This is part of a series, posting between 30th December 2025 and 3rd January 2026
John Tejada: The Watchline (Palette Recordings)
Not that you’ll be bothered if you’re reading this in the future, but my Top 20 Bangers of 2025 blog posting has slowed down. It’s New Year’s Day and I’m staggering through the minutes like a tortoise in molasses.
Tejada describes his new album as “a place between memory and forgetting, between land and ocean, between who we were and who we’re becoming.” The last time I was in a between place was between Warrington and Runcorn because the train had broken down. I’m getting PTSD.
This one was a surprise. I was expecting something more straightforward. Headlights on, barrelling down the house freeway, 100 miles per hour. But this is way more subtle, with scurries of intricate percussion embedding rather beautifully into rich, fluttering IDM melodies.
It’s unfair to compare an artist too much to others, but I’m sniffing this album and I’m getting notes of Jon Hopkins, Massive Attack, Elrich Schnauss, Boards Of Canada and Plaid. The latter was a brilliant melancholic foil on their 2024 single Bittersweet.
His drum programming is pristine, and positive dazzles when he takes on breakbeats, namely on the similarly named Until The End Of The World (skippy, celebratory) and Until The Light Bends (insistent, urgent).
Another flashback to my aborted travel on the way to, as it happens, a writing weekend. On that halted train journey, I got a free packet of crisps and a Coke. This is a much better inbetween place, and if it’s a sign of things to come, you need to add John Tejada to your playlists.
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