Think of us as like the magi, but instead of giving you only three presents, we offer 10 best-of-the-best recommendations for you and, if you need some gift ideas (and who doesn't), the music-lovers in your life. OK, granted, it’s maybe (definitely) not as good as sweet, sweet gold, but as for the frankincense and myrrh, Mary and Joseph were definitely returning that nonsense to their nearest John Lewis. Anyway, it’s been another fantastic 12 months for new music, and whittling it down to just 10 LPs was not easy, but below are the records that, more than any others, we returned to again and again.
Cate Le Bon - Michaelangelo Dying
The latest record from Cate Le Bon is a break-up album that the Welsh artist says is “not really about” her ex. While it’s true that Michelangelo Dying is largely an impressionistic anatomy of a relationship gone bad, rather than a dialogue with her former partner, on tracks such as ‘Is It worth It (Happy Birthday)’, amid the abstractions the listener is left in doubt as to whom Le Bon is talking when she says, “I thought about your mother / I hope she knew I loved her” – a devastating couplet that speaks to the relational ripple effects of a difficult breakup.
Musically, Michelangelo Dying is Le Bon’s most adventurous LP yet. Where once her records were tightly coiled, angular constructions, such as 2013’s Mug Museum, the subsequent albums have seen a gradual dissolving of the post-punk hard lines for something more opulent. If Mug Museum was a dilapidated, slightly cramped and reassuringly familiar bunk, Michelangelo Dying is one of those massive Emperor-size beds you find in posh hotels, covered in seemingly endless pillows and high-thread-count sheets, which seems to swallow you up. Lissome, rippling and expansive, the dazzling production brings to mind Let’s Dance-era Bowie tracks covered by Cocteau Twins – yet, for all the adornments, Le Bon’s prodigious talent for off-kilter melodies is still, thankfully, in evidence in every corner of this wonderful LP. (Released: 19/09/2025)
* Comes with a free Michelangelo Dying print hand-signed by Cate Le Bon!
If you like: Cocteau Twins, Julia Holter, Connan Mockasin
Oneohtrix Point Never - Tranquilizer
The latest LP from Oneohtrix Point Never (OPN) – AKA Daniel Lopatin – eschews the cybernetic-baroque and experimental electro-pop of Age of (2018) and Magic Oneohtrix Point Never (2020), respectively, in favour of an ambient electronica that references OPN’s earlier (and in our opinion, best) work, such as Replica (2011) and R Plus Seven (2013), Japanese environmental music, and, very particularly, ‘Moments in Love’ by the 80’s British avant-pop outfit Art of Noise.
But don’t let the album’s title mislead, for this is not an album that employs ambient music to sedate; rather it rewards deep listening – the warm, lush synths providing the backdrop to numerous foregrounded sonic delights. Across its shifting terrain, from the liquid serenity of ‘Lifeworld’ to the haunted melancholy of ‘Cherry Blue’ and the distorted pulse of ‘Rodl Glide’, the LP blurs the boundary between the tangible and the imagined, physical textures lurking everywhere within its digital spaces: the scrape of fingers on strings, the shuffle of stone, the plaintive moan of a creaking door. (Released: 14/11/25)
* Comes with a free fold-out newspaper print poster!
If you like: Hiroshi Yoshimura, Actress, Tim Hecker
Falle Nioke - Love from the Sea
If you listen to 6 Music, you’ve most likely heard the absolute jammer that is 'Falle Le Le Le’, taken from the mercurial Afro-pop artist Falle Nioke’s brilliant debut, Love from the Sea; or if not, perhaps you’ve heard Nioke via his guest appearances on Joe Goddard of Hot Chip’s lovely ‘Miles Away’, or Barry Can’t Swim’s sweetly melancholic ‘I Won’t Let You Down’? If so, you already know how gifted the Guinean-born, Margate-based musician is, both as a composer and a vocalist.
Nioke’s sound is best described as experimental electronic music that pays homage to basement rave culture, deftly augmented with hushed, atmospheric soundscapes and West African rhythms. It's ridiculously catchy and moreish, aided by the incredible production, for which Nioke turned to new and old collaborators alike, including Ghost Culture, Johan Hugo (known for his work with artists like Self Esteem and Baaba Maal), and Tunng’s Mike Lindsay. (Released: 27/06/25)
If you like: AYA, Kokoroko, Kamaal Williams
Alex G - Headlights
The latest album from Alex G – AKA Alexander Giannascoli – is another dazzling collection of the kind of left-field guitar tracks, adorned with surreal storytelling, that have made the Pennsylvania native so beloved of forward-thinking indie fans. Once a DIY wunderkind, Headlights is Giannascoli’s first record for a major label, and accordingly the production is more hi-fi than previous offerings – but thankfully this doesn’t detract from the experience at all. If listening to an old Alex G song was akin to looking at a sunset through a dirty windscreen – abstractly, hazily beautiful – Headlights puts the wipers on, giving Giannascoli’s expertly crafted songs a Technicolor clarity. (Released: 18/07/25)
If you like: Mac DeMarco, Big Thief, Andy Shauf
Alpha Maid - Is This a Queue
Is This a Queue by Alpha Maid – the South East London guitarist, songwriter and producer a Leisha Thomas – is a masterful mix of lo-fi guitars, filthy noise and experimental electronics, anchored by Thomas’s beautifully ragged guitar work, which takes influences from dub, grunge, post punk, and Thomas’s Jamaican heritage.
Highlights include the pulsing, metallic ‘6 - 9’, which wouldn’t be out of place on Aphex Twin’s Selected Ambient Works Vol. II; ‘2 Numbers’ (featuring Leo Hermitt) which gives the impression of a chopped and screwed Slanted …-era Pavement track; ‘Guarded’, which sounds like a cross between AD 93 label mates Moin and Kim Gordon’s excellent Body/Head project: all flickering, grainy sub bass and art rock moves; and (speaking of Moin) the insistent ‘Why We have to Move’, which features the London trio’s Valentina Magaletti, and conjures an idea of Pere Ubu covering – or rather absolutely, gleefully destroying – Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Tusk’. (Released: 14/11/25)
If you like: Moin, Moor Mother, Body/Head
SML - How You Been
Another day, another fantastic release by Chicago’s prolific International Anthems Records. How You Been, the sophomore record from SML, the supergroup of Anna Butterss, Jeremiah Chiu, Josh Johnson, Booker Stardrum, and Gregory Uhlmann, expands on the acclaimed Small Medium Large, distilling improvisations from a series of shows into a finely honed studio work, whose touch points range through Afrobeat, kosmische, techno, electric Miles Davis, and more.
To illustrate the scope, where ‘Chicago Four’ synthesises the electronic and organic – think a hybrid of Mouse On Mars and Tortoise at their most propulsive and restless – ‘Taking Out the Trash’ evokes Polar Bear with its pointillistic guitar and ESG-esque bass and drums, augmented with incredible Fela Kuti-indebted horns. Another special mention must go to the terrific ‘Old Myth’, which combines knotty footwork electronic percussion (think Jlin), Afrobeat drums,
analogue noise bursts, organic winds and horns, and shimmering ambient tones. (Released: 07/11/25)
If you like: Carlos Niño, Mouse On Mars, Tortoise
Armand Hammer & The Alchemist - Mercy
Armand Hammer (New York’s billy woods and ELUCID) and The Alchemist (LA’s Alan Daniel Maman) follow their acclaimed Haram from 2021 with the monumental Mercy, a hip-hop record built from fragments of empire, memory, and imagined futures. Both jagged and strangely luminous, stitched together by The Alchemist’s dense, atmospheric production and the sharp interplay of rappers ELUCID and woods, Mercy also features excellent guest turns from Earl Sweatshirt, Quelle Chris, Cleo Reed, Pink Siifu, Kapwani, and Silka, who each add new textures to the album’s layered intensity. (Released: 07/11/25)
If you like: billy woods, Earl Sweatshirt, Quelle Chris
Tortoise - Touch
It may have been almost a decade since the legendary post-rock outfit released their last album, The Catastrophist (2016), but the brilliant Touch proves that the Chicagoans have lost none of their inventive, left-field melodicism. In fact, Touch is one of the finest records the quintet has ever produced – on a par with Millions Now Living Will Never Die, TNT and Standards. The apotheosis of Tortoise’s pioneering brand of post-rock, a sublime synthesis of minimalism, krautrock, experimental post-bop guitar, post-rave, pointillist spaghetti western fanfares, cold-war-spy-film intermezzos, and more, Touch is a thrilling return from a group that, after 30-plus years, is only getting better with age. (Released: 24/10/25)
If you like: The Sea and Cake, Stereolab, Neu!
Jeff Tweedy - Twilight Override
The terrific fifth solo album from the Wilco leader is a 30-track collection across three discs, showcasing Tweedy’s signature blend of wit (self-deprecating and otherwise), wisdom, and whimsy. Standout tracks include the achingly lovely ‘Mirror’, which combines Grandaddy-like keyboards with bubbling, subtly discordant guitar; the serpentine ‘Out in the Dark’, and the rousing ‘Enough’, a glorious cross between Dark Horse-era George Harrison, Tom Petty and Pavement. (Released: 31/10/25)
If you like: Elliott Smith, Wilco, Loose Fur
HAAi - HUMANiSE
For her excellent sophomore LP, the Australian producer and DJ HAAi – AKA Teneil Laetitia Throssell – puts the voice at the record’s centre in her exploration of affect as mediated by machines. Featuring vocals both organic and digitised, the album’s title is taken from a vocal harmoniser plug-in with a function called ‘Humanize’, with which Throssell and collaborator Jon Hopkins experimented; as Throssell says, “The idea of something completely synthetic trying to make an actual person sound more human is crazy.” In addition to Hopkins, HUMANiSE boasts a remarkable lineup of collaborators, including Alexis Taylor of Hot Chip, singer Obi Franky, rapper KAM-BU, artist Kaiden Ford, poet James Massiah, and the Trans Voices choir. (Released 10/10/25)
If you like: Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith, Jon Hopkins, Daniel Avery