Andy's Favorite Music of 2025
From drizzly digital grunge to jackhammering club music, lo-fi guitar explorations to glacial jazz standards, this is the music that moved me most this year.
I look over my list of favorite music from this year and I notice a couple of trends. There is plenty of music that falls under the increasingly massive umbrella of ambient, but isn’t really ambient per se—too active, too slippery, too noisy or dissonant; and yet too drifty, droney, and atmospheric to be anything else. This kind of not not ambient music, to borrow a coinage, is especially fertile territory right now, and I hope to write more about it in the new year. There’s also quite a lot of guitar, mostly in contexts other than traditional rock bands. From French noise to Nigerien punk, Andean electronic psychedelia to Midwestern bedroom shredding, people are still finding new things to say with six strings. I could make more attempts at big narratives, but it’s a long list, and you’re probably not here for my philosophizing. Let’s get into it.
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