Best electronic music albums of 2025: a carnival of ghosts and a lake of haddock

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

This is a summary of ambient albums released in 2025. For those unaware of ambient music, it's basically like normal music but everything's floating in space, or floating in water, or floating in spacewater, which is a kind of water I just made up. Enjoy.

Biosphere – The Way of Time (AD 96)

Veteran ambient producer Biosphere, Mr Sphere to you or me, dug into the past for his epic new album. It's inspired by twentieth century writer Elizabeth Madox Roberts, and his compositions take in a Beethoven string quartet, a 1951 radio adaptation and his usual rack of analogue gear. The vocal samples will give you goosebumps.

Debit – Desaceleradas (Modern Love)

Using old Sonido Dueñez DJ mixtapes, Debit brings us an album of cumbia rebajada, a Mexican subgenre of music in which everything is slowed down. Woozy. Lethargic. Flipping well spooked out. It's perhaps less haunting than her previous Modern Love output, and the closing title track sounds almost carnivalistic. Well. If the carnival was full of ghosts.

Loscil – Lake Fire (Kranky)

Nearly 400 million square kilometres of land burn in wildfires every year. It's a terrifying figure. So here comes Loscil with an album "celebrating life while the world burns". He presents the smoky drones of Ash Clouds, and the suffocating fumes of Candling. This is slow ambience, beautiful in its completeness, and so very hot, hot, hot.

Ø – Sysivalo (Sahko Recordings)

This is Mika Vainio's final work as Ø, finally completed eight years after his death. The title comprises the Finnish words for dark and light. There are plenty of shadows and shiny bits in its numerous short ambient tracks. Brooding and pensive, stardusted and heavenly. "Vainio's last word," says the press release. No, there's a lump in YOUR throat.

Pye Corner Audio – Lake Deep Memory (Quiet Details)

More grandiose ambient divination from the UK's most cinematic producer. This one was inspired by Guatemala's Lake Atitlán, the deepest lake in Central America. And it sounds like that lake. Extravagantly expansive, impossibly deep, gracefully sweeping and endlessly rippling And full of haddock. Probably. 

Steve Hauschildt – Aeropsia (Simul Records)

I don't think ambient music is allowed to have bangers, but this is as close as it gets. Hauschildt calls his seventh full-length album an ode to Chicago – he recently moved from there to Georgia (the country, not the state nor the hamlet in Cornwall). It's full of classical and house oomph. like Kiasmos if they were made from cotton wool. Fluffy bangers.

Whatever The Weather – Whatever The Weather II (Ghostly International)

Loraine James' introspective pseudonym is back. Again, all the tracks are temperatures, ranging from 1°C (brass monkeys, mate) to 26°C (ice baths in the supermarket car park). There are swathes of textures, homely chords, evocative chattering samples, and the occasional burst of popping and spotted micro-rave. All that an a brilliant opening line: "It's a bit chilly, innit."

See all of my Best electronic music albums of 2025

Top 50 electronic music albums of 2022: Whatever The Weather, Biosphere, Maxime Denuc

      

This is the [mumble]th of ten blog posts laying out numbers 50 to 21 in my end-of-year countdown of the best electronic music albums of 2022. I dunno. I've lost count. I'm typing furiously to stay ahead of my blog schedule, smashed on peanuts, Smarties, Diet Pepsi and Windowlene. Anyway, let's continue. Here are three more albums to pad out this never-ending Top 50.

See the full countdown here.

Whatever The Weather: Whatever The Weather (Ghostly International) + 

This was the outing of the new ambient alias from the critically acclaimed London producer Loraine James. The track titles are temperatures, ranging from the scorching 36°C to an exactly freezing 0°C. Which suits the album, because even when she’s dropping beats into the foggy atmosphere, it’s either snowflake crystalline or devilishly scorching. Phew. Also worth checking out is her other 2022 album, the Julius Eastman interpretation Building Something Beautiful For Me (Phantom Limb) – this is also hot / chill stuff.

Biosphere: Shortwave Memories (Biophon)

Let’s stay with ambience. Apparently Geir Jenssen took inspiration from post-punk for this latest album. You can’t hear much of that in the rich chords, the long structures and that ever-so-90s bass. Instead, thanks to the reintroduction into his sound of vintage analogue synthersisers, we have an evocation of classic Biosphere. Moody and moving ambience.

Maxime Denuc: Nachthorn (Vlek)

I’ll fess up. I used to help organise a rave in a church. It was called TAS:TE, although I can’t for the life of me remember what that stood for. As if treading in my footsteps (ahem), Denuc plays rave music on a church organ. Indeed, it’s all there: the thudding rhythms, the choppy chords, the banging melodies. Except it’s all on a pipe organ. This Album Soars: Totally Ecstatic.

This is part of a series of the Best Electronic Music Albums of 2022. Read it all here.

Stand back because Lone's in a Crush Mood

Following his hyper-jungle twelfth best album of 2016, Lone is returning to the safety of a 4/4 beat.

Nottingham's biggest dance act since, er, KWS is about to drop four Ambivert Tools EPs directly focussed at the dancefloor. Listen to Crush Mood taken from volume one below. "Free your mind, free your mind..."

This series is coming out on the legendary R&S label who, at one point in the 1990s, released every good thing ever to have existed (Selected Ambient Works, CJ Bolland, Sun Electric, Biosphere, Seabrook crisps, Dave Angel, System 7) (I lied about the crisps).



Further Fats: Anski updateski onski myski campaignski (2005)

Further Fats: CJ Bolland's Spring Yard scared the pants off me (2016)

Ambient also-rans: from Panthers to Planet Earth

Ambient music never went away. It just ended up in this also-rans section of my 2016 countdown.

Just because I preferred Pye Corner Audio to Kyle Dixon & Michael Stein’s Stranger Things (Lakeshore Records), it didn’t stop that programme and its soundtrack being a glorious highlight of 2016. Alas, not in my final list though.

There are plenty more ambient works that didn’t make the top 20. COW / Chill Out, World! (Kompakt) saw The Orb at their most floaty, while Sir Brian of Eno spiced up a Velvet Undeground cover with the voice of Peter Serafinowicz on The Ship (Warp Records). Yes, you read that right.

Clark’s The Last Panthers (Warp Records) seemed dark and interesting, but it was soundtracking a TV series I hadn’t seen. Brooklyn’s Julianna Barwick spooked us with Will (Dead Oceans), clearly taking some of her inspiration from Oneohtrix Point Never.

Digging down into the experimental bucket, I have three final ambient works to mention. Norway’s greatest export Biosphere used Ukrainian and Polish folk music on Departed Glories (Smalltown Supersound). Black Merlin trekked to some far off places for the field recordings on Hipnotik Tradisi (Island Of The Gods). And Crotaphytus’s Acanthosaura (Further Records) came across as some kind of ketamine Planet Earth.





Scroll all of the best 2016 electronic albums by clicking here.

Best electronica albums of 2011: numbers 4 to 2

We are approaching the Album Of The Year much in the same way an astronaut with an upside-down map is heading for the sun. By the time you finish reading this blog post, you should be in a position to try and guess the winner of this year’s top accolade.

Meanwhile, let’s check out the nearly gang in our penultimate collection of also-rans. Once that's done, we'll crank up the Top Of The Bleeps theme music with numbers 4 to 2.

[This is part three. Click here for part one. Click here for part two. Click here for part four.]

Some also-rans

I’m very sad to exclude Björk, especially after her triumphant performance of the Attenborough-tastic Biophilia (One Little Indian). She had a Tesla coil for crap’s sake. However, although she is on top of her game right now, it’s not really electronica of the Fat Roland On Electronica variety.

At the very bottom of their game is Paris’s own Justice, whose new album Audio, Video, Disco (Ed Banger) was such a mess, I wasn’t sure if Spinal Tap were having a seizure: at first amusing then just painful and sad. Imagine The Who teaming up with David Guetta. No, it wouldn’t be fantastic, you’re wrong. In 2011, Justice made me cross.

Mark Pritchard and Steve Spacek’s Africa HiTech project was a joy to the ears: 93 Million Miles (Warp) was bristling with bass and bad attitude – but not a top ten spot. Also not in the top ten is Biosphere, whose nuclear-themed concept album N-Plants (Touch) was gorgeous and just okay at the same time, while SBTRKT’s SBTRKT (Young Turks) was filed along with Nero in the grey bin next to my desk marked ‘pop’.

4 - Modeselektor - Monkeytown

In 1998, Thom Yorke threw a rabbit into the headlights and set the standard for guest vocalists on Unkle’s debut Psyence Fiction. It’s remarkable then that he should return all these years later and equal that achievement on Modeselektor’s third album Monkeytown (Monkeytown). It’s not the first time they have worked together, of course, but the tracks Shipwreck and This are hypnotic and beguiling.

Beyond the Yorkie bombs are other highlights: the hotstepping German Clap, the digital urgency of the loping Grillwalker, the emotive melody on the PVT-collaboration Green Light and the absurd hip hop of Pretentious Friends (“the pâté was fabulous!”).

We’re so spoilt with this Berlin duo’s dexterity, confidence and (whisper it) pop sensibilities, it almost seems a shame that the claustrophobic Shipwreck b-side Dull Hull isn’t on show too.

Unstoppable, bass-driven, ear-hugging digitalism: this is the rise of the town of the monkeys. Come on my ‘selektor.

3 - Plaid - Scintilli

Plaid are a duo that arose from godfathers of bleepery The Black Dog and became the techno musician’s techno musician, much in the same way that Stewart Lee is the comedian’s comedian and your great granddad is the racist’s racist.

Until now, Spokes was their best post-1990s album: it had amazing tunes but, unlike actual spokes, didn’t quite hang together as a whole. Scintilli (Warp) is the scintillating icing on the, um, spoke cake.

Opening with jingling guitars, which brings to mind 2001’s Eyen, we’re quickly smothered with choral sorrow and their trademark awkward chord progressions. Eye Robot brings in the fuzzy techno, Thank leads us into the cheery eeriness seen on many a Plaid album and by the fourth track, the anthemnic Dr Who work-out of Unbank, we’re ready for a tea break. The rest of the album careers from sunny dance numbers (African Woods) to sheer strangeness (Talk To Us), but it’s all perfectly Plaid.

This band has spent five years dabbling in other media, most notably for their audio-visual project Greedy Baby, but they have been in danger of seeing their traditional fans drift off. In that respect, Plaid have checked themselves and produced their best album for at least ten years.

2 - Martyn - Ghost People

The Brainfeeder label was the success story of 2010, with important releases from Lorn, Teebs and The Gaslamp Killer, and a crucial partnership with Ninja Tune. They were responsible for the return of Mr Ozio this year and they were even a headline feature in the Guardian a month or two ago.

All along, however, I felt that without a Brainfeeder-labelled album from their godlike founder Flying Lotus (he releases on Warp), they’d never quite crack it. They just needed something... something extra. I don’t know. Something indefinable. A ghost, maybe.

Ghost People (Brainfeeder) is a spectre to behold and should be the album that propels Brainfeeder into the premier league. I’m mixing metaphors again. Martyn has produced an aural dystopia in which shards of rave and techno have darkness cast upon them until they glisten molten musical antimatter.

Popgun could just be bouncy Joy Orbison dubstep with the occasional vocal grunt, but the atmospherics lift the sound into something greater than its parts. The driving Bauplan is so beautifully melodic, you either want to go for a run or a cry. And the choppy We Are You In The Future sounds like the theme music for every techno track ever recorded. Everyone is trying this sound, but Martyn does it best.

I wrestled over the decision whether to make Martyn’s Ghost People my album of the year or not. But no. There is another. A debut album so great, so absorbing, with such unique production, it ought to have every kid with a smidgen of soul mimicking his sound. Stay tuned, dear reader, for my Album Of The Year 2011.

[This is part three. Click here for part one. Click here for part two. Click here for part four.]

Five new IDM electronica releases I intend to purchase in the near and not so near future

Wisp: The Shimmering Hour. Not an actual wisp; that would be silly. It wouldn't stay in my CD player for a start. It would just float off and diffuse into my room's usual noxious haze of dust, fart gas and the terrible, belching smoke from burning puppies.

Grizzly Bear: Veckatimest. Not an actual gizzly bear. I suspect that would be inadvisable. I have no immediate intentions to go bear buying. Apart from white ones: you know, the ones with translucent fur that live on overzise mint sweets.

Biosphere: Wireless. Not an actual biosphere. Fitting all the world's ecosystems into your mp3 player may void your warranty, and in any case all that moisture would way you down when getting chased off Eamon Holmes' property. Oops. I wasn't meant to mention that.

Clark: Totems Flare. Not an actual clerk. That would be dull. I mean, if you wanted someone to take notes, perhaps do a bit of filing for my campaign for 'twazmuppet' to become the most common word in the English language, then maybe I'd buy a clerk.

Jega - Variance. Not an actual... um... at this point, the whole premise of this piece deflates like an airship in a needlework shop. *backs away from blog slowly*