Top 20 electronic music albums of 2025: Cain reaches God-tier with a highlands highlight

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

Cain: Lineage (Fine Grains)

Cain's lineage is detailed in chapter four of the book of Genesis, which means Bible scholars can trace the descendants of Cain, the firstborn son of Adam… oh wait. Sorry. Wrong Cain. Let’s start again.

For the past eleven years, since Cain’s addictive Savan EP, I’ve been growing increasingly impatient. Sitting there, looking at the internet, tapping my watch and tutting. Just when is he going to release a proper studio album?

What I wasn’t expecting was an album of pipe music featuring Gaelic singing and with an illustration of a Pictish boar on the cover. Nor would the expect it to be one of the best debut albums of recent times.

At his best, there’s a mystery and an endearing gawkiness to Cain’s work, and that’s all on display here. The boss drum thumps hard, the melodies paint chunky Prodigy primary shapes, and the droning synth lines add soundtrack oomph wherever they go.

The Scottish flavours, so folky and human, come from a very real placer. In his youth, Cain was a junior bagpipe champion. His wife Katie Mackenzie is a Gaelic singer, and her voice is featured prominently, as song or as Bicep-style samples.

Unlike the past 15 or so years, in this year’s best album’s list I have committed to NOT declaring a number one. But… y’know… Cain. Lineage. You absolutely have to rinse this album from now until the end of time.

One extra note. This beautiful and personal album also stands as a tribute to Alexander Horne, otherwise known as DJ Uraki Riddim, who founded the Fine Grains record label. I suspect his influence runs deep on Lineage, and his recent passing will be felt by many.

See all of my Best electronic music albums of 2025

Best electronic albums of 2019: twenty

20 – Cain – The Collection 2014-2019 (Highlife)

I've been anticipating Cain's debut album since this blog post in 2015. "More of this playfulness!" I demanded like a spoilt king firing chicken bones at a jester's feet. And finally, the former bagpipe playing highlander has dropped that much-anticipated debut.

Except it's not what I expected. The Collection, as its title suggests, is a collection of his pan-global dance music that's been piling up over the past few years. I'd rather be reviewing a proper studio album rather than a compilation, but I'll take what I've been given — because this is great.

The beats are metronomic, such as the 4/4 clonks on Eshu. This could be alienating, but a ghostly African chant or a shashaying sitar is never far away. It's a globe-hopping experience, and yet when a snaking acid line drops, such as on Gordito, it never seems out of place.

There's no-one else out there like Cain: it's so damn fun. The jester is dancing and I like it. Now can I get out of these king robes, please? There's some serious chafing going on here, and the crown doesn't match my eyes.



Scroll the full best-of-2019 list here.

Cain's Savan comes with dashings of Delhi

Back in early 2015, when all this was just fields, I praised the "epic playfulness" of Cain's Savan EP. Cain is a Scottish DJ who's played with Amon Tobin and Mike Paradinas, so my blog comment must have been, er, just the boost his career needed.

I recently revisited the EP and now I'm obsessed with it. I'm playing it over and over again. I don't know what it is - it's so tuneful, so fun, and drizzled with dashings of Delhi-style melody. Nagan is especially brill.

It's funny how a record can reappear from the past and grab you more than ever before .The same thing happened with Death In Vegas's Dead Elvis album. Have a listen to Cain below.

Incidentally, Cain is back with a new extended play. The Eshu EP came out a couple of weeks ago and is positively tribal.

More new electronic music for January 2015: Cain, AI, Black Sites

Let's fondle my record bag until it calls the music police.
 
From the snow-capped mountains of the highlands comes an India-flavoured EP from Cain (pictured). It has that same epic playfulness of Loop Guru (indeed the title track of the Savan EP could easily have been plucked from mid-90s Nation Records). More of that playfulness on the upcoming debut album, please.


Speaking of stuff that takes me back to the past, AI drop a debut Forgotten Truths EP for Metalheadz. You remember Metalheadz? Co-founded by the bloke with the shiny teeth that went on to waggle sticks at orchestras? Anyhoo, this is very much in the vein of classic 'headz and it's no worse off for it.


There's droning acid galore on Black Sites' Unit 2669: the track is over ten minutes long and I'd put money on its distorted nastiness destroying your head in a third of that time. One half of Black Sites, Helena Hauff, runs a club called Birds And Other Instruments. With that in mind, Unit 2669 is a twitching, stub-footed town pigeon with a loaded machine gun. Lovely.

Catch my previous new electronic music round-up here. Oh and psst, remember me banging on about Kiasmos? Grab a free Erased Tapes compilation here.