Spaghetti Best Western
Best of 2025, Mixes, Playlists, Other Best of lists, Gaza is the moral compass.
Hello friends, I’ve shared this before on different channels, here’s my best of 2025 picks. I’ve picked something like 120 songs around 10 hours. There’s a whole gamut of genres, they are roughly ordered by sonic texture: ambient drift to spiritual jazz to leftfield pop to guitar rock to noise and back. It’s a topography not a ranking! I hope you find something you like more and go deeper. As always this year has been a fantastic year for new music, even though every year is getting tougher for artists outside the scope of Live Nation etc. Support independent artists and music!
Here’s the way to do that: 10 Ways To Support Independent Music And Culture in 2026.
This is a playlist organized by texture rather than preference—starting in ambient, dub and electronic pop territory, moving through jazz and indie rock, making you dance a bit in the middle and landing somewhere in ambient again. There’s much to say about all the artists, but covering 120 artists is a mammoth task, so I didn’t do it.
We open with a tune from Adrian Sherwood's “The Collapse of Everything” and close with 34 minutes of Natural Information Society (gnawa inspired trance jazz). Four women bend pop early on: Jenny Hval, Eiko Ishibashi, Laura Groves, Lucrecia Dalt. Cochemea's "Otros Mundos" fits into the spiritual jazz revival that labels like International Anthem and Luaka Bop have championed. On the spiritual side, Charles Lloyd is 87 and still channeling.
There’s a guitar-forward stretch where LA Witch, Osees, Tropical Fuck Storm and Geese coexist. London jazz diaspora (Kokoroko, Joe Armon-Jones, Yazmin Lacey) meet ECM (Mathias Eick, Anouar Brahem). DjRUM makes atmospheric drum and bass / IDM while Roza Terenzi, Shanti Celeste and Nick Leon make you dance. There’s Sessa from São Paulo, Yagya from Reykjavík, Brìghde Chaimbeul from Scotland.
Yeah, a lot of things, just put it on and enjoy!
♩Same list on Apple Music. Unfortunately can’t embed it.
♩Listen to these albums from start to finish they utilize the album format very well.
♩Favorite metal albums of 2025
I keep this separate from the main list so you don’t freak out. As always, a lot of black/death metal.
My Top 5 are in order.
👀 Other EOY lists that made me discover stuff I missed.
Free Jazz Collective’s Top Albums of 2025.
My friend Corto Ramirez’s playlist. (Spotify)
De Selby’s list (Bsky)
First Floor’s Favorite Tracks of 2025.
Zensound’s The 25 Best Ambient Albums of 2025
♩Two mixes I played at the NYE dinner, first one was this rocksteady mix by DJ Karl (first time I’ve heard his name but he seems to be the real deal!) and the second is a Thai psych & molam mix by Diana Ratsamee.
2026
♩Ok, 2026. I’m going through a lot of stuff that I missed from other lists, and one of the compilations I have to mention is by the always on point Habibi Funk. A lot of great and lost songs from Libyan cassettes compiled here. Detailed writeup on The Quietus.
♩Coincidentally, there’s a new compilation on Beacon Sound called “Gaza is the Moral Compass” with artists such as Sary Moussa, Sam Shalabi, Raz Mesinai, Kareem Samara, foodman, Hüma Utku and others. Experimental, ambient, jazz etc. and liner notes by Radio AlHara’s Yousef Anastas.
"Remember that cultural work is not a neutral endeavour. In other words, we are all implicated in the struggle for Palestinian liberation, which is a struggle for everyone’s freedom. I invite you to question what this means and use Gaza as your compass."
👀 Ten years later, an oral history of David Bowie’s ‘Blackstar’: Mark Guiliana, Donny McCaslin and Tony Visconti, talk about working on Bowie’s final testament “Blackstar”
👀 What is the artist to Fascism: Dada Drummer
There’s no room for art under Fascism. Kitsch and propaganda, yes. But the rest is Entartete Kunst, degenerate art.
👀 Why Innovation in So-Called Creative or Experimental Music is Frozen Solid:
If I played you some improvised music recordings from 1973 and 2025 it’s fairly likely you wouldn’t be able to tell which one was made when, especially if I tried to make the quality of the recordings sound the same.
Talk soon!
fantastich selection and admirable work as always. doesn't necessarily mean i always share the same taste, but the effort that you put in it as well as the whole idea and the flavor it leaves in our tongues etc. thank you
Big ups!! Thanks for the plug!!