Top 20 electronic music albums of 2025: Central Processing Unit do it again with Noumen

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

Noumen: Altum (Central Processing Unit)

My top 20 albums of the year wouldn’t be a top 20 albums of the year without an album from those ever-reliable electro selectors Central Processing Unit. In previous annual lists, I have featured their artists Maelstrom, Silicon Scally, S>>D, Nadia Struiwigh and Proswell.

So here we have Noumen from Ukraine, who returns to CPU with an album of scrummy ambient techno. Let’s get the obvious out of the way first: There are definitely nods to old Autechre, particularly on the clatter of Telemask, the dark musicality of Fate Carette, and in the concrete snares of Far Wind.

With that out of the way, let’s see what makes Noumen so Noumen. On that latter track, the cold mechanics of the rhythm section are joined by layers of shiny synths until it becomes more about the melody than the Ae (it's what the cool kids call Autechre). And tracks like Splutter and Centrip are so brilliantly detailed and spidery.

The opening track Oion – and this is bold – runs for 15 minutes. It’s an airy ambient dub chug-a-long, really wonderful, its endless electro rhythm never giving up. It’s a real statement starting with a track that long. The message is clear: strap in or bugger off.

Can I just say, by the way, that I love Central Processing Unit’s commitment to binary. The catalogue number for this record is 10000010, binary for 130, and you’ll notice elsewhere in my end-of-year list Blackploid’s Cosmic Drama, which was their release before this one (10000001, or 129). I give then 1010 out of 1010.

See all of my Best electronic music albums of 2025