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

No mood for sniffing: five September 2020 electronic music album recommendations

Here are five different flavours of album due for release in September. Think of this as an ice-cream cone stacked with five scoops. Better gobble it down quickly before your hand becomes a drippy mess.

There's a line on Marie Davidson's album Working Class Woman which goes “I want to smell you, even from far away”. On her new single Renegade Breakdown, she's in no mood for sniffing: "I feel disgraceful whenever you're around." Her new band, called Marie Davidson & L'Œil Nu, is quite the change in direction, with DIY pop influenced by Fleetwood Mac and Kraftwerk. Have a nosy at the album, also called Renegade Breakdown, here.

Berlin-based RUI HO (pictured) mixes Western dance music with Chinese melodies, and has built a reputation as a DJ and purveyor of futuristic sound collages. Her debut album Lov3 & L1ght takes a typically leftfield move into glittery EDM-tinged autotuned pop. Not for everyone, but the production is really on fleek, as the cool kids say.

Tricky seems to be back on form for the first time since, well, Victorian times or something. Fall To Pieces is his 14th studio album: that's as many albums as the Prodigy and Oasis combined. He's got a great new(ish) vocalist called Marta and it's got some pretty mournful vibes.

Field Lines Cartographer took inspiration from an elusive island for The Spectral Isle – it's full of UFOs or ghosts or Westlife fans (I might be wrong about that last one). If you want big fat soundscapes to make your ears tingle, then this is the album for you. The vinyl is 'seafoam' which means you can play it with a fish.

And finally, a quirky 1990s album is getting a fresh rerelease. Help was a hastily-assembled War Child charity compilation and featured tracks from Blur, Orbital, Portishead and Massive Attack. It had early OK Computer material, the first post-Richie Manics appearance, and a bizarre return by the long-deleted KLF under the pseudonym The One World Orchestra featuring The Massed Pipes and Drums of the Children's Free Revolutionary Volunteer Guards. The album's available to stream again in all its quirky glory.

Further Fats: My greatest idea once more crumbles to dust like a great big crumbly bit of dust (2010)

Best electronic albums of 2018: I still want to smell these, even from far away

It's time for some more also-rans, and there are some big names here. I'm like David with his pea-shooter, and a couple of these are like Goliaths or the Good Samaritan or something, I dunno. Let's get on with it.

Almost making it into the final list was Marie Davidson, whose acclaimed fourth album Working Class Woman (Ninja Tune) had some of the best house tunes of the year –  ‘So Right’ and ‘Work It’ are so sparky (“I want to smell you, even from far away”). felicita’s hej (PC Music) mixed gentle piano with frequency-destroying digitalism: a curious mixture. Gender inequality and the refugee crisis informed the uneasiness on the ethereal club vibes of Deena Abdelwahed’s Khonnar (InFine Music).

Jlin’s Autobiography (Planet Mu), written as a soundtrack to a ballet, sounded more introspective than usual, complete with piano ballad. The twisted electronics of Amnesia Scanner’s Another Life (PAN) put the ‘anger’ into ‘bangerz’. See what I did there? I am such a clever writer. Spiritflesh’s Spiritflesh (No Corner) was an industrial street-fight of gloomy mechanics.

With track titles like Tunnel Stalker and Final Mercy, DJ Richard’s Dies Iræ X erox (Dial Records) was hardly going to be a bundle of laughs, but the lurking EMB-driven beats held their own dark optimism. The weaponised techno of Ancient Methods’ The Jericho Records (Ancient Methods) sounded like it had buried its way out of the earth’s core like some kind of mixing desk-tweaking mole, assuming you could get hardware that could work while encased in soil, which I don't think you can, got to be realistic about these things. *Such* a clever writer.





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