Best electronic music albums of 2025: some actual tip-top, clubbing jam fair

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

As a house music hit once said, "house, house, ha-ha-ha-house". Probably. Here is a summary of some of the notable house music albums of 2025. And as usual, that definition is very loose. Some of them might be outhouse music. Or shed music. Or lean-to music if you're old fashioned. House-ish.

DJ Koze – Music Can Hear Us (Pampa)

Despite the scientific inaccuracy of its title, this is a likeable collection of folky house music. A flute tooting over paddy drums, dreamy vocals over wide glittering chords, a bit of drum 'n' bass, and Damon Albarn singing about a reconciled love over an amapiano shiffle. Koze did a DJ Kicks album once, and this feels very much in that vein.

Charles Webster & The South African Connection – From The Hill (Stay True Sounds South Africa)

From a sizzling Cape Town comes a collection of sunny deep house tunes, with oodles of jazz asides and downtempo loungings. All very pleasant. There are tonnes of collaborators, including Daev Martian, Atmos Blaq and FKA Mash, who I assume is FKA Twigs' gloopier cousin. Here's a fact: it was recorded in Nelson Mandela's former prison.

K-Lone – sorry i thought you were someone else (Incienso)

I'm still playing K-Lone's 2020 album Cape Circa. This is an equally exotic offering, spilling over with warm club tunes. The attention to detail is fascinating: the sprightly beat on Fauna, for example, is so crystalline. Loss and grief underpin its themes, and the title reminds me of the time I waved at someone in a car park by mistake then felt hot embarrassment for a week.

Kaytranada – Ain't No Damn Way! (RCA)

This Canadian producer says his album is "strictly for workouts, dancing and studying" so excuse my while I get my spandex disco pants and/or spandex mortarboard. I love this album. Head-nodding house beats dominate, but there are nods to rave, disco and 1990s Euro-techno. Sampled acts include J Dilla, Tangerine Dream and TLC. Boy, these pants are chafing.

Lindstrøm – Sirius Syntoms (Feedelity Recordings)

This trickily-titled album is a perfect introduction to one of the most positive producers on the planet. Cheerful doesn't even cut it. He makes Roger Hargreaves' Mr Happy look like Strong Sad from Homestar Runner. Sparky disco, acidic house, cheery bass grooves. Plus the best track title of this entire blog series: Sharing An Orange (With Omar S On The Train From Minehead To London).

Ploy – It's Later Than You Think (Dekmantel)

Now we're talking. To exactly quote Tyres from Spaced, this is "tip-top, clubbing jam fair. It was a sandwich of fun on ecstasy bread, wrapped up in a big bag like disco fudge." It's banging and breathless; exactly what should be pouring out of the dancefloor speakers at 2am. Another brilliant Dekmantel release.

Real Lies – We Will Annihilate Our Enemies (Tonal)

Real Lies do Real Lies better than anyone else, and that's no lie. Where would we be without Kevin Lee Kharas' likeable wafflings, and the emotive nostalgia of their expansive club production. At its heart, it's a love album. As he says on the Bicep-ish Towards Horses, "If all people were the same, I’d have no-one else to play with." Aaaaw, lads.

See all of my Best electronic music albums of 2025

Best electronic albums of 2018: Bruno Brookes eat your heart out

It's a bit weird writing all these side-bars amid a top 20 countdown. It's a bit like Bruno Brookes wandering off to his knitting circle in the middle of Top Of The Pops.

Anyways, here is the final bunch of electronic noodlers that didn't quite make my final list.

A jazz pianist and a cellist might not be natural territory for techno behemoth R&S, but Djrum’s Portrait With Firewood (R&S Records) produced some bass music on an epic scale. Elysia Crampton found a clattering joy in the balance between found sound and world music on Elysia Crampton (Break World Records). Mark Pritchard’s The Four Worlds (Warp Records) was worth it for the likeable washboard shuffle of Circle Of Fear. And Marquis Hawkes raised the flipping roof on The Marquis Of Hawkes (Houndstooth).

DJ Koze created a deserved fuss with Knock Knock (Pampa), a collection of twitchy house music but not as you know it. I was perhaps less keen on its folky elements. Chris Carter, of Throbbing Gristle repute, managed to funnel several decades of electronic music into the excellent Chemistry Lessons Volume 1 (Mute). Astonishingly, Mr Fingers dropped his first album for 24 years in 2018: Cerebral Hemispheres (Alleviated Records) was as soulfully slick as you'd imagine. HVL’s Ostati (Organic Analogue Records) revived many memories of old raves and armchair techno listening.

German glitchmeister Alva Noto gets his own paragraph. He brought us a minimal masterpiece with Unieqav (Noton) earlier this year, but he didn't stop there. His rare Newcastle live recording Live 2002 (Noton) with Ryoji Ikeda and the late Mika Vainio seemed to have its audience hair-spun with static. Also worth looking into is the architecture-inspired Glass (Noton) with Ryuichi Sakamoto: the pairs last work was The Revenant soundtrack with Leonardo DiCaprio getting jiggy with a bear.

That was the tenth and final lot of also-rans for this 2018 countdown. I'll probably remember something I wanted to include, but forgot – I'll include it in this blank space here: _________________.





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