Cornish – Altruism (The Death of Rave)

"Bring our yer dead! BRING OUT YER DEAD!" This disconcerting drawl is an uncomfortable start, which is good, because this is not a comfortable listen. Cornish gives us an album that is DIY in production and intention. The nihilism of its broken and rusty half-rave music is bravely undercut by his lysergic vocals full of truth about queer life.

Hieroglyphic Being – The Sound Of Something Ending (Mathematics)

In anyone else's hands, this would have been a deep house album. The Chigaco producer quickly sends things sideways with electro-jazz, horn-laden microhouse and psychedelic EBM. It feels like he's commandeered a studio, planked over the doors and windows, then poured boiling oil on anyone else who dare approach its boundary. Entertaingly original.

Holden & Zimpel – The Universe Will Take Care Of You (Border Community)

Border Community's James Holden is always up to something, like a disobedient child or a naughty poodle. He goes all kosmiche on this partnership with folk musician Waclaw Zimpel. This builds on their Long Weekend EP from a few years ago, and it's jazzy, loose, carnivalistic and earthy. What will he get up to next? Someone keep an eye on him.

Los Thuthanaka – Los Thuthanaka (self-released)

What did I just listen to? Bolivian-American brothers reimagine music of the Andes. The result is uncategorisable: it's scratchy and shuffling, but also epic and hysterical. Someone called it a trance album, but that's true only in so far as its exuberant clattering and deceptively subtle dynamism will induce a kind of psychosis.

Oneohtrix Point Never – Tranquilizer (Warp Records)

Mr Never is back doing his thing, this time plumbing sounds pulled from ancient sample CDs and CD-ROMs featured on the Internet Archive. Tranquilizer drags us into a steamy greenhouse of organic sounds, bursting with heady colours and with frequencies sprouting all over the place. It's all so precise, though, and intoxicating throughout.

rRoxymore – Juggling Dualities (!K7 Recordings)

This latest selection of 2025 albums have defied categorisation, and rRoxymore's third album is no exception. Opener Am I Human? could have been lifted from Global Communication's 76:14, while elsewhere it feels like motorik Detroit techno, library music, or jazzy coffee table electronica. She never takes an eye of melody.  

See all of my Best electronic music albums of 2025

Best electronic music albums of 2025:cyborging friendships with a bunch of techno tunes

This summary is part of a series, posting between 30th December 2025 and 3rd January 2026

Here is another Best 2025 Albums summary, grouped under the general heading of techno. I'm not sure it's the done things these days, what with colour TV and air fryers, but you really should be swinging your pants to every one of these albums.

Charlotte de Witte – Charlotte de Witte (KNTXT)

In 2025, Berghain DJ de Witte reached the peak of her powers. Lashings of critical acclaim and finally a debut album of floor-fracturing room-rattling bangers. Thudding acid techno, aerodynamic power mantras, colossal build-ups, tribal take-downs. And that constant slamming bass rhythm. I'm already regretting not including this in my final 20 albums.

DJ Bone – DJ Bone XXXV: The End of Never (Further)

Detroit comes on strong in this no-nonsense funky techno jams arising from his Further club night. Play They Flew Away. That beat is off the chain, that boss drum insistently nutting you in the face. It's full of soul too, and his work has been bigged up my Laurent Garnier and Carl Cox. Another chapter and another success for Detroit.

Hieroglyphic Being – Dance Music 4 Bad People (Smalltown Supersound)

Jamal Moss has two albums in my end-of-year list, in two different subgenres. This collection, which sees him joining the Smalltown Supersound label, is inspired by disappointment with the dancefloor. Good job, because there are few straight lines in this splashy, broken techno. An inventive and entertaining addition to his catalogue.

Paul St. Hilaire – w/ The Producers (Kynant Records)

The dude also known as Tikiman brings us a dubwise selection of foggy sound system techno. He's used a different producer on each track, including Timedance label boss Batu. He really is w/ the producers. St. Hilaire's voice echoes and ricochets throughout, adding to the whole nocturnal flavour of things. One to play as the daylight fades.

Sandwell District – End Beginnings (Point Of Departure)

After many years away, Regis and Female reform Sandwell District for a more human take on their usually severe techno. Amid those clockwork drum loops are screes of mechanical harmony. It's a cracking listen, and surprisingly listenable for a new audience. Spacey final track The Silent Servant is dedicated to their bandmate John Juan Mendez.

Slikback – Attrition (Planet Mu)

I think Slikback is my favourite music artist named after a hairstyle. His arrival on Planet Mu is noisy, wonky, playful and sometimes terrifying. Staccato rhythm onslaughts, strobing drum meltdowns, malfunctioning robot clankery, and hyper-footworkery that nearly made my trousers fall of. Not. A. Dull. Moment.

Valesuchi – Futuro Cercano (Discos Nutabe)

That last record was from Poland via Nigeria. Now we jet to Brazil, Chile and Portugal for the very international DJ Valesuchi. Her second album was made by "cyborging my friendship with the machine", which is a clever way of saying: a bunch of squiggly computer music, busy and bobbling beats, and cheeky melodic circuitary. It's like LFO gone YOLO. Ace.

See all of my Best electronic music albums of 2025

Best electronic music albums of 2025: poking my eyes out with a stick

This summary is part of a series, posting between 30th December 2025 and 3rd January 2026

I hope you're enjoying my end-of-year blog posts. There are a few more summaries to come, and then we can get into the Top 20 Bangers. This selection can be loosely labelled IDM, or armchair techno, or Braindance, or whatever the heck you want to call it. Oh and some of it is electro, not IDM. And some of it is... oh never mind, just get reading.

Blackploid – Cosmic Drama (Central Processing Unit)

German producer Blackploid has had a lot of fun with his latest album. Flirty drum machine patterns get hot and sweaty with growling basslines, with plenty of digital dramatics, Imagine a bunch of robots short-circuiting on the dancefloor. A touch of Drexciyan humanity in the enjoyably robotic world of Central Processing Unit.

Bogdan Raczynski – Slow Down Stupid (Disciples)

He's featured multiple times in my end-of-year lists. This is meant to be a slowed-down version of his 2024 album You’re Only Young Once But You Can Be Stupid Forever. So skippy noodlings become woozy soup, and everything becomes a bit of a ketamine entity. It's how I felt in my maths exams. Weirdly enjoyed learning the numbers and stuff, but the exams turned my brain to mush.

The Flashbulb – Papillon (self-released)

Let's pop Stateside to see what The Flashbulb is up to. This short album is a rather fluffy addition an otherwise intricate catalogue of works. The beats skip merrily, the synth lines dance about t he keyboard, and the nu-jazz vibes style it out with confidence. It's neat stuff and probably a good entry point for people wanting to get into IDM stylings.

µ-Ziq – 1979 & Manzana (Balmat)

These pair of Mike Paradinas albums were released a week apart, so I'll deal with them with one entry. This is µ-Ziq in contemplative mode, in with his signature melting-clock chords are even drippier than normal. Manzana in particular has some serious heroin haze, and if some of this work isn't used in horror soundtracks, I will poke my eyes out with a stick. Or a µ-Ztick.

Ship Sket – InitiatriX (Planet Mu)

In music's underbelly is the belly button itself: it's moist and mucky, and exactly where we find Manchester producer Ship Sket's debut album. Frequencies collide in this dark mix of grime, shattered techno and distended footwork. Listen to Casting Call's caustic EBM collapse into a circuit-bent piano disaster. You want to look away but you can't.

Wagon Christ – Planet Roll (De:tuned)

Hallelujah! Christ has returned! It's classic Luke Vibert, which, for those new to his formula, consists of party beats, end-of-the-pier synth wibbles, and a phalanx of playful vocal samples. "Bitch!" say the samples on Bitch. It's doesn't break new ground, but why should it? Vibert doing Vibert is a joy, and mid-album track Acid is up there as one of his bestest ever tunes

See all of my Best electronic music albums of 2025

Best electronic music albums of 2025: a carnival of ghosts and a lake of haddock

This summary is part of a series, posting between 30th December 2025 and 3rd January 2026

This is a summary of ambient albums released in 2025. For those unaware of ambient music, it's basically like normal music but everything's floating in space, or floating in water, or floating in spacewater, which is a kind of water I just made up. Enjoy.

Biosphere – The Way of Time (AD 96)

Veteran ambient producer Biosphere, Mr Sphere to you or me, dug into the past for his epic new album. It's inspired by twentieth century writer Elizabeth Madox Roberts, and his compositions take in a Beethoven string quartet, a 1951 radio adaptation and his usual rack of analogue gear. The vocal samples will give you goosebumps.

Debit – Desaceleradas (Modern Love)

Using old Sonido Dueñez DJ mixtapes, Debit brings us an album of cumbia rebajada, a Mexican subgenre of music in which everything is slowed down. Woozy. Lethargic. Flipping well spooked out. It's perhaps less haunting than her previous Modern Love output, and the closing title track sounds almost carnivalistic. Well. If the carnival was full of ghosts.

Loscil – Lake Fire (Kranky)

Nearly 400 million square kilometres of land burn in wildfires every year. It's a terrifying figure. So here comes Loscil with an album "celebrating life while the world burns". He presents the smoky drones of Ash Clouds, and the suffocating fumes of Candling. This is slow ambience, beautiful in its completeness, and so very hot, hot, hot.

Ø – Sysivalo (Sahko Recordings)

This is Mika Vainio's final work as Ø, finally completed eight years after his death. The title comprises the Finnish words for dark and light. There are plenty of shadows and shiny bits in its numerous short ambient tracks. Brooding and pensive, stardusted and heavenly. "Vainio's last word," says the press release. No, there's a lump in YOUR throat.

Pye Corner Audio – Lake Deep Memory (Quiet Details)

More grandiose ambient divination from the UK's most cinematic producer. This one was inspired by Guatemala's Lake Atitlán, the deepest lake in Central America. And it sounds like that lake. Extravagantly expansive, impossibly deep, gracefully sweeping and endlessly rippling And full of haddock. Probably. 

Steve Hauschildt – Aeropsia (Simul Records)

I don't think ambient music is allowed to have bangers, but this is as close as it gets. Hauschildt calls his seventh full-length album an ode to Chicago – he recently moved from there to Georgia (the country, not the state nor the hamlet in Cornwall). It's full of classical and house oomph. like Kiasmos if they were made from cotton wool. Fluffy bangers.

Whatever The Weather – Whatever The Weather II (Ghostly International)

Loraine James' introspective pseudonym is back. Again, all the tracks are temperatures, ranging from 1°C (brass monkeys, mate) to 26°C (ice baths in the supermarket car park). There are swathes of textures, homely chords, evocative chattering samples, and the occasional burst of popping and spotted micro-rave. All that an a brilliant opening line: "It's a bit chilly, innit."

See all of my Best electronic music albums of 2025

Best electronic music albums of 2025: the Chuckle Brothers, hotdogs and ketchup

This summary is part of a series, posting between 30th December 2025 and 3rd January 2026

I have this summary of 2025 albums filed under "assorted beats". I really should sack my filing clerk. It goes to show that labels are ultimately meaningless and should be avoided wherever possible, especially for a queer ENFP WASP like me. Oh. Wait...

The Bug vs Ghost Dubs – Implosion (Pressure)

This is a to-me / to-you alternating album, which is as far as the Chuckle Brothers comparison can go. The Bug is in a right huff, all grimacing bass synths and gasping ambience. Stuttgart's Ghost Dubs sounds even more subterranean: his contribution is so dubby and minimal, it's hardly there. Recommended as a headphone listen, preferably while carrying a piano up a staircase.

DJ Babatr – Root Echoes (Hakuna Kulala)

Welcome to raptor house, a genre of music composed by dinosaurs. Oh wait. That doesn't sound right. These frenetic club cuts, collated over the past couple of decades, are the sound of the Venezuela's club scene with massive chunks of UK rave and Eurodance thrown in for joyous measure. Sirens and screams and celebratory drums abound.

Ikonika – SAD (Hyperdub)

It's fifteen years since I first wrote about Ikonika ("more pow than Batman"), but I think this is the first time I've heard a vocal-led album. The beats are as smoky as ever, skipping through sub-genres like a boss, but the addition of her voice has led things in a - dare I say - poppier direction. A thing of beauty that, if released earlier in the year, may have ended up higher on my list.

Low End Activist – Airdrop II (Peak Oil)

The strangled rave calls that open this album sum things up. This is hardcore, but it's throttled to within an inch of its life. A bouncy laser bass drift aimlessly amid spacious ambience, junglist rhythms struggle to lift off amid ghostly synths, a fuzz bass is left on its own to slowly die. This is the dancefloor, but underneath the floorboards where there's dampness and cobwebs and all of rave's darkest secrets.

Mark Pritchard & Thom Yorke – Tall Tales (Warp Records)

From my Electronic Sound review: "Mark Pritchard of Global Communication fame doesn’t just illuminate as Yorke’s foil: he throws fireballs of blinding light. His analogue electronics stutter and spark, with ambience flowing like lava. Yorke appears as an addled narrator dragged, squinting and startled, into Pritchard’s midday sun."

Rian Treanor & Cara Tolmie – Body Lapse (Planet Mu Records Ltd)

I saw this performed live last year, and it was as fascinating as it was uncomfortable. Tolmie chatters and vocalises and yanks sounds from every inch of her body. Treanor accompanies this with machine-gun percussion and squirls of manic electronics. Incongruous Diva sounds like Bjork's Army Of Me on the other side of an apocalypse. 

Verses GT – Verses GT (LuckyMe)

I love a collaboration. Orbital and Kneecap; Leftfield and Lydon, hotdogs and ketchup. This meeting by Jacques Greene and Nosaj Thing is proper supergroup territory. Greene brings the melody, Thing brings the darkness, and somewhere in this middle is this pleasing, melancholic creation. Vocals from the likes of George Riley and Tyson add an r'n'b sheen.

See all of my Best electronic music albums of 2025