These are some of my favourite albums I listened to in 2025; not all I listened to, just some highlights for me. Quite a few were new releases in 2025, but not all by any means. I use the music streaming app Qobuz which doesn't have any 'wrapped' or 'most listened to' features (I like that it doesn't) (more on Qobuz below). So, I don't have a record of what I listened to. This is just from memory and probably forgets some gems I loved at the time.
I've posted elsewhere on the theme of My Top Tracks. But that's about my favourite tracks of all time, a sort of soundtrack to my life. I don't listen to some of them that often these days. This post is more on what I listened to in 2025 and is about albums not tracks. My Top Tracks is also much more oriented around pop and rock which I still listen to but less so. I listen more to jazz and classical music now.
Muriel Grossman, Breakthrough
I think I discovered Muriel Grossman for the first time in 2025. Qobuz recommended her new 2025 album Breakthrough. This led me on to also listening to Golden Rule (2018), Reverence (2019), and Quiet Earth (2020). She had a new album out at the end of 2025 intriguingly called Plays the Music of McCoy Tyner and Grateful Dead which I have only just started to listen to in 2026. Grossman is an Austrian jazz saxophonist, long resident in Spain, playing I guess (I'm not an expert) in the tradition of Coltrane and spiritual jazz but obviously with her own original approach. In my brief glimpses of her live in videos and in interviews she comes over as nice and showing a lot of respect for her band members.
Tortoise, Touch
Tortoise, from Chicago, were a new band for me this year, again recommended by Qobuz editors. Touch, their 2025 release, was an 'album of the week' on Qobuz. Kind of electronic, jazz, driving, alternative rock (or post-rock) with twangy western-style guitar. This hasn't really been my kind of music in the past but I've been getting into the genre recently. Against my will, I've had to drive more in the last year than I used to (I used to barely drive at all) and the album Touch is great driving (especially motorway/autobahn) music.
Neu! Neu!
Listening to Tortoise reminded me of the Krautrock band Neu! that I first heard on the John Peel show in the 1970s. In 2025 I went back to their 1972 eponymous album. Driving, repetitive, rhythmic, experimental, great. In 2025 SML's How You Been came out. Following Tortoise and Neu!, this fitted in with all that, weird rhythmic experimental jazz, this lot being from LA.
Madonna, Ray of Light
I'm not a big Madonna listener but I loved this album when it came out in 1998 and bought it. I also liked the aesthetics of the cover. I liked Madonna's next album Music which I also bought. I come back to them both every year or two, as this year.
Bobbi Humphrey, Blacks and Blues
I think it was the track 'Harlem River Drive' which first brought me to the flautist Bobbi Humphrey and this 1973 album. Great funky jazz. Listening to this album led me to other funky jazz like Donald Byrd and Lonnie Liston Smith. See also below on Miles Davis. Bobbi is from Texas, moved to New York, and has gone into the business side of the industry.
Emma Rawicz, Big Visit
I discovered Emma Rawicz when her album Big Visit came out in 2025 and that led me to Inkyra (also 2025), her 2022 album Incantation and Chroma (2023). She was a great new jazz find, a British saxophonist and composer. I only realised when researching for this post that Emma is only 22. She has Chromesthesia where you perceive colours when you hear sounds. She has her own style, a great find for me, and I was gutted when she came to play in my home town on a day when I was away and could not make it.
Lucile Boulanger, La Messagère
I've always listened to classical music, but more and more these days ('that's because you're old', one of my kids said). I'm drawn less to composers than to instruments and the size of groups. I like deep string instruments like the viola de gamba (that Lucile plays) and cello and smaller units like quartets or just solo players to full orchestras. Having said that I manage to get my hands on reduced tickets for classical concerts and often go to see whole orchestras. In 2025 I really enjoyed Lucile's La Messagère released in 2024. She's French and also an actress.
Shabaka, Perceive its Beauty Acknowledge its Grace
I've followed Shabaka Hutchings' career as a jazz musician in various incarnations for a while, a saxophonist from the UK. He lives and breathes music. Two or three years ago I went to see him at the Brighton Festival where he played solo a number of flutes or flute-like instruments from around the world, seemingly quite randomly and just improvising. This album from 2024 is that sort of thing. He's a bit of a legend on the contemporary jazz scene for me and others.
Sol Gabetta, Lise Cristiani
A 2025 album by a great Argentinian cellist. I love Gabetta's music, for me it fits in with artists like Lucile Boulanger and (see below) Salome Gasselin.
Jasmine Myra, Rising
Another spiritual jazz saxophonist (following Muriel Grossman mentioned above). She's from Leeds in the UK, young and signed to Matthew Halsall's Gondwana records. This is her second album from 2024. Matthew is a meditative trumpeter from Manchester, also often on play for me.
Muireann Bradley, I Kept These Old Blues
I went to see Irish Muireann play in my home town in late 2025. She was incredibly composed for an 18 year old at that point. Her guitar playing, finger-picking style, was amazing. She spoke in between songs about the blues composers and players of the songs, often about women, some little stories, and about people from the blues she had met in her travels. She is obviously really steeped in the traditions she works in. The gig was advertised as folk but it was blues and fantastic. She mostly played other people's songs. Unfortunately her studio recordings are (for me) nowhere near as good as her live, but that may say more about how good she is live as about the album. Nevertheless, I really enjoyed this 2023 release in 2025, listening to it before and after her gig I went to. The whole room stood for her when her gig ended.
Buddy Guy, Ain't Done with the Blues
A few years ago I listened to jazz, blues, and soul mostly; 'where it all comes from' someone said to me, 'it' being rock music. In recent years jazz has dominated and blues and soul gone on a bit of an unintentional back-burner. But new albums in 2025 by Buddy Guy and Mavis Staples have brought blues and soul back much more into the picture. I can't believe that Buddy Guy was 88 or so when this album was recorded. It's amazing he's still recording at that age, let alone not sounding anything like 88. His voice is in great shape and he rocks away (for instance on his own life history) with some impressive vibrant guitar playing. 'I don't forget' is a powerful song on the history of racism in the USA. Buddy is from a Louisiana sharecropping family. The album brings back happy memories of listening to a local blues band every Friday night in the Nag's Head in High Wycombe when I was about 16.
Mavis Staples, Sad and Beautiful World
Another 2025 release, by Mavis Staples the last surviving member of the Chicago Staple Sisters (in one song on the album she sings: 'I dealed in loss, daddy, I am the last, daddy, last of us, ain't always easy to believe, I miss my family, daddy'). The album is called 'Sad and Beautiful World' after one of the songs and the title captures the album well. It's a sad record that comments on violence, the gun, war, and police brutality yet looks for humanity, love, and hope. 'Hard Times' she says 'Ain't Gonna Rule My Mind' which kind of summarises it all. There is bleakness and sorrow about the state of humanity and the world and the album is subdued on the whole. But there is also grit, hope, and perseverance despite evidence against these. 86 when this was released; as with Buddy Guy, Mavis is still very much a strong singer and this is a powerful, great album.
Saxon, Wheels of Steel
I go swimming about three times a week. It's a 20 minute walk there and I put my headphones on and treasure it as a special music listening time. I tend to listen to classical music on the way. On the way back pumped full of endorphins I often listen to heavy metal. A regular for the homeward stretch is Saxon's Wheels of Steel, their second album released 1980 and I heard it then when I was 16 and I suspect I bought it. It includes the classic song 747, about a plane approaching Kennedy airport where the runway lights are out, there's no radio contact, the plane is without power and out of fuel. Many would disagree but I think this is one of the great rock songs of all time. The band UFO (eg Doctor, Doctor) play a similar role in my life.
Salome Gasselin, Mystères
A French viola de gamba player, like Lucile Boulanger, who I like alongside people like Boulanger and Sol Gabetta mentioned above. Her Mystères was released in 2025 and that led me on to Récit 2023. Alongside these I've also been listening to related artists like Hille Perl (viola de gamba), Anna Besson (flute), and Myriam Rignol (viola de gamba). From my brief sightings of Salome on the internet she seems to have a bit of character, beyond the music.
Seckou Keita, Homeland Chapter 1
I was born in Kenya and came to the UK aged 6 about 1970. When we were back, Africa continued to feature in our British lives, in terms of food, household ornaments, and music. Miriam Makeba was on the turntable and other African musicians and singers I now can't remember the names of. In the late 1970s when listening to the John Peel show at night, amidst all the punk and new wave now and then an African band with jangling guitars would come up and keep me aware and in touch with music from countries of the continent. In recent years I came across Seckou Keita when I heard his collaborations with the Welsh harpist Catrin Finch, and then this album which was released in 2024. The album includes political and social commentary, for example on migration, and spoken voice parts by guests that are also used in live performances. I then saw him and his band live in Brighton in May 2025 and they played mostly uptempo tracks rather than his more chilled ones. I was right at the front and he was a real showman, the band obviously thoroughly enjoying themselves, getting the audience involved and building up a party atmosphere. Keita is a Senegalese Kora player - the Kora looks like a large back-to-front banjo with a harp attached. I had been tipped off about a secret guest appearance by Anoushka Shankar who was curating the Brighton Festival the gig was part of, but no-one else knew. When she came on stage there was a collective intake of breath and the two of them performed some great pieces together, alternating taking the lead. It was a rare and memorable moment. Seckou's young guitarist was peering round at Anoushka's playing with his jaw literally dropping and glances of amazement to his fellow band members. I then started to find out about many other Kora players like Ablaye Cissoko also from Senegal who performs this beautiful song, Amanke Dionti (She's Not a Slave) about women from poor families employed as maids for the rich. Also Ballaké Sissoko and Toumani Diabaté from Mali. I was also listening in 2025 to the great singer Fatoumata Diawara from Mali.
Anoushka Shankar, Chapter III: We Return to Light
British-American sitar player Anoushka Shankar was the curator of the Brighton Festival 2025 in my home town. There was a nice emphasis on South Asian music and culture which made it one of my favourite programmes of the annual festival for a while. I mentioned above that I saw her come on as a guest at Seckou Keita's gig in that festival. The final event of the festival was Anoushka performing in her own right. The venue was packed and there was an excitement to see her and for this the special closing event. Anoushka made a lot of how she had been unwell and could not talk and that her band members would have to do the talking, although that took quite a lot of talking to explain. Shankar comes over as quite precious and upper class (this could be unfair, but that is how it feels) so I was surprised when her band members seemed quite blokey, jokey, and down to earth and they brought a smile to her face. The gig had a lot from her latest album Chapter III: Return to Light which came out in 2025 and I think is my favourite album of hers. It's part of a trilogy, Part II being How Dark it is before Dark, and this one, obviously, a return to light in feel. It has loops which become the basis for the playing over them. I listened to the album over and over in 2025. There is quite a balanced, intelligent review in The Indian Express.
Steve Reich, Jacob's Ladder/Traveler's Prayer and Different Trains/Electric Counterpoint
I discovered Steve Reich for the first time in 2025 when the Jacob's Ladder album came out. He's an alternative classical composer from the USA. That led me to the Different Trains album from 1989. As a child Reich lived between LA and New York where his parents were respectively located and parts of the latter album represent him travelling from one to the other during the Second World War while part represents the transportation of Jews by train under the Nazis at the same time (Reich is Jewish). The album features recorded speech and train sounds. During 2025 I went to see an experimental classical concert in my town. One of the composers, Rachel Portman, was there and came on stage. I loved it, it stimulated my mind, anything unusual like this does, but the people who went with me didn't like it. The performers didn't seem that excited about it all when it finished, and the woman sitting next to me ranted at the end about what a waste of a good orchestra it had been. I wondered why she went when it was obvious it would be experimental.
Kamasi Washington, Fearless Movement
Fearless Movement was released in 2024 and I went to see Kamasi Washington play in 2025 on this tour. I've been following Kamasi since his first album grandiosely titled The Epic. It seemed a bit of an arrogant way of introducing himself to me and the sound was too 'big' for me. I liked it but these were off-putting. However, he's grown on me. At the gig I went to, other members of his band had a lot of time to play and he showed humility to them and the audience. The big sound has grown on me. Some of the stewards at the gig were wearing ear protectors and wincing at the volume but I liked it. There is funk and hip-hop as well as spiritual jazz in his music and, I have learned, characteristics of LA-jazz, where Washington is from. Nubya Garcia has been another one of my favourites from the contemporary jazz scene, especially that coming from young people in the UK, in particular London, and her 2024 album Odyssey was on play in 2025 quite a bit and I went to see her live.
Jess Gillam, Prism 3 Volumes
I first came across Jess Gillam through my parents who saw her play when visiting friends. They reported back on her delightful personality and lovely music. It had obviously been a very pleasant and uplifting experience. I think they already knew her from the 2016 BBC Young Musician of the Year in which she was a finalist at 18. Her first album was released in 2019, when she was only 20. Prism is effectively three EPs, released in 2025. Put together they are about the length of an album. Her music evokes to me English (or Scottish) countryside, birds on the wing, light dappled woodlands, and that kind of thing. There was a time when I would much rather have listened to Stiff Little Fingers but I've got older and the world is so grim, mostly at a macro level but also a bit at a micro level, that Jess Gillam provides a bit of relief. I saw her play in Brighton in the last year or two. She lit up the place and got a lot of love from everyone. She's a lovely young northener, from Cumbria in the Lake District. She's also a presenter on BBC Radio 3. She has a light personality, very unstuffy for the classical world, which she adds colour (literally) to.
Miles Davis, On the Corner, Amandla, Doo-Bop, Tutu
I've already written a post on the title track of Miles Davis' On the Corner. I've listened to Miles Davis and John Coltrane for a long time but was never that crazy about Davis' fusion music, where jazz is mixed with funk and rock. I always thought if you like funk and rock just listen to funk and rock. But I did listen sometimes to his rocky fusion album Bitches Brew and started to look at fusion from the point of view of jazz and to see the merits of funky and rocky jazz. On the Corner (1972) grabbed me the most, then I got into Tutu (1986) and the funky Doo-bop (1992) which doesn't seem to be very highly rated but I like and also Amandla (1989). Miles was married to Betty Davis a hard hitting unfiltered funk singer who was amazing herself. She influenced his move towards fusion music. I read a journalist once saying he went round to their place to interview Miles Davis and was surprised to find him listening not to jazz but to soul and funk music.
Gabi Hartmann, La Femme aux Yeaux de Sel
French singer Gabi Hartmann was a new discovery for me this year when La Femme aux Yeaux de Sel came out in 2025. The album has jazz, pop, world, and French aspects. It tells the tale of a young woman Salinda. It has a dreamy poetic feel. It's a lovely album and I listened to it many times this year.
Free, Fire and Water
Free's old album from 1970 made a bit of a comeback for me this year. Actually it never really went away. It features the classic single Alright Now and the title track. The music is simple and sparse, each member of the band very proficient on their instrument.
Anouar Brahem, After the Last Sky
It's always exciting for me when a new Brahem album comes out. I've posted on Brahem and the oud before. After The Last Sky, released 2025, is another beauty, mixing jazz, classical, and Arabic sounds. It was composed by Brahem, who is Tunisian, just before the Hamas attack of October 2023 and the ensuing genocide in Gaza. The album was then recorded in May 2024 during the genocide. The tracks have titles that refer to the experience of Palestinians and Gaza. 'After the Last Sky' refers to Mahmoud Darwish's poem 'Where Should the Birds Fly after the Last Sky'. It was also the title of a book on Palestinian lives by Edward Said. The liner notes written by Adam Shatz focus on Palestine and the genocide in Gaza.
Qobuz
I use the music streaming app Qobuz. I left Spotify because the owner invests millions in the arms trade and they allow advertising of ICE, not to mention paying artists a pittance. Qobuz pays artists more than any other streaming provider. As far as I can see it doesn't have the same evils as Spotify although it is a conventional capitalist company. It has very good sound quality. Qobuz is oriented around recommendations of albums made by musical editors more than algorithm-based recommendations. I like the former because I discover so much (including several albums above) that I would not from personalised recommendations. There can be technical glitches for some, but not others, and customer support can range from very helpful to unresponsive. They could spend some of what they put into music curation on customer support and functionality. Qobuz also sometimes feel a bit elitist as it caters to many users who are audiophiles and have expensive equipment which Qobuz reviews. It has a VIP club where you pay an annual fee to get special privileges and be labelled 'VIP' in the forum. I hate that. I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with the company. But for me the disadvantages are far outweighed by the advantages.
Related post: My Top Tracks