Best electronic music albums of 2025: new bowels, my uncle's moustache, something about Berghain

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

Blawan – SickElixir (XL Recordings)

I have seen Blawan live a few times, and on each occassion, I had to contact the NHS and order new bowels. SickElixir has rightly been lauded for its distortion and bass badness. It's powerful beyond belief. It's like one of them grime acts have done a big dump not only over your home speakers, but over reality itself. I suspect it's going to be much copied.

Daniel Avery – Tremor (Domino Recording Co)

When my Uncle Augustus grew a moustache, I hardly recognised him. With a gang of vocalists leading the charge, including Alison Mosshart from The Kills and Walter Schreifels from Rival Schools, this is almost unidentifiable as an Avery album. I'm not entirely convinced, although it's very well done, and my fictional Uncle Augustus loves it.

Djrum – Under Tangled Silence (Houndstooth)

I wasn't expecting this. Djrum's third album leads with flowing piano, melodic ambience and a generous splatter of sinuous drum programming. I mean, he's plonked the piano before, but this is giving Kiasmos-levels of classical music energy. He's still got the grimy bass and acidic techno, but this is pushing the piano up the staircase more than before.

FKA Twigs – EUSEXUA (Young)

Here comes the new album from FKA Twigs or,  to give her her full name, Felicia Kenneth Alabaster Twigs. It's a reliably entertaining mix of airy electronica and pop vibes. She gains electronic music points because the influence of producer Koreless is evident – in fact, Koreless did the production on Drums of Death while flying to Berghain. Hardcore.

Nazar – Demilitarize (Hyperdub)

It's over to Angola for a truly unsettling album inspired by pandemic illness. No, wait, it's better than it sounds. This is a singular sound comprising what I assumed had been confident r'n'b tunes before they were smothered in a gauze of audio unease. The muttering. The scuzz. The broken production. It's like a glitzy dancefloor covered in insects... in a good way.

Polygonia – Dream Horizons (Dekmantel)

Going out of the house naked, flying naked through the air, fighting naked ninjas while naked – we've all had vivid dreams. On this latest album, Polygonia lays out a series of dream sequences with playful and pin-sharp techno. The staccato percussion tickles, and at one point a clipped vocal loop looks set to hypnotise you into unconsciousness. 

Surgeon – Shell~Wave (Tresor Records)

YES. Finally. An album with a tilde in the title. Do you know how long I have been waiting for this? Praying to Santa every morning for a tilde album. Never mind the mathematical symbols, Sheeran, what about the chuffing tilde? Anyhoo. This is Surgeon being brilliant Surgeon. Rowdy bangers, razor-sharp machinery. Even the ambient Dying feels like it's going to tear your face off. Delicious.

See all of my Best electronic music albums of 2025

On the Fat Roland radar: a sunset, a head-spin and a marshmallowy James K

October is often busier than a wild ferret building its igloo for the autumn. Does that metaphor work? Pretty sure I saw that on a David Attenborough documentary once.

I haven't had much blogging time, so before the month is out, before we discard October onto the laundry heap of forgotten month-pants (really need to work on those metaphors), let's listen to some music.

Here are some tunes I have recently enjoyed. Five tracks that are worth a pause in your day, when you stop to listen and decide that these tracks are "yeah, okay I suppose". That's enough for me.

Let's go.

Alexander Kulikov – Sunset

A foggy offering from this LA producer signed to Scotland's Soma Records. This is murky stuff, and although the bass drum is a real pile-driver, it's so incredibly distant - maybe even absent without headphones. Minimal, ambient and a perfect autumnal meditation.

This is from a recent EP. I don't think it includes this track, but look out for the new album Radio Edit out later this month on Greyscale.

Blawan – NOS

Yorkshire producer Blawan is turning heads at the moment. Then making those heads spin and go all vomitty. One review called his new headphone-exploding album SickElixir "a victory lap against his demons". 

See what you think. Razor-bladed ASMR electro. 

Djrum –  Three Foxes Chasing Each Other

Let's get pastoral. This tropical groove starts light, with a playful picturesque patter emphasising the "OK" in "evoke". And then comes the staccato charge of the machine-gun bass. A really interesting piece of work: tropical, tribal and ever-so teasing.

This is taken from the Oxford experimentalist's upcoming new album Under Tangled Silence. 

James K (pictured) – Hypersoft Lovejinx Junkdream

A breathy swoosh-gaze meditation from this New York producer's third album Friend. It's a song about disappointment, I guess, but it's disappointment cushioned by marshmallows, clouds and teddy bears made of marshmallows and clouds.

This pairs quite well with the Djrum piece, although it's a lot more silky.

Kneecap + Paul Hartnoll – Sayōnara

Well this was fun, wasn't it. Let's do it again sometime. We finish with subversive euphoria from Kemi Badenoch's least favourite rabble rousers Kneecap, with a little help from one half of Orbital. The video is worth a look-in: they're having a ball(gag).

Further Fats: Student's guide to new music (2010)

Further Fats: New musical excess (2015)

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.