This is part of a series, posting between 30th December 2025 and 3rd January 2026
Tim Reaper – sfs (self-released)
Let’s have another top 20 album of 2025. You wait a year for one, and then 20 come at once.
Sometimes it’s nice to have a change, like eating a chicken & mushroom Pot Noodle instead of the usual tapioca & cheese flavour. Tim Reaper has done a similar thing, although with music noodling, not with… well, you get the idea. For this album, he has veered away from the jungle stylings featured on 2024’s In Full Effect with Klondike – see last year’s best-of list.
But does this change work? Has he fluffed it on sfs? Or has he entered exciting new territory? It’s good news. The bloke is such a genius, he could release a mumble rap album and still make it one of the most listenable albums of the year.
It’s treat after treat after treat. Buzzy balaeric chords meet hyper-pop vocals on Haribo. A rolling samba parade sways and morphs on Native Land. The dubwise Weathered spins all over the place.
The cover of sfs depicts a boy – presumably a young Tim – making tunes with a Winnie The Pooh Play-along Piano Book. It suggests a childlike approach – playfulness, first principles, not taking things too seriously.
In fact, by self-releasing this album on Bandcamp for free, it’s almost like Reaper wasn’t taking the album too seriously. Not a core project. A DVD extra for the fans. However, this deserves to be considered as one of his most entertaining works. That boy is prodding those Play-along buttons hard.
This is all first-draft quality, so can we please forget about that tortured Pot Noodle metaphor? Thanks.
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