by Ben Hogwood

In my humble opinion, 2025 has been a brilliant year for new music. Over the course of the year I have listened to more than a hundred new albums and have been fortunate enough to review a good many of them for musicOMH (Suede, Kae Tempest, Gruff Rhys and Cate Le Bon being just four examples) and here as editor of Arcana.

Rather than restrict our thoughts to numbers or ratings, I wanted simply to present albums that Richard Whitehouse and I have reviewed here and have been returning to frequently. You’ll see the musical variety on show is as broad as this site would like it to be! So, in chronological order…

…try listening to C Duncan’s It’s Only A Love Song without being drawn into his weather-beaten world of romantic expression. This is another beautiful and personal album, Duncan’s voice and musical command only improving with time. Tunng’s return is a cause for celebration, and the band’s lates album Love You All Over Again is a typically winsome mix of quirky musical thoughts and unexpectedly concentrated emotions, all expressed through catchy melody.

At the start of last year, California was in the grip of terrible fire. The musical response was nothing short of extraordinary, not least from Leaving Records, whose massive compilation Staying not only kept a high musical bar of ambience – in spite of the terrors – but raised money for the area’s troubled residents.

Gavin Higgins continues to prove himself to be one of the most interesting voices in classical contemporary music these days. If you wanted a good place to start, think no further than his 2025 album The Fairie Bride, a Lyrita release including the Horn Concerto.

Meanwhile, the Italian-US composer Vittorio Rieti proved himself fully deserving of a recall towards the classical front line. This Naxos release of a good deal of the composer’s music for piano and orchestra revealed a distinctive voice influenced by Stravinsky but finding its own original identity.

Moving sideways into the worlds of shoegaze and electronica, we have a series of rather wonderful releases that graced the headphones in 2025. Guitarist Andy Bell – prior to reclaiming his position in Oasis – released the excellent pinball wanderer album, a record that proved to be “equal parts Krautrock and Manchester”, while over at Castles In Space, Andrea Cichecki found “an inner serenity and brightness” on her album Drawn Into The Edge Effect, bringing positive energy to her ambient music. Speaking of ambience, Pye Corner Audio also found the sweet spot that blends relaxation and invigoration, with the heavenly Lake Deep Memory album.

Bureau B continued their streak of excellence with one of the year’s best compilations. Silberland Vol.3 celebrates the ambient side of Kosmische Musik with music of great colour and charm. Darker worlds were explored by the electronica of the remarkable Cosey Fanny Tutti, whose new chapter 2t2 proved a compelling and occasionally foreboding piece of work. Similarly well-established are the Matmos duo, and like Cosey their spirit for exploration goes undimmed. Metallic Human Nature only allows metallic objects in its discourse, but the imagination of the pair comes through in their use of creaking doors, pots and pans to make a surprisingly moving whole.

Our last visit to classical waters is made by cellist Parry Karp, whose new accounts of music by Ernest Bloch on Signum Classics get to the nub of what makes this composer uniquely expressive:

Baxter Dury has a sort of charm, though you wouldn’t want to get on his wrong side! Allbarone is his finest solo achievement to date, channelling his family influence but raging against city slickers and the like in a series of wickedly funny and extremely catchy songs, ably assisted by JGrrey.

More music of a rhythmic bent comes from Ten City, with their joyous celebration The Next Generation. There are several spiritual highs to be enjoyed within their house music, thanks to a set that frequently hits the highs.

With these albums suitably praised, who should take the album of the year? Well I’m going to give it to the record I’ve revisited most often…which is Andy Bell’s pinball wanderer. Listen to it a few times and you’ll see what I mean!

Published post no.2,754 – Saturday 20 December 2025