Best electronic music albums of 2025: the Chuckle Brothers, hotdogs and ketchup

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

I have this summary of 2025 albums filed under "assorted beats". I really should sack my filing clerk. It goes to show that labels are ultimately meaningless and should be avoided wherever possible, especially for a queer ENFP WASP like me. Oh. Wait...

The Bug vs Ghost Dubs – Implosion (Pressure)

This is a to-me / to-you alternating album, which is as far as the Chuckle Brothers comparison can go. The Bug is in a right huff, all grimacing bass synths and gasping ambience. Stuttgart's Ghost Dubs sounds even more subterranean: his contribution is so dubby and minimal, it's hardly there. Recommended as a headphone listen, preferably while carrying a piano up a staircase.

DJ Babatr – Root Echoes (Hakuna Kulala)

Welcome to raptor house, a genre of music composed by dinosaurs. Oh wait. That doesn't sound right. These frenetic club cuts, collated over the past couple of decades, are the sound of the Venezuela's club scene with massive chunks of UK rave and Eurodance thrown in for joyous measure. Sirens and screams and celebratory drums abound.

Ikonika – SAD (Hyperdub)

It's fifteen years since I first wrote about Ikonika ("more pow than Batman"), but I think this is the first time I've heard a vocal-led album. The beats are as smoky as ever, skipping through sub-genres like a boss, but the addition of her voice has led things in a - dare I say - poppier direction. A thing of beauty that, if released earlier in the year, may have ended up higher on my list.

Low End Activist – Airdrop II (Peak Oil)

The strangled rave calls that open this album sum things up. This is hardcore, but it's throttled to within an inch of its life. A bouncy laser bass drift aimlessly amid spacious ambience, junglist rhythms struggle to lift off amid ghostly synths, a fuzz bass is left on its own to slowly die. This is the dancefloor, but underneath the floorboards where there's dampness and cobwebs and all of rave's darkest secrets.

Mark Pritchard & Thom Yorke – Tall Tales (Warp Records)

From my Electronic Sound review: "Mark Pritchard of Global Communication fame doesn’t just illuminate as Yorke’s foil: he throws fireballs of blinding light. His analogue electronics stutter and spark, with ambience flowing like lava. Yorke appears as an addled narrator dragged, squinting and startled, into Pritchard’s midday sun."

Rian Treanor & Cara Tolmie – Body Lapse (Planet Mu Records Ltd)

I saw this performed live last year, and it was as fascinating as it was uncomfortable. Tolmie chatters and vocalises and yanks sounds from every inch of her body. Treanor accompanies this with machine-gun percussion and squirls of manic electronics. Incongruous Diva sounds like Bjork's Army Of Me on the other side of an apocalypse. 

Verses GT – Verses GT (LuckyMe)

I love a collaboration. Orbital and Kneecap; Leftfield and Lydon, hotdogs and ketchup. This meeting by Jacques Greene and Nosaj Thing is proper supergroup territory. Greene brings the melody, Thing brings the darkness, and somewhere in this middle is this pleasing, melancholic creation. Vocals from the likes of George Riley and Tyson add an r'n'b sheen.

See all of my Best electronic music albums of 2025

90 best electronic music albums of 2021: The Bug, Calibre, Clark, Fatima Al Qadiri & Floating Points

Fat Roland's Best Electronic Music Albums of 2021 presents five more brilliant albums:

The Bug – Fire (Ninja Tune) 

The Bug is back! Not an actual bug. I get loads of them all the time, trying to climb on my knees and stuff. No, Kevin Martin has returned and he's angry. "You'd better run from me," go the vocals amid teeth-gnashing bass and barometer-blowing heated atmospherics. The speaker-wobbling badboy loops brilliantly match the sheer ferocity of the ragga and dancehall vocals – take a bow, MC Irah. As good an expression of our pressure cooker society as anything else on this list, and rightly already topping other people's best-of-2021s. 

Calibre – Feeling Normal (Signature Recordings) 

Despite the chirpy dubstep and sassy half-step rhythms, this is Calibre in a mood. He's drum ‘n’ bass royalty, but this 16th album (!) is among his slowest, the BPMs reigned in to produce one his more introspective works. As I wrote in Electronic Sound magazine: "Dominick Martin delivers an umpteenth album of coffee-table drum and bass that’s a smooth as a buttered puppy.... ever-decreasing circles of frowning, thoughtful electronica." Not what I expected at all, in a good way.

Clark – Playground In A Lake (Detusche Grammophon) 

It has been fascinating watching the career of this Warp alumnus, er, warp into something totally new, moving from his barnacled techno beats into something much more neoclassical. This is a "concept" album, whatever that means these days, and is his first appearance on classical label Deutsche Grammophon. Clark's 12th album isn't just classical, though: it's folk and weird horror, with vocals from Clark himself, Afrodeutsche and a choir boy. As atmospheric as heck and very much following on from his Daniel Isn’t Real original soundtrack.

Fatima Al Qadiri – Medieval Femme (Hyperdub)

You can always expect something special from this Californian Kuwaiti. On Medieval Femme, we find ourselves somewhere between ancient Arabian history and some far-flung future chill-out night. Sung vocals hang lazily amid heavy reverb, an elegiac organ melts against misty half-beats, harps hang in the air quivering with anticipation. The Middle Ages meets the Middle East. This is possibly Al Qadiri's most accessible album to date, so consider it an excellent starting point. 

Floating Points, Pharoah Sanders & The London Symphony Orchestra – Promises (Luaka Bop)

This is a biggie. Sweep everything else off the table, cancel the milk, hang up on grandma. Floaty, as I like to call him, has always been classical adjacent, his shuffling house beats always feeling grand. He's got his own electronic "ensemble", for goodness sake. Here, he teams up with the LSO and jazz saxophonist Sanders for what might be his grandest project to date. It's slow and bluesy and a little too jazzy for my tastes, but still, its a landmark release whatever you think of stupid saxophones.

This is part of a series of the Best Electronic Music Albums of 2021. Read it all here.

A Team Doyobi bundle: £12.99 ... carrying a puppy under your ludicrously tanned arm: priceless

If fatroland.com has become known for anything for the past eight years, it's shopping.

There's nothing I like better than mincing down King Street, my beemer parked in a disabled space, to look disdainfully into shop windows full of clothes for retarded stick insects. Daddy's credit card, expensive shades, puppy under arm. That's how I shop.

Good job, then, the real world has Bleep, the online electronic music shop. Recently, they launched a 'bundles' sale, which is a brilliant way of getting rid of all the dross you can't shift otherwise.

I suspect all the fried gold has sold, but there's a decent set of silverware left. There's 808 State's Quadrastate, which had that saxophone tune, bundled with their Planet Mu Rephlex rarities album Prebuild.

There is a vinyl album bundle from the godfathers of chiptune Team Doyobi. I think their music is deeper than the lazy chiptune tag, but anyhoo it's worth a punt because they're key players on Manchester's Skam Records.

And if you prefer plastic, there's a CD pack featuring a brace of albums from London producer Kevin Martin: one under his King Midas Sound collaborative moniker, and one as the quite-frankly-brilliant The Bug. I still think The Bug's London Zoo is one of 2008's essential releases.

Along with a couple of slices of brutalism from Venetian Snares and a wee bit of vinyl from the Ant and Dec of techno Carl Craig and Kirk Degiorgio (note to editor - please delete the Ant and Dec bit: it makes no sense), the bundle sale is still worth a poke with your music-buying stick.

Visit the sale here or click on the links in this piece. And no, I'm not paid by Bleep: I just like 'em. Oh crap, they're towing my BMW - looks like this shopping trip is over. Later, dahlinks.

What I watched, what I heard and what I thought in 2008

The best scene in a film.

Call it. I'm tempted to plump for Javier Bardem's baiting of a gas station owner in No Country For Old Men, or the moment we realised Indy was on a nuclear test site in that vivid scene with the dining table dummies in Indiana Jones And The Crystal Skull.

But it's neither of these, friendo. My favourite scene of the year taught me everything we need to know about the fragility of life. In Hellboy II: The Golden Army, our foul-mouthed protagonist fights an Elemental - kind of a vegetarian Godzilla - and the resulting death scene is astonishing, beautiful and the absolute opposite of the throwaway baddie deaths we often get with Hollywood.

Crappest purchase of 2008.

Gym membership. I should have seen the warning signs as soon as I walked in: "Gym? What's a gym? ... Oh! A gym!"

Back to films again - which was the best in 2008?

Strange beasties ruled 2008. Firstly, Wall-E was one of the best animations for years, and the most tender robot love affair since Bjork's All Is Full Of Love video. Cloverfield was a lost creature of a different kind, in a film which was simply a tour-de-force of suspense and large-scale horror.

Another pair of strange beasties brought us the best two films of the year. Heath Ledger gave us 2008's best performance in The Dark Knight, although he should have rescued his magic-trick pencil and crossed through a couple of over-long scenes. Instead, I raise a glass to the Oscar-winning monster Anton Chigurh and No Country For Old Men - the bestest film of 2008 following a couple of worrying Coen Brothers misfires.

Anti-Obama: the biggest political disappointment of 2008.

Brian Eno has completed his first year as Liberal Democrat youth advisor. I was a tad disheartened to see the modern-fangled youth of today haven't all shaved their head and dedicated their lives to Robert Fripp or Mixmaster Morris. It's still more thug life than My Squelchy Life. Come on, Brian, get it together.

My moment of puffed-chestness in 2008.

I was proud that I tried a stand-up comedy routine, which was scary but gosh I did it. There was some comedy in there, it was rather routine, but at least I was standing up. My challenge now is to do more in 2009.

My greatest personal achievement of the year was losing 50 lbs in a few short months. Yes, I know, I should mention these things on my blog so you can post messages of encouragement / bitter jealousy. The only thing I won't allow is "Thin Roland" jokes, because believe me it has been done to death by my wonderfully supportive if slightly unoriginal friends.

Top telly of 2008. Yes, this is getting a little sad now.

Watching The Wire on DVD doesn't count, because it came out in, like, 1526 or something. So then, two little words sum up my favouritest TV moment of this blessed 12 months.

Dead.

Set.

My worst moment of 2008.

There is only one. A couple of weeks ago, my cat Whiskey died after a brief illness. She had been my closest companion since I was 16, and I have felt aimless and listless since I lost her. I have 19 years of fond memories of a good-tempered, sleek, shy furball. She deserves a hundred blog posts, but what needs to be said can be said in just a few words: I'll miss her forever.

2008's best album. Probably.

A tough one this, as I don't think it has been a classic year for electronica. I think Metronomy and The Whip are a dish best served live. The Bug took one giant dubstep forward with London Zoo, while fellow dubstepper Burial wowed the Mercury Music Prize with his 2007 album Untrue. I seriously rated Bochum Welt's ROB (Robotic Operating Buddy) even though I didn't rave enough in this post from April .

Portishead's Third showed Tricky a thing or two about keeping fresh after years out of the fridge, and Leila's equally accomplished comeback was quiet but beautiful. Gang Gang Dance's primal Saint Dymphna was Warp Record's most tribal release, while Squarepusher held back on the drums for his jaaazz Just A Souvenier album. (Edit: I forgot to mention Autechre's Quaristice, which I attempted to play as background music in my bookshop but only succeeded in pissing people off. Consider it mentioned.)

And finally, top of the tree is a gathering of geeky keyboard wizardary called Hot Chip (pictured). Made In The Dark's mechano pop is a little to commercial for this snobbish blog, but oh what joy when it produces videos like this for One Pure Thought.

Skip to the end...

There. I called it. And it came up heads. I'm going to buy a bicycle before all the shops close down. Meanwhile, I'll cook up a little 2009 preview. While you're waiting for that, have a joyous new year.