Best electronic music albums of 2025: poking my eyes out with a stick

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

I hope you're enjoying my end-of-year blog posts. There are a few more summaries to come, and then we can get into the Top 20 Bangers. This selection can be loosely labelled IDM, or armchair techno, or Braindance, or whatever the heck you want to call it. Oh and some of it is electro, not IDM. And some of it is... oh never mind, just get reading.

Blackploid – Cosmic Drama (Central Processing Unit)

German producer Blackploid has had a lot of fun with his latest album. Flirty drum machine patterns get hot and sweaty with growling basslines, with plenty of digital dramatics, Imagine a bunch of robots short-circuiting on the dancefloor. A touch of Drexciyan humanity in the enjoyably robotic world of Central Processing Unit.

Bogdan Raczynski – Slow Down Stupid (Disciples)

He's featured multiple times in my end-of-year lists. This is meant to be a slowed-down version of his 2024 album You’re Only Young Once But You Can Be Stupid Forever. So skippy noodlings become woozy soup, and everything becomes a bit of a ketamine entity. It's how I felt in my maths exams. Weirdly enjoyed learning the numbers and stuff, but the exams turned my brain to mush.

The Flashbulb – Papillon (self-released)

Let's pop Stateside to see what The Flashbulb is up to. This short album is a rather fluffy addition an otherwise intricate catalogue of works. The beats skip merrily, the synth lines dance about t he keyboard, and the nu-jazz vibes style it out with confidence. It's neat stuff and probably a good entry point for people wanting to get into IDM stylings.

µ-Ziq – 1979 & Manzana (Balmat)

These pair of Mike Paradinas albums were released a week apart, so I'll deal with them with one entry. This is µ-Ziq in contemplative mode, in with his signature melting-clock chords are even drippier than normal. Manzana in particular has some serious heroin haze, and if some of this work isn't used in horror soundtracks, I will poke my eyes out with a stick. Or a µ-Ztick.

Ship Sket – InitiatriX (Planet Mu)

In music's underbelly is the belly button itself: it's moist and mucky, and exactly where we find Manchester producer Ship Sket's debut album. Frequencies collide in this dark mix of grime, shattered techno and distended footwork. Listen to Casting Call's caustic EBM collapse into a circuit-bent piano disaster. You want to look away but you can't.

Wagon Christ – Planet Roll (De:tuned)

Hallelujah! Christ has returned! It's classic Luke Vibert, which, for those new to his formula, consists of party beats, end-of-the-pier synth wibbles, and a phalanx of playful vocal samples. "Bitch!" say the samples on Bitch. It's doesn't break new ground, but why should it? Vibert doing Vibert is a joy, and mid-album track Acid is up there as one of his bestest ever tunes

See all of my Best electronic music albums of 2025

Best electronic albums of 2020: eight

8 – The Flashbulb ‎– Our Simulacra (Alphabasic)

The Flashbulb, or Flash to his friends, is a jazz composer, advert soundtracker, film scorer, martial arts practitioner, and an electronic music programmer who runs a neat line in squirrelly IDM. 

Catch him at a party and he'll probably bang on about all these things. Jeez, Mr Bulb, give it a BREAK.

I'm guilty of neglecting The Flashbulb's work for a long time. He last got a mention on this website in 2006. ‎So the cinematic, perfectly programmed and endlessly creative Our Simulacra came as something of a revelation. 

The sheer range of ideas wins the day. The choral and darkly comic Stabmyself is worth the album price alone. The title track sounds like recent Daft Punk caught in a malfunctioning Faraday cage. And he's not afraid of a bit of cheese either, as the liquid piano in Ez God Library shows. Very well played cheese.

Hi, I'm Flash. I fly helicopters, I can bench press 12 tonnes and I once liberated Milton Keynes. Yeah but can you write an end-of-year blog series under pressure while eating seven full Viennettas? Pfffrt.

 

Browse the rest of the Best Electronic Albums of 2020

Reviews: The Flashbulb & Hecker/Voafose

>Filter this
Artist: The Flashbulb
Title: Flexing Habitual (LP)
Label: Sublight
Listen with your ears here
Boots the chemist saw fit to use The Flashbulb's drugged-out sonick magick in their Campaign For Real Beauty advertising campaign (see the video here). There is something truly beautiful in Flexing Habitual, an offence of maimed breakcore in the best Squarepusher tradition; it's as digital as war. There is melodic songwriting here too, but the velvet glove isn't big enough to hold this grenade. Go buy.

>Filter this
Artist: Hecker / Voafose
Title: Kit001 (10")
Label: Rephlex
Listen with your ears here

Like someone whispering your name from the other side of a football match, these tracks from two upcoming albums on Rephlex are hardly going to trouble the airwaves. However, this sort of minimal frappery and subtle sonic distortion makes me more excited than a clown car hooter. It's Salvador Dali's Persistance Of Memory in sound. Distorted bells, flappy clicks and echoing drips. You can't go wrong.