Top 3 records of 2025 1. FULL EARTH - Cloud Sculptors Enormous riffs, hypnotically swirling and pulsating organs, mellotron and synths. This album is a giant, unfathomable roller of Psychedelic Rock goodness with Classical inspirations.
2. KAMASI WASHINGTON - Fearless Movement From Afro-Beat and Funk to Hip Hop and from Ambient to Tango. Never have the saxophonist and his West Coast posse fused his maximalist Spiritual Jazz with such a wide array of influences so effortlessly.
3. DOOL - The Shape of Fluidity The Dutch Dark Rock masters deliver their most personal and emotionally profound work to date. A highly addictive selection of mighty, sweaty and catchy hymns.
Top 5 albums VoS missed in 2024
1. MITOCHONDRION - Vitriseptome The Canadian masters returned with one of the most over the top virtuously chaotic Dissonant Death Metal releases in recent years. Eighty-five glorious minutes of relentless utter obliberation.
2. LETHE - Alienation You love Ulver’s dark Synth Pop sound, but need it with an ethereal female lead voice, instances of Post Black Metal and Trip Hop with French rap vocals? Here comes some wonderful midnight hour headphone fodder to deeply bewitch your ears!
3. DOPE PURPLE & BERSERK - This Is the Harsh Trip for New Psyche The title of this Taiwanese collaboration says it all: Go onto an awesome space trip with a great Psych Rock band, but let them frontally crash with a Harsh Noise artist! Bonkers and brilliant.
4. NICK HUDSON - Kanda Teenage Honey This Englishman in Georgia - singer, songwriter, poet and multi-instrumentalist - remains one of the most criminally unrecognized artists of our time. And there’s no way I can even give you the slightest glimpse into the greatness of this epic Chamber Pop / Post Punk / Alternative Avantgarde treasure chest.
5. GNOD - Spot Land In a complete one-eighty from the politically agitative rebellious noise of GNOD’s previous albums Spot Land is a rather introvert experience of dreamy, enraptured, escapist Ambient Kraut Rock with occasional Gregorian chants. Beautiful.
My TOP 3 live shows of 2024
1. LAIBACH - Pavillon, Hanover, Oct 22 2024 In an impressive demonstration of all their strengths the Slovenes celebrated their legendary 1987 classic Opus Dei.
2. CYNIC - Logo, Hamburg, Mar 28 2024 Cynic’s 1993 Fusion Metal masterpiece Focus is one of the best things among the entirety of things. What an unexpected bliss to experience it live in its entirety now!
3. EINSTÜRZENDE NEUBAUTEN - Capitol, Hanover, Oct 9 2024 After decades Blixa Bargeld & co finally left my bucket left. New level of music nerd bliss unlocked.
</b>5 other good things in 2024</b>
1. Shōgun A much rarer occurrence than in music, television/streaming series seldom reach complete perfection. But if you can forgive that most of its English dialogue should technically be in Portuguese or Dutch, Shōgun absolutely nailed it. What an experience!
2. Arcane The other huge mindblower of a series was Arcane - and I’m not even a gamer at all. Each frame a stunning piece of art, and all in service of great storytelling. If only there weren’t the shitty Imagine Dragons title song plus a couple of other duds and unnecessary non-fantasy references in the soundtrack. “Only” close to perfection.
3. Reverse January 6th in Seoul The people of South Korea wasted zero time to reject the martial law absolute power grab of their misogynist bullshit president. Why are there so few political happenings like this? Instead the whole world rather seems to “hitler around” in fascist cults….
4. Nah, come on, that was pretty much it. Stopping here, sorry. Humanity blows and we’re still f***d. Have a happy 2025!
