A few more notable releases from the year gone by
While I didn’t feel much appetite for putting together a 2025 albums of the year list (I already compile a few for different publications and end up feeling dissatisfied with all of them), there were a bunch of releases that kept nagging at me to at least acknowledge their existence in writing. The attention economy means that a lot of music seems to disappear from view almost as soon as it’s been released, a victim of our appetite for newness. So let me just take stock of a few more worthwhile albums (and one single) from 2025, some of which didn’t get nearly the attention they deserved.
Kakuhan & Adam Golebiewski
Repercussions
(Unsound)
Kakuhan’s 2022 album Metal Zone fried my brain with its blend of Autechrian rhythms and avant cello technique, but when I caught the duo live it felt like there was something missing. Turns out that “something” was Polish improvising percussionist Adam Gołębiewski, who Kakuhan’s Koshiro Hino and Yuki Nakagawa hooked up with when they played at Unsound festival in Kraków in 2023. Favouring bowed cymbals and metallic scrapes and rattles, Gołębiewski meshes easily with the serrated textures of Nakagawa’s cello and Hino’s unpredictable, ping-ponging beats, while injecting added dynamism into the music. I was fortunate to catch them at Unsound’s Osaka edition last September and it was one of the highlights of the weekend: a dizzying cyborg swirl that conveyed a constant sense of forward motion, only to leave you exactly where you’d started.
Jon no Son
Short Guide
(Self-released)
It’s hard keeping up with Jon no Son: since re-emerging last year, the Nagoya indie ensemble have released three full-lengths in the space of a little over 12 months. December’s Play All was CD-only until a couple of days ago, but Short Guide has been swimming around on the usual streaming services for the past few months, so I’ve actually had a chance to give it a proper listen. It’s a less hectic-sounding album than Cupholder, which I wrote about in my previous round-up: the group’s multiple vocalists tend to wait for their turn at the microphone rather than singing/speaking all at once, trading lines with the intricate choreography of a stage play. The music is soft and breathy, pairing acoustic guitar, chirping synthesisers and murmurs of woodwind and brass, with a stumbling gait and just enough improv wonkiness to ensure it won’t get mistaken for run-of-the-mill twee pop. CD available here.
New Manuke
Sour Valley
(Leftbrain )
Although they’ve been active since 2009, it’s taken this long for New Manuke to release a full-length album, which tells you something about how ambitious they are. The Kansai trio pool the talents of Neco Nemuru guitarist Pedal Kurihara, sound designer Masamitsu Araki and DJ Distest into a sample-heavy shambles that’s on a similar wavelength to Tokyo’s Mammoth: a garish, primitivist electronica with tongue wedged firmly in cheek. It sounds like they’re triggering a lot of the sounds manually, giving the music an appealingly drunken lollop. As the group’s bio proudly states, their live shows “induce a reverse trance with beats that are impossible to dance to,” and while this feels like a bit of a creative cul-de-sac, I can’t deny that I had fun listening to it.
Ju Sei
Mousu
(BasicFunction)
Wild stuff from these experimental veterans, back with their first full-length in 14 years. 2011’s Conesolo suggested Ju Sei were heirs to the avant-pop tradition of After Dinner, and this continues on a similar trajectory, but goes harder on the electroacoustic techniques that its predecessor mostly just hinted at. Junichiro Tanaka’s productions are a riot of contradictory impulses: synth-pop, orchestral bombast, glitching electronics, drone seances and concrète chanson. Sei responds in kind, her pure-toned vocals ranging from winsome sweetness to curdled shrieks. Not everything works, but it’s a dizzyingly inventive album that spun me out even more when I realised that I’d actually performed with Sei back in 2017 (those were different times).
Ntski
Euphoria
(Orange Milk Records)
I’m still not sure if the stylistic shifts between each of Ntski’s albums are the mark of restless creativity or an artist who can’t quite figure out what she does best. While last year’s Calla channeled the spirit (if not necessarily the sound) of Japan’s 1980s cassette underground, Euphoria is sleek and club-ready. There are Brat-style 2000s rave vibes – Chloe Kae collab ‘ESC’ is straight-up bassline house – and even a bit of reggaeton (‘246’), but Ntski’s fondness for pillowy pad synths and airy vocals are of a piece with the trance revival spearheaded by Minna-no-kimochi. Just as the prevailing lushness threatens to become soporific, ‘Journey 2 Euphoria’ supplies a joyous highlight, as billowing Enya vocals give way to a sweaty gabber onslaught.
Keiji Haino + Shuta Hasunuma
U TA
(Temporal Drift)
Did Keiji Haino finally make a chill-out album? Although I suspect many listeners associate the underground icon primarily with guitar, his recent activities have often put more focus on his inimitable vocals, whether as frontman for covers band The Hardy Rocks or in live collaborations with the likes of Apartment House and MUSARC. U TA is the fruit of a pandemic-era project pairing his voice with music by composer and sound artist Shuta Hasunuma. For the most part, it’s a surprisingly blissful ride: Haino’s vocals (improvised from pre-written lyrics) are hushed and ruminative, often swimming in reverb so thick you’d think they were recorded in a cistern tank. Meanwhile, Hasunuma’s musical settings – limpid, spacious melds of analog synths, piano, field recordings and whatnot – suggest a modern spin on Hiroshi Yoshimura-style kankyo ongaku.
Former_airline
Breath of the Machineries
(Call And Response Records)
The opening track to this fresh transmission from Masaki Kubo had me wondering (worrying?) if he was about to go all Boards of Canada on us, with its reverse melodies and decaying samples emerging from a haze of crackle. There’s certainly an element of nostalgia in the music on Breath of the Machineries, which folds snippets of decades-old tape recordings into its futurist reveries. Kubo offsets his krautrock influences (a motorik rhythm here, some Manuel Göttsching guitar there) with squelching acid basslines and dubbed-out ambient excursions that suggest early-90s The Orb might have been an equally important reference point. And how can you not warm to an album that features a cover of one of the best tracks from Broadcast’s Spell Blanket?
Peterparker69
Yo,
(Self-released)
This is the closest I’m ever likely to come to writing something complimentary about Radwimps, so savour it. The band’s Yojiro Noda guests on ‘Hey phone’, the lead single from Peterparker69’s ingratiating and commendably brief debut album. This seems to have been one of the defining pop-adjacent releases of 2025 in Japan, and is certainly the only one I spent much time with. The hyperpop duo’s euphoric, pitch-shifted trance hooks and emotive lyrics make for an addictive package. Musically, there are echoes of Jam City’s recent work or (unsurprisingly) collaborators Two Shell, who pop up on ‘Magic Powers’, but the whole thing sounds like it’s geared for phone speakers rather than a club PA. I also love the way Jeter’s vocals sometimes mimic the strangulated quality of a low-bitrate audio file, like they’re being run through Realplayer. Listen to it here.
Takuro Okada
Konoma
(Temporal Drift)
Guitarist and producer Takuro Okada’s second release on Temporal Drift during 2025 was a more cohesive statement than home recordings collection The Near End, The Dark Night, The County Line. According to the accompanying blurb, Okada found inspiration in Chicago artist Theaster Gates’ concept of “Afro-Mingei” as a way to understand his own relationship with jazz as a Japanese musician. I’m not sure I would have guessed any of this based on the music, which sticks mostly to a gently seductive strain of spiritual jazz made for late-night reveries. Okada acts as bandleader for a crack team of musicians including drummer Shun Ishiwaka and saxophonist Kei Matsumaru, while subtly filling out the sound with electronics, percussion and analogue synth. Versions of Jan Garbarek’s ‘Nefertite’ and Hiromasa Suzuki’s ‘Love’ fit in seamlessly with the originals.
Moreru
SEKAI: YYou && MMe
(Musicmine)
By far the most irritating thing that I listened to repeatedly during 2025, Moreru’s latest full-length is more obviously the work of a flesh-and-blood band than its predecessor, Juso Kokuhaku Hatsukoi Soshite Sekai. It’s less likely to induce whiplash, too: Though they’re working with a similar list of ingredients (black metal, screamo, idol pop, TikTok memes, visual kei, melocore, harsh noise, etc.), they’ve adjusted the ratios so that everything coheres more naturally than it has any right to. There are moments at which it sounds like the band are dreaming of a Gezan-style crossover, but a quick scan of the lyrics – witty, nihilistic, puerile, profane and decidedly NSFW – puts any such notions to rest. Closing track ‘Anone’ is the sound of virginal 80s idol pop having an existential crisis, and confirms my suspicion that they’ve been channeling the spirit of Jun Togawa all along.
Yassokiiba
Dub 5 / Dub 3
(Self-released)
The perennial dig against modular synth enthusiasts is that they never get around to finishing anything. Tokyo-based artist Yassokiiba skirts around that dilemma with this tasty 7-inch culled from recordings of modular jam sessions. Though it clocks in at under 10 minutes, this is music to get lost in: hypnotic, skanking dub techno in the vein of Ghost Dubs or Rhythm & Sound, but with the added fizziness that comes from constant tweaking. And if you like how that sounds, there’s way more to be found on Yassokiiba’s YouTube channel.
HannodaTaku
Walk Musics
(Self-released)
Hearing Taku Hannoda’s music for the first time is like discovering a new flavour of ice cream that turns your tongue a funny colour. The Kansai-based artist wields guitar, sampler and analogue synth to create music so chirpy and playful, it’s hard to believe he came up via the early 2000s free improv scene. He’s a prolific bugger: Walk Musics is one of nearly 20 releases he’s put up on Bandcamp over the past couple of years. The opening stretch showcases naive, awkwardly funky electronics reminiscent of the output of Koshiro Hino’s now-defunct Birdfriend label, before Hannoda switches to guitar and unleashes bursts of psychedelic squiggle that put me in mind of Dustin Wong. I don’t imagine he spent much longer finessing each track than he did designing the ebullient artwork, but that’s part of the charm. While we’re at it, you might also want to try ABA, Hannoda’s recent file-sharing collaboration with Kazuhisa Uchihashi, which to my ears sounds like Music For Commercials played by Alvin and the Chipmunks.
