Best electronic music albums of 2025: deeply dubby about Neapolitan ice cream

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

My 2025 highlights continue. Here are bunch of albums I have categorised under "experimental", which is a cop-out way of saying "assorted genres but let's not get too hung up on labels, yeah?". Despite my laziness, it is still an excellent summary, and you should get these albums down your ears.

Adrian Sherwood – The Collapse Of Everything (On-U Sound)

Despite its apocalyptic title, Sherwood's first solo album since 2012's Survival & Resistance is an uplifting affair. It's got lashings of deeply dubby delights, more than a few jazzy soiree moments, and Brian Eno pops up on production duties for one track. The most fun moment is Spaghetti Best Western, which I guess is better than a Brown Rice Britannia.

Barker – Stochastic Drift (Smalltown Supersound)

It's nice to have Barker back for a second album. His music is sometimes called "post-club", which means chilled dance music rather than an enthusiast organisation dedicated to the Royal Mail. He keeps thinks clean and minimal, shifting and shiny, and thoroughly emotional throughout. The very definition of a headphone listen.

In Transit: In Transit (Felt)

Oh hello there. Dave Huismans appeared in two previous end-of-year blog posts: as his alias A Made Up Sound in 2016, and as 2562 way back in 2019. Nice to have him back. This album has only just come out, and develops his ex_libris work into an even deeper, duskier ambience. You'll get lost in the smokiness and the speckles of it all.

Josef Tumari – Dubovaya (DSL System)

All the way from Tashkent comes a killer collection of ambient dub, slamming house and spiritual breaks. Sublimation Collective's Josef Tumari gives us a real pick 'n' mix here, but that's part of the charm:. Once a groove lock in, it's truly transportive: his sounds and vocal use is never less than hypnotic. I'm off to check some Uzbek playlists.

Lyra Pramuk – Hymnal (7K!)

Techno, folk and classical music collide in a tasty Neapolitan ice cream mix for Pramuk's second album. The building blocks for this album are wild: a German classical music quartet, the poet Nadia Marcus, the I Ching, the artist Jenna Sutela, slime moulds, and some nifty CDJ work. Yes, I said slime moulds. Yet again, her vocal work is on point.

Powell – We Do Recover (Diagonal Records)

We do indeed recover. This album was collated over an eight-year period, finally achieving form after Powell lost a friend to suicide. This tragic loss forms one of the themes here, and it feels like an experimental producer working things out in real time. There are moments of contemplation, of grief, of darkness, of wonky piano and broken circuits.

See all of my Best electronic music albums of 2025

Top ten best electronica albums of 2009: part one of three

This is part one.   
For part two, click here. 
For part three, click here. 

10 - Telefon Tel Aviv -  Immolate Yourself

This band started 2009 with two momentous events: the death of Charles Cooper and the release of this third studio album. Such tragedy overshadowed a great album full of 1980s analogue confidence - and curtailed what would have been a fascinating future for the pair.

I called Immolate Yourself "insubstantial" back in January, but you have to lie back and let yourself be overtaken by it. One moment it is channelling the ghost of the Pet Shop Boys, while the next moment it could be Brian Eno in a cavern or the Human League on GHB.

It was unashamedly pop: check the new wave joy of Helen Of Troy. Buy it from Bleep or Boomkat.

9 - Lone - Ecstacy And Friends

My computer speakers can't cope with Lone's new album, as I mentioned here just a few weeks ago. Maybe my old cobwebby PC just has a function in it that cannot cope with anyone who grabs Boards Of Canada, rubs them up against Bibio and produces a beats album that gave Hudson Mohawke a run for his money.

This was Nottingham boy Lone's difficult third album: a lush, poly-rhythmic long player that, t'be honest, struggled to be heard amongst all the other rhythm-reapers of 2009. It's difficult to exorcise the washing repetitions of Waves Imagination, or to brush off to smooth, silkiness of the future party track To Be With A Person You Really Dig.

Get some good speakers, then listen to Waves Imagination (Goldies Timeless without the d 'n' b, anyone?) Buy it from Bleep or Boomkat or Piccadilly.

8 - Lukid - Foma

Luke 'Lukid' Blair's sophomore long-player took the foundations laid by Autechre and Eno and blew them wide open. Foma was this year's first essential electronica album, and it sounds even better knowing what albums came after from other artists in 2009.

This is utterly in the vein of classic electronic music (it is the sound of a man playing with his machines into the wee hours of the night). The crunchy wooziness seemed to stretch it out into something new, until the sound was more ambient than a dialling tone. The buzzing anticipation of the first 30 seconds of Slow Hand Slap are better than most albums this year.

Have a listen to Fall Apart, and while you're doing that, buy it from Boomkat or Piccadilly.

7 - 2562 - Unbalance

Dubstep inspired by Detroit techno? This was the unlikely starting-point for 2562, whose Unbalance was a rhythmic, deep follow-up to his much acclaimed 2008 debut Ariel. Of course, dubstep is a tired genre, and this album was in danger of being swept under the dancefloor. Indeed, I didn't even feature it on this here website.

But listen! The pounding Flashback was a nuclear missile aimed squarely at your feet, while the reverberating saw bass of Like A Dream or the snapping loops on Yes/No reminded you this was music for the head too. How could you ignore it? 2562's Unbalance was a triumph.

Have some trippy Love In Outer Space. Buy Unbalance from Bleep or Boomkat or Piccadilly.

6 - Harmonic 313 - When Machines Exceed Human Intelligence

More than most on this list, Harmonic 313 succeeded in carving out a very particular furrow this year. By the time When Machines Exceed Human Intelligence came out at the start of the year, Harmonic 313's solid techno sound was already recognisable.

Don't get distracted by the Speak and Spell novelty value: there is true feeling here. I rather pretentiously described Harmonic 313 as a "siren song of a cyborg" calling from some distant shore. It's not. It's just great subwoofer-friendly dance techno (check the bass on Cyclotron!) churned out by one of the best ambient producers of the past 20 years

Quandrant 3 is quite lovely and brilliant. Once you've listened to that, purchase the LP from Bleep or Boomkat or Piccadilly.

The top five will be on this site from tomorrow...

Not quite in the top ten (part one)

I never claim this blog to be comprehensive, even though it is subtitled 'From AFX to Yokota'. So here is what missed the list for no reason other than, well, I didn't put it on the list.

I didn't include Grizzly Bear's Veckatimest, even though I loved Two Weeks. It just wasn't electronic enough for this top ten run-down (same for the wonderful Animal Collective long-player Merriweather Post Pavilion). Other albums just passed me by, so there's a severe lack of Zomby's Nintendo-nudging One Foot Ahead Of The Other, nor is there Jon Hopkin's compelling Insides album.

I kinda got bored with Venetian Snares, so that's why Filth isn't featured. And this is an album top ten, so what a shame I couldn't mention some great tracks from 2009: Burial's expansive Fostercare, Kode 9's excellent Black Sun (well done, Hyperdub, for a great year), or a definite classic, Mount Kimbie's Maybes.

This is part one.   
For part two, click here. 
For part three, click here.