2025 albums i listened to

08 Feb, 2026

The Mix

I made a mix of some of my favorite songs I heard in 2025. You can listen to the mix here ↓

You can download it here.

Here is the track list.

• 0:00 Hugo Maillard - Gaillet
• 05:19 Zach Phillips - It Made My Night
• 07:08 Bogdan Sekalski - Make Life Easier (feat. magic_pep)
• 09:55 Componium Ensemble - Automata (for celesta, glockenspiel and spring-tank guitar)
• 12:04 jj+js - Lily Pad (with Izella)
• 16:11 Dawuna - Bottom Energy
• 20:32 argo nuff - in amish,
• 25:19 Theo Alexander & Qow - 02
• 30:59 ゑでぃまぁこん eddie marcon - 真夜中の音楽 mayonaka no ongaku
• 36:44 Perila - Sepula Purm
• 40:13 Sibylle Baier - Remember the Day
• 41:56 Quilapayún - Mi Patria
• 45:50 U.e - Good morning
• 48:30 Patrick Higgins - Little One (Feat Chris Williams)
• 52:12 Low - Tempest
• 56:56 Romance - Love is Colder Than Death
• 59:05 Sade - You're Not the Man
• 1:03:54 James Rushford - The Body's Night (part 2)

The cover of the mix is a drawing inspired by a scene from Jon Fosse’s Melancholia I, which I read in December.

Hair flowing below her shoulders. Pale, flowing hair. And then a smile on her mouth. And then her eyes, that opened towards him. And out from her eyes came the brightest light he had ever seen. The light from her eyes. Never had he seen such light. And then he, Lars from Hattarvåg, stood up. And Lars from Hattarvåg stood there, in his purple suit, made of velvet, he, Lars from Hattarvåg, stood with his arms hanging straight down and he looked at the hair and the eyes and the mouth there in front of him, he just stood there, and then it was as if the light from her eyes surrounded him, like warmth, no, not like warmth! no, not like warmth, like light! yes, the light from her eyes surrounded him like light all around him! and in this light he was someone different from who he had been, he was not Lars from Hattarvåg any more, he was someone else, all his anxiety, all his fears, everything he lacked and that always filled him with anxiety, everything he longed for was as if fulfilled by the light from Helene Winckelmann’s eyes and he was calm, he was fulfilled, and he stood there, with his arms hanging straight down at his sides, and then, without meaning to, without thinking, without anything, he just walked up to Helene Winckelmann and it was like he entirely disappeared into her light, the light all around her, and he felt calm like he had never felt before, so unbelievably calm he felt,

The Spreadsheet

At the beginning of 2025, I decided to keep track of every album I listened to in Google Sheets. You can see the whole thing here. It's also embedded below ↓

I started this spreadsheet because I wanted to commit to listening to music more actively, with attention and care, as the artist intended, as opposed to something to put on in the background to facilitate task-doing. The turning point for me was at some point around the end of 2024, when I was listening to Huerco S. and reading an interview he did where he says “Ambient music has just become like ‘beats to chill and study to.’ It’s like productivity music, capitalist music. It’s non-intrusive, it doesn’t get in your way, like you can still work your job. It kinda makes me cringe a bit.”

To enter an album into the spreadsheet, I had to listen to it front-to-back, and had to have at least one thing to say about it.

It would be nice and neat to conclude that all of this note-taking deepened my appreciation of the music I listened to, or opened my eyes to new ways of listening. Or whatever. I think now I can recall more of what I listened to, if I consult the spreadsheet. But honestly I can’t remember what it was like to listen to music before.

All I know is that the notes section of the spreadsheet evolved over time. At first I tried to go for an objective evaluation of the music I was listening to. It had so and so instruments, generated so and so emotions, was made in so and so context, the artist was part of so and so scene, kind of sounds like so and so, etc. Thinking a lot about the artist and their intentions. I did not want to contaminate this section with anything personal. But then on June 15, 2025, I wrote:

You know what. So much of my experience listening to music is related to the conditions in which I listened to it, what I was doing, who showed it to me, what state of mind I was in at the time etc. which goes beyond any sort of numerical ranking and is inseparable from talk about instruments/scenes or even the artist themself. I've decided that it would be foolish to omit this from this spreadsheet, so now, if I feel like it, I'm gonna include it. And not in a separate column.

I realized that sometimes I didn't want to think about what the artist was doing, what their intentions might be. Sometimes I stopped thinking about listening to music the way it's supposed to be listened to and started listening solipsistically, focusing on the effects it gives me in my own insular world, not caring at all about who the artist is or where they come from but just something that meets some selfish need. Like listening to the same Sade song 100 times on repeat. I didn’t log that. Or the need for stimulation. There's a type of music that I listen to a lot of, I don't really know what to call it, maybe “ASMR pop” or something like that, typified by Orange Milk Records (maybe I'll make a playlist of this), but it sounds like pretty much a collage of different noises like trickling, clicking, beeping, gurgling, popping (softly), etc, and everything in between, and beyond, but with the intention of stimulating your brain with as many different sounds as possible. Gentle enough not to be overwhelming, diverse enough to be interesting. While I really like anything that sounds like how pop rocks candy feels on your tongue, I found it increasingly difficult to come up with anything to say about these albums. For example, in my review of m Helux by Alley Catss, I wrote:

Sometimes I feel like I'm running out of words. What can I say other than "glitchy spacious ambient with vocal samples", and "it's good". The tao that can be named is not the eternal tao.

I feel a bit lazy wabout maintaining this spreadsheet in 2026, for a few reasons:

1. I’m afraid that it reinforces this idea of music taste as a commodity, something to be exchanged for social capital instead of just as… listening for its own sake. Or as an identity marker, i.e. “I am X person, therefore I listen to X music.” rather than “I listen to X music, therefore I am this person”. It’s so hard to avoid these feelings during the year-end list season, for example. It feels so competitive. Everyone suddenly needs to weigh in. It makes me want to delete all my social media apps.¹

   I guess this is the trap of being perceived. Everything we do is a little bit performative. It’s performative to share a best-of-2025 list, it’s performative to start a blog, it’s performative to go outside. Whatever. I think of the performative people sharing their performative lists of their favorite performative artists and I think, thank god, because I might not have known about them otherwise.

2. Prioritizing the album is sometimes an unnatural way of listening to music. Last year I didn’t listen to any mixes, and I largely abstained from listening to singles, preferring to wait until the whole album came out.

3. I realized that it is simply pleasurable to have music on in the background while I’m not 100% focused on it. Maybe that’s bad. This year, though, if I wasn’t able to pay attention fully, I simply wouldn’t listen to anything. This led to this year actually being probably the most silent year of my adult life, even though I listened to a total of 341 albums.

4. I canceled my Spotify premium subscription but also didn’t download another streaming app as they all just seem so fucked. See this chart: This combined with my headphones losing their noise canceling has caused me to just go wherever I need to go as I listen to the sounds of cars, scooters, ambulances, garbage trucks, conversations on terrazas, dogs barking, babies crying, buildings being demolished, buildings being constructed, the occasional birdsong, storefront shutters being opened or closed, unmuted tiktoks, the 2019 Samsung Galaxy ringtone Over the Horizon, Si et trobes malament, baixa del vagó i demana ajuda a l'intèrfon SOS que trobaràs a l'andana, etc.

But I think I am going to continue the spreadsheet. Because:

• I like having a record of things that I listened to.
• Momentum.
• I discover a lot of music through stalking random people's bandcamp purchases, rym lists, slsk folders, etc. Maybe some freak will find my spreadsheet and find something new.

The Lists

I ended up making a couple year-end lists. Here they are.

Favorite albums/EPs that came out in 2025

2025 Awards

Miscellaneous

Favorite year end-lists

• Modem
• Rhizome
• 222tyuk222
• Tone Glow

Favorite label I discovered

• Mappa (Slovakia)

That's all for now. I'm sure I could infinitely reflect upon what I learned after making this blog post, in this day and age, in this economy, what I want to do in the future, justify my decisions, include all possible forms of criticisim to immunize myself to it, etc. But I'm going to get back to listening to music now d^_^b

Oh and here's the 2026 spreadsheet.