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

90 best electronic music albums of 2021: Aleksi Perälä, Alva Noto, Amon Tobin, Anthony Naples & Arovane

Fat Roland's Best Electronic Music Albums of 2021 presents five more brilliant albums:

Aleksi Perälä – Spectrum Analysis (Repetitive Rhythm Research) 

I want to avoid reissues and repackages in my best albums list, but this triple vinyl compilation of Perälä's Spectrum Analysis minimal techno series was too much of a treat not to include. The mathematical simplicity of his micro-house loops are made to move your feet and soothe your brain. The Finnish Rephlex veteran is so prolific, this entire list could have just been him. You're only allowed one per end-of-year list, Alekksi. Reader, do yourself a favour, and spend some time dangling in the laser web of his music. It's quite something. 

Alva Noto – HYbr:ID (NOTON)

There will be a few albums in this list that were written for choreography. You don't want me writhing in my leotard, so you'll just have to imagine the dance moves that accompany this low-key electronic scree written for ballet bloke Richard Siegal. Synths hum, static leaks, ambience drones. It's ASMR in its attention to detail, its little landscapes of electronic experimentalism building into a sonic experience that seems to occupy every inch of the room. Its inspiration is astrophysics and cinema, but it sounds like the atoms between the two. 

Amon Tobin – How Do You Live (Nomark) 

25 years after his debut, Amon is still going. It's testament to his talent that he continues to be uncategorisable. Buzzing synth cycles meet swooping strings, end-of-the-pier organ lines spiral over hippy guitar noodlings, shimmering half-grooves follow breathy folk vocals. It's scratchy and sketchy, glitchy and groovy, always with a cinematic bent. Albeit a curious indie film than a sweeping blockbuster. A vision of Sergeant Pepper appearing in a cloud of spliff smoke. 

Anthony Naples – Chameleon (ANS)

This New York label owner created his latest album by jamming out the tracks on real instruments first rather than, say, start with the software or bashing kittens with a mallet. So where I'd normally expect driving house music, instead we have something much more organic and experimental. In these late-nite ambient instrumentals, blues-style drums meet chill lounge chords and unhurried melodic loops. Its lack of urgency belies the fact this is a producer at the top of his game. A soundtrack for sleepy parties.

Arovane – Reihen (12k)

Uwe Zahn is back, and this time he joins Taylor Deupree’s 12k label for a bunch of noise wafflings produced in early 2021 using a limited range of gear. The blurb mentions pointillism and etherealism, with Zahn citing "intermodulated oscillators, amplified and distorted". This is tiny sound writ large: cascading ambient mirages reflect playfully against the resonating harmonics of fuzzy analogue synth lines and hammer-dulled piano chords. It's almost church-like in its stillness.

This is part of a series of the Best Electronic Music Albums of 2021. Read it all here.

Best electronic albums of 2019: attacking electronic equipment with stationery

My top 20 list of the best electronic music albums of 2019 is well underway. But let's have a quick fag break and consider some albums that didn't make the final cut: my continuing longlist of the best-of-the-rest.

The press blurb for Jodey Kendrick's EDM Vol.2 (Dub Recordings) suggests listening to this album is good for your brain development. All I know is I loved this squiggly Rephlexian IDM. Meanwhile, Antwood based the stonkingly spangly narrative album Delphi (Planet Mu) around a fictional lovelorn girl who comes complete with her own theme tune. And while we're on Planet Mu, Rian Treanor diced club music to pieces on the choppy ATAXIA (Planet Mu), and it sounded like someone attacking a computer with a hole-punch. In a good way.

Lisbon's Photonz added a queer Balearic flavour to house music in the strong debut album Nuit (Dark Entries). New York label owner Anthony Naples impressed with expensive house on Fog FM (ANS) while Bristol producer Shanti Celeste evoked the spirit of dub techno on Tangerine (Peach Discs): brisk house cuts meet blunted ambience.

Ooo, I must mention WH Lung whose wonderful and psychedelic Incidental Music (Melodic) evoked early Verve when Verve were just Verve without the "The". Aleksi Perala's Sunshine 3 (Dub Recordings) was so bright and cosmic, you could feel the stars twinkling in appreciation.

And two final mentions for this slightly genre-ambivalent section. The titanic techno twiddler Bogdan Raczynski returned to us with Rave 'Till You Cry (Disciples), which was as fun and as daft as I had hoped. And I hold a special place in my heart for the unique Lee "Scratch" Perry. Adrian Sherwood brought out the best in ole scratchy on Rainford (On-U Sound).





Scroll the full best-of-2019 list here.

Best electronic albums of 2018: off-grey paste

Here is yet another collection of brand-spanking new audio presents whose batteries ran out before reaching the much-coveted top 20 best electronic albums of 2018. I hope you kept your receipt.

JK Flesh took great delight in pneumatically drilling our brain to an off-grey paste on New Horizon (Electric Deluxe). “This is my extravagant entrance for my show” boldly announced the scuzzed club anthems of Peder Mannerfelt’s Daily Routine (Peder Mannerfelt), a claustrophobic journey into a self-styled temporary psychosis. Demdike Stare’s Passion (Modern Love) was a pulsating patchwork of noise and jungle and nasty breaks.

FORMA’s Semblance (Kranky) gave us some beautifully building arpeggios with a cosmic classical bent, while I held a candle or three for the slow-burning debut album from Bruce, Sonder Somatic (Hessle Audio). Rather less forgiving were the gorgeously grit-teethed beats of Chevel's Always Yours (Different Circles).

Lorn discovered sobriety to produce a wonderfully dark new album Remnant (Wednesday Sound). Objekt moved away from techno for Cocoon Crush (PAN) into a world that seemed equally organic and robotic – it has been compared to Future Sound of London’s Lifeforms, and I can see why. And the post-club fuzz of Anthony Naples’s Take Me With You (Good Morning Tapes) included a beautiful dubby smoker’s version of John Barrys Midnight Cowboy.





Scroll all of the best 2018 electronic albums by clicking here.