So, we’ve all voted for our best album of 2025, and we wait with bated breath for the final results. But what are the chances that you got to hear the album that would really scintillate, that would perk up your jaded (old) musical palate? Think back. Those albums that seem to have travelled with you all your life – how many did you actually pick up on straight away? I was 13 when Hejira was released, so way too young to get its worldweariness or to appreciate its depths. I was twice that age when my travelling feet led me to the sweetspot where it would become the perfect soundtrack. Even artists that I already knew somehow could release something below my radar, usually due to me being personally preoccupied – I’ve had a few fallow years. Hell, I already knew Kate Bush, but The Dreaming came out towards the end of 1982, so I didn’t pick up on it for a few months by which time it was ‘so last year’. But it was definitely my album of the year – just not the year it was released.
My list for last year was well considered and included some artists new to me as well as old favourites like Juana Molina, Naragonia and Le Vent du Nord, who all brought out dependable albums, but not anything that made me leap round the room, which does still happen occasionally. Half Man Half Biscuit will do well again this year but, with the best will in the world, 2025 was not really the imperial year of HMHB, not even if you’re a Biscuits fan.
Do you really think you’ve already heard your album of 2025? Aren’t you hoping for a chance discovery that really thrills you, regardless of when the release date was? Did the album that really made its mark on you this year, actually come out in 2025?
Yes
While I listened to many, many new (to me) artists and albums in 2025, there weren’t enough actually released in the last 12 months to justify putting together an entry to either Paul or Tig’s charts.
Cybertrópico by Disstantes was an exciting Brazilian release for me to discover.
Mit Dem Hoodie Durch Die Stadt by Blumenstrauss was bought when I saw the neurodiverse rockers from Offenbach, and is raucous fun.
Systema Solar, my favourite Colombian band who make wonderful electrocumbia, released Futurx Primitivx 20|25. Very hard to get hold of, and not quite as good as their earlier albums.
Possibly the album I’ve most enjoyed that was released this year was a compilation – There’s No Stopping Us Now – The Female Mods Forgotten Story. Most likely to appeal to deramdaze, I dare say, I haven’t yet heard all the nearly 100 songs, but there are some wonderful voices, and it nicely matches where I’ve got up to in the History of Rock Music in 100 Songs podcast series (early 60s and Motown).
I think the album that most wowed me last year was Below the Bassline by Ernest Ranglin – released in 1996, that’s 30 years before the Female Mods album was released, yet 30 years after many of the songs in that compilation were in the charts.
Somehow, all time is eternally present, yet possibly redeemable…
Those Disstantes & Systema Solar interest me @salwarpe and I’ll be investigating
That does please me, as Systema Solar in particular have enormous joy, positivity and humanity in their music, and the different vocals have a rich, fruity rasp to them that I feel deserves to be shared. Here are 4 of the songs from the album in succession:
That mod set sounds great – and so much better for not being ‘male’.
Of course, there are so many comps. out it’s almost impossible to keep up.
How did you discover Disstantes ?
https://disstantes.bandcamp.com/album/cybertr-pico-disstantes
Certainly not a stadium act quite yet but rather interesting.
From the most excellent Sounds & Colours online Latin America culture site. I can only recommend a regular visit to check out the new and interesting from the majority American states.
https://soundsandcolours.com/articles/brazil/on-the-margins-11-78676/
What a superb choice @salwarpe. Below the Bassline was the soundtrack of the 90s for me, I was even lucky enough to be in London when Ernest played the Jazz Cafe in Camden,
His wonderfully mellifluous guitar lines were a total joy. A reggae guitarist who was a jazz maestro. Not many of those around.
Time to visit the Tiny Desk….
Pretty much all of the noted Ska musicians of the ’60s were jazzers.
Making quality dance music to earn a living, because there was no living to be made playing jazz in Jamaica back then.
The Island Jazz Jamaica label set an impossibly high standard with their first two releases, Below The Baseline and Dean Fraser’s Big Up. Both stand the test of time.
My favourite album of 2025 was released in December and by my current favourite band Kahil El Zabar’s Ethnic Heritage Ensemble – Let The Spirit Out, Live At “Mu” London.
Do you know where I can buy that new Systema Solar album from the UK? Can’t find an outlet selling it!
I couldn’t see anywhere doing physical product, but this site seems to sell the download if that works for you:
https://www.prostudiomasters.com/album/page/353429
@salwarpe
Many thanks – I’m sufficiently taken with this lot to have overcome my download aversion this time. The site you provided the link to looks like a potential wallet-threatening discovery so I think my anti-download tendency will need to be re-instated immediately! Lots of great material there. I’ve bought the new album tracks (provided in hi-res flac format) and will shortly derive the wav files and burn them to a CD-R for listening in the living room or in the car.
For anyone else checking out the ‘prostudiomasters’ site, please be aware that it is only AFTER you have paid for the digital material that you discover you must also download and install their proprietary download app in order to get the files you’ve bought. This is extremely poor behaviour on their part, and I had to swallow my annoyance in order to get the music I was purchasing.
Unlike other sites, like Bandcamp for example, who serve the files from the main website immediately on demand, this one forces you to download, check (i.e. if you have any sense, subject to scanning for malicious content), install and execute a separate application that only then lets you grab the material you’ve already paid for. I’m sure they think this is a better (for whom?) way of proceeding, but it needs to be signposted to the customer BEFORE they take your money. Shameful.
Thanks, Foxy.
I’m somehow on the Prostudiomasters email list, although the last time I tried to buy anything I couldn’t because my IP address was in the UK.
Having read that, I’m never going to try again.
Well, I have a UK IP address – I’m on Zen infrastructure – and it worked fine for me. Just a shame the procedure seems a little sneaky. Fore-warned is fore-armed – if I’d known I had to do manoeuvering like that beforehand I might well have declined the purchase opportunity and sought other routes to acquisition that are, shall we say, less-advantageous-to-the-artist.
Sorry about your experience, VV. The other albums are available as CD and are worth acquiring, as I did do. In this case, I don’t recall where I got the tracks, possibly YT->mp3. I prefer Bandcamp when it’s available, but in this case not.
@salwarpe
No worries, it’s the very definition of a first world problem.
Those guys (Systema Solar) are amazing, aren’t they? I’m playing Rumbo A Tierra as I type, and I can’t help thinking that they must be responsible for consuming a huge quantity of marching powder in the studio. Phew!
You’re just teasing me aren’t you? This hamper must be being delivered by Evri.
It’s on Spotify. Just make sure you don’t press record on a free bit of software and accidentally burn it to CD.
Thanks to The Afterword, @fitterstoke and @pencilsqueezer especially, I picked up more classical than I normally would. Best album bought in 2025 was a pre-loved copy of Miksuko Uchida’s five disc recordings of Mozart’s piano sonatas.
I have that, as it happens – it’s a great set. Mitsuko Uchida’s Mozart – what’s not to like?
I have it too and unsurprisingly I’m in complete agreement.
My favourite album of ‘25 was Gigspanner Big Band’s Turnstone, I was also new to the band and bought a few more of their albums, all very good but Turnstone will stay with me for a long time
Great tip @Pyramid. The Gigspanners sound very promising.
The trio that begat them are pretty darn good too. The fiddler is Peter Knight, who was in Steeleye Span for many years.
You’ve got to feel for them. They’ve rather got caught up in the whole Raynor Winn / Salt Path falling apart, having recorded music or the Satlines project.
Speaking of which, Mrs F and I watched the TV adaptation of The Salt Path recently. It was alright. Perhaps best viewed as fiction rather than documentary, but… alright.
I’ve been walking the SouthWest Coast Path in stages over several years, and I thought I’d be a shoo in for being a fan of the book, but it didn’t click with me, and it was the couple themselves who didn’t click. That is not me saying that I’d rumbled them from the start, as that wasn’t how I was reacting. I just didn’t warm to them or the story.
Simon Armitage’s book on the path, on the other hand, was great.
As for me: pool-sitting for some mates going on holiday. Wander into their extensive library and spot Salt Path. Ah, thinks me, perfect for lying by the pool. Read it through Saturday afternoon/Sunday morning. Finished and thought “Obviously artistic licence going on but I really enjoyed that.” Before I went to open a bottle of lunchtime rosé I browsed the online edition of The Observer – “Liars and charlatans” it screamed.
Won’t get fooled again, no sirree….
I’ve always wanted to do the whole thing since seeing John Noakes and Shep do it on Blue Peter. But I regularly holidayed at my cousins’ house near Falmouth and did enough to know the clifftops turn my legs to jelly. Then my pal Rob did it, and he had to crawl along bits of it, and my vertigo is much worse than his. So I’ll just watch it on telly.
It’s one of the best things I’ve ever done. The variety of landscapes / seascapes is remarkable, given that it’s all coastline of one particular peninsula. It’s certainly demanding at times, but I’m surprised at the need to crawl. Each stint we did, we vowed the next time to a) plan shorter days and b) afford more comfortable accommodation. It’s something to be relished, not endured, after all.
Sadly, my mucker may not be able to complete it for reasons I needn’t state, and it was definitely a trip with that particular mate, so Par to Poole remains unfinished.
What a superb choice @salwarpe. Below the Bassline was the soundtrack of the 90s for me, I was even lucky enough to be in London when Ernest played the Jazz Cafe in Camden,
His wonderfully mellifluous guitar lines were a total joy. A reggae guitarist who was a jazz maestro. Not many of those around.
Time to visit the Tiny Desk….
Very enjoyable, KFD – thank you for posting.
I think you are really onto something here @thecheshirecat. It seems very unlikely to me that I should discover favourite new music, the year that it was recorded.
Here are two examples of new favourites that i was a latecomer to.
I wasn’t born in 1926.
i was born when Annie Ross recorded this gem but I was a little too young to enjoy it, I was more into Piny and Perky,
Before you all say I am a fogey, here are two modern tunes that have become great favourites.
A couple of that acts I saw in recent years at Roskilde
For me these days it’s all about the reissues. My Number One album released in 2025 was a record of arrangements of Erik Satie’s music for classical guitar FFS.
The album that was released in 2025 that I most enjoyed and played the most was Little Feat’s The Last Record Album closely followed by FZ’s One Size Fits All
I guess that would be Sean Shibe’s album @Mousey? He popped up on a Tiny Desk recently playing some pieces from Thomas Adés. He’s a talented young fella.
Wow.
He certainly is. A real find, pencilsqueezer
Thanks for putting him on our map.
The fabulous Sean Shibe was one of the top favourites in my 2021 (or 2022??) year-end list, and he’s put out some amazing albums since. My current fave is his 2023 album where he played acoustic guitar with a tenor vocalist, interpreting classical pieces as well as an arabian song from Fairuz! Truly magnificent.
And here it is. Broken Branches.
https://www.pentatonemusic.com/karim-sulayman-and-sean-shibe-on-a-musical-exploration-with-broken-branches/
That was the AW HIVEMIND at its finest……
@Mousey in Australia makes a comment and then @Pencilsqueezer in North Wales provides more info.
Here in Stockholm, I post some clips and then you @fatima-xberg bring us up to date about recent releases.
Brilliant.
Here’s a track from Broken Branches.
@pencilsqueezer It was Xuefei Yang’s album Chapeau Satie
Thanks @Mousey. This is new to me. I shall take it out for a spin.
Jolly good it is too
Oh that looks tasty. I visited Satie’s house in Brittany. He was a very odd fellow, always pennyless and obsessed with collecting umbrellas. Lovely music though.
CRIKEY. What a character, @Twang,
Is it, by some chance, very rainy in Brittany?
https://francetoday.com/culture/music-festivals/on-ecoute-erik-satie/
After passing in 1925, his apartment was revealed to be a squalid madhouse of incomplete manuscripts, stacked pianos and umbrellas. A character indeed. His compositions were equally eccentric. ‘Vexations’, fuelled by heartbreak, was written to be played 840 times in a row. But there’s also profound beauty and sadness in Satie’s work. Just listen to the ‘Gnossiennes’ and ‘Gymnopédies’ for a glimpse into the deep soul behind the sound.
I can recommend the book “Satie seen through his letters” by Ornella Volta. Both biography and collection of letters to and from Satie through his life, it’s highly entertaining, informative and interesting. He was, indeed, a very odd fellow!
I await the musical film.
Les Parapluies de Satie.
The only new album I bought in 2025 was the Waterboys one. I thought it was very good but, in my opinion, for music to truly ‘matter’ and to have a seismic influence you have to be the right age- probably around 13 or so (when I first heard Aladdin Sane) or 17 (when punk happened). My theory (which I am sure will be disputed) is that once you reach thirty or older music tends to become less central to our lives and the continual hunt for that ‘new thing’ to replicate that initial thrill and sugar rush becomes vaguely desperate and futile.
I think your theory correctly applies to the vast majority of the population. The only people I know who continue to be excited by a new musical discovery or rave over the latest Van Morrison reside here.
As for me – I listened to less music in 2025 since I first started tuning into Radio Luxembourg circa 1960. Can’t get excited about anything new (I mostly think “Sounds like early Who or late Bowie): happy to play me some Ella or Dave Rawlings whilst cooking supper but that’s about it. Must be gettin’ auld….
I think I was initially excited by pop music because of its relative scarcity- particularly in north Wales where I grew up (no touring bands, Radio One largely unavailable except when it merged with Radio Two for things like Junior’s Choice (where I first heard Starman). Because of this scarcity it became a valuable ‘secret’ currency- especially later due to the esoteric and strangely exciting ramblings of the NME and the exclusive club of OGWT. Increasingly, however, pop and rock music has become ubiquitous and now it’s almost impossible to find a sanctuary from it’s perpetual synthy thump. With such a relentless Niagara of noise music becomes less potent, less mysterious and- for me anyway- considerably less important. I doubt if music is even that central to today’s ‘kids’. Sure, we have the semi-annual musical Wimbledon of Glastonbury but I feel that there would be 150,000 cheering souls there whoever played- be it Springsteen or Reggie Nolan and his Dancing Spoons Orchestra. There are some nice tunes about and, as I say, I still buy the occasional new album (nowhere near as many as second hand or re-issues however) but the visceral thrill of pop music as represented by what moved me when I was 15 or so has gone forever. Sadly never to return. However good the tune.
I think 2025 was a fine year for new music from old and new artists. I hardly listened to any old at all. My Spotify listening agreed was 17 so perhaps I still have the enthusiasm for new music as it did back then. I’m sure I listen to more new than I did when I was 17 cos I couldn’t afford it back then.
If 2026 turns out to be at least half as good then I’ll be happy.
I agree with premise of this thread and looking at my own choices I’m sure quite a few of them will fall by the wayside. I’ve previously looked back on my albums of the year and sadly realised that I’ve rarely played many of them since then. I suspect that Remembering Now (my no 1) will be a stayer and probably Midlake and Pulp but not sure about the rest.
I’ve been scratching my head trying to find an answer to this question. The previous twelve months were filled with a lot of music and a great deal of it brought me much joy so to narrow it down has been difficult. However plucked from what passes for my memory nowadays I find a few bits and pieces that I’d like to mention.
I love Shostakovich and two complete symphony cycles kept me company in 2025. The first from The Royal Liverpool Philharmonic conducted by Vasily Petrenko and the second by WDR Symphony Orchestra conducted by Rudolf Barshai. I can’t choose between them they are both enthralling.
I have always loved to hear Chopin played by Ivan Moravec so I picked up a box set from Supraphon called Portrait. I bought it for the Chopin but stayed for the Beethoven amongst others. Completely beautiful and brought some much needed peace and contentment into my little life. Lastly two discs of Ravel’s orchestral works on the Ondine label by The Basque National Orchestra conducted by Robert Treviño. Stunningly good Ravel played with a passion as one would expect from the BNO. Full of colour and light. Avid, sensual and magical as and when the music demands it to be. Completely captivating and throughly recommended.
I generally listen to the albums of the year on here and I’m often mystified that people like them so much. Frequency I don’t even get all the way through them. But hey, horses/courses etc.
The album I probably played most was “Stay Lucky” by Nerina Pallot which I already had and knew but for some reason absolutely fell for this year. It’s fabulous. Great songs, superb classy but restrained backing and what a voice.
I concur with this (thanks to @Twang for bringing it to my attention) and indeed my Spotty end of year stats tell me it’s the album I played the most.
I think my enjoyment of music is my reason for being. And it gets stronger as other “interests”, like work, fall by the wayside. I don’t suppose the new notes I hear now will ever etch as deep into my soul as those of yore, but that is from the familiarity of a few, played time and time again, through necessity. Now the horizons are boundless, I may listen less often to the ones that now catch my ears, but that’s because I am not only capturing them as they emerge, but also all those I missed along the way.
Yesterday’s new discovery are the Swedish folktronicists, Garmarna, who have just re-released their 1996 album, Guds Spelemän, on Bandcamp. That, in turn, led me to 2020’s Förbundet. Dark and swirly, like a Nordic forest, it is splendid stuff.
Ooh, That makes me want to dig out my old copies of “Guds Spelemän” and “Vedergällningen”. Yeah – Garmarna (literally “The Vultures”) were really good. “Guds Spelemän” certainly kicks off with a couple of good ‘uns in “Herr Mannelig” and “Vänner och Fränder”.
I am another big fan of Garmarna, Retro, and was lucky enough to see them live several times.
Singer Emma Härdelin went on to sing with another more folky, low-key band, Triakel. Well worth exploring..
Many of their songs are dark and very tragic.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emma_H%C3%A4rdelin
Here’s a very jolly Xmas song.
Ah…I believe we’ve had this discussion before: Garmarna doesn’t mean The Vultures, it means The Wolves (or possibly The Dogs, but less likely). Garm is a mythological creature identified as a wolf, in the old Nordic tales of Ragnarök, but the word garm is used for wolf in general in other places, and for dog a few times.
The Vultures would be Gamarna in Swedish – no R.
I didn’t know that @locust. The Polyglot Hivemind of the Afterword strikes again.
Like @duco01, I’d always thought they were The Vultures. Thank goodness we have you toget us back on track.
Just to confuse things, Garmarna have a very fine song about a vulture – GAMEN.
This live version has a translation of the lyrics into English. Dark, gory, Gothic stuff, worthy of Poe.
Game On, Garmarna.
A couple of albums I heard for the first time this year were by old bands and I certainly listen to lots of new music, but I fell in love with these two old records. Probably because I have had Radio Caroline on at work a lot and they play a right old mix of tunes. So I have now discovered the first album by Dutch band Earth & Fire from 1970 and the 1975 album by Renaissance called Scheherazade And Other Stories. I have loved my vinyl copy of Turn of The Cards (their following release) for years, which when I found it had an original UK tour programme inside the sleeve. Both bands have beautiful female lead voices but those two albums had completely passed me by for decades so in ’25 I’ve revelled in these two oldies.
Well! I thought I was the only one left on here with a taste for Renaissance…
that’s two of us with good taste here then, ha! actually i just realised Turn of The Cards was the album before SAOS released in ’74
Radio Caroline ! Are you living in a lovely 1970s time warp. I had no idea that it was still a thing? Will now seek out if I can find my old Grundig radiogram
Aren’t we all living in a 1970s time warp?
They say you’ll get there in the end
all you need to time warp
https://www.radiocaroline.co.uk/radioplayer4/index.html
My no.1 pick for 2025 was the Martinů quartets disc by the Pavel Haas Qt – and I expect to continue listening to that for years to come. I don’t expect it drop off the radar any time soon.
But the recordings which really hit me this year were all older: the final three Shostakovich quartets, recorded by the Fitzwilliams in 2019 (I have a couple of sets of the complete quartets by various groups, including the original Fitzwilliams, but this recording was new to me). The mid 1970s trio of VdGG recordings (Godbluff/Still Life/World Record) were back at the top of the pile due to the recent box set – and lots and lots of Ella Fitzgerald. 2025 was a year of health issues, mild depression and regret – so, my new top 20 notwithstanding, I got far more sustenance and comfort from old familiar records than new. Hey ho!
One of my favourite discoveries of 2025 was “Anthology: The definitive Collection” by Charlie Shavers, featuring many tracks with the marvellous Maxine Sullivan singing.
Another was this year’s “Calling You Home”, a very tasty piano jazz album by Jim Watson.
Also enjoyed the “My Life In Music” 4-CD set by the great Lalo Schifrin and the spiky piano jazz of “The Complete Blue Note Recordings” on 3 CDs by the Herbie Nichols Trio.
Maxine Sullivan – Loch Lomond
I did have three Real Albums of 2025
First up, a re-release. Simon Care, he of Edward II, Albion Christmas Band, Banter, Whapweasel and more, recorded an album with his best mate Gareth Turner back in 1997. ‘Two squeezers from Northamptonshire’ wasn’t an obvious strapline, but it turned out that there was a market for duelling melodeons after all. Sadly, Gareth left the field at Cropredy for the last time a couple of years ago, but not before he and Simon had made a follow up which was released, coupled with the original Twos Up. And the original is an absolute banger, and a clear winner for my re-release of the year. Except that it came out in 2024. I wouldn’t care, but Simon is a mate of mine. How did I not know?
Captain Pugwash and Roger the cabinboy caper about on the shipboards as Master Bates and Seaman Staines knock out a fine ditty on their instruments. Splendid!
I trust you know that @salwarpe that this is just an urban myth and John Ryan successfully sued a couple of papers for printing that the BBC had stopped showing it because of the names. I think it was Victor Lewis Smith who first started this IIRC.
Clearly in the programme the boy is called Tom and there is Master Mate (possibly a link to the story) Barbara’s and Willy (another possible link.
I had a book about children’s TV that had to print an insert to correct them stating the same myth.
I do have the autograph of the chap Tom Edmundson who played the theme tune.
Thank you for pointing that out, Hubert. Yes, I was aware these are not names used on the children’s show. I hope that as long as this is made clear, the inventive smutty cheek of VLS can still be enjoyed, separate from the innocence of the original, and not be seen as a cutthroat joke.
Cutthroat joke ISWYDT 👏
Well, you could have asked….
https://atthebarrier.com/2024/08/20/simon-care-gareth-turner-twos-up-two-album-review/amp/
I’ve listened to a load of ‘new to me’ old albums in 2025, the result of a record shop opening in town, the revival of a local record fair, and a huge amount of quality CDs (£2 max., often 50p) invading the local chazzers.
At least five obscure 60s Blue Note albums, tons of rocksteady/early reggae (late 60s), James Carr (67), Donny Hathaway (70), ‘Brixton Cat’ (69), the quite brilliant ‘Babylon’ by Dr. John (69), and that Peter Howell box set from a few years ago including the ‘Alice Through the Looking Glass’ soundtrack (69).
The best was ‘Harlem River Drive’ (71), a kinda cross between Astral Weeks and What’s Going On. It’s Puerto Rican and the CIA hated it. How apt, contemporary and woke does that sound?!
This year I hope to buy as many albums-as-albums by black artists in the 60s as I can on CD.
And I’ve got a whole stack to listen to already… purchasing the 36-CD ‘Bob Dylan Live in 1966’ box on Saturday for, I kid you not, £30. How much vinly would that same £30 have bought me in the record shop? One album?
You’ll never get through it
Not true. I’m planning May around it, buying beer/wine/food from the city or country according to where the concert was on that night, and then listening to all of it, acoustic and electric sets, on the anniversary itself.
Australian wine, French wine, Newcastle Brown Ale, Guinness, a couple of Swedish au pairs, the usual sort of thing.
It’s in that perfect ‘end of football season/just before the 1st Test Match’ period.
That sounds great (apart from the music).
The music is unbelievably good, but it gets a bit much for me to hear slightly different versions of the same songs 23 times. I have had the box set since it came out (almost 10 years ago) and think I have managed 5 complete shows. Otherwise I just listen to the most famous one (Manchester) if I want to hear it
You certainly know how to get us interested @deramdaze.
The best was ‘Harlem River Drive’ (71), a kinda cross between Astral Weeks and What’s Going On. It’s Puerto Rican and the CIA hated it. How apt, contemporary and woke does that sound?!
The man behind the project was Eddie Palmieri….
This page is very informative….
https://www.soulstrut.com/Archive/harlem-river-drive-harlem-river-drive
1971’s Harlem River Drive was Eddie Palmieri’s shot at the big leagues. Until that point, he had made safe latin jazz records on the Roulette subsidiary Tico. On Roulette, he sought to crossover to a mainstream audience by fusing his brand of Puerto Rican salsa with the politically heated soul and funk of the day. With help from R&B veteran Jimmy Norman along with heavy hitters Bernard Purdy on drums, Cornell Dupree on guitar, his brother Charlie on organ, and other session musicians, he formed and recorded Harlem River Drive.
The album touched on the controversial topic of racial inequality in New York City circa the 1970s and was backed by funky soul anchored by heavy latin percussion that would later become the blueprint for groups like War. Clocking in at around 30 minutes, Harlem River Drive is short and sweet with very little if any filler.
Here is an NPR programme about how Eddie played the album live several years later.
https://www.npr.org/2016/12/09/504712369/harlem-river-drive-revisited-with-eddie-palmieri
Eddie was a very major figure in the NY latin scene.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eddie_Palmieri
He appeared for the last time in Spike Lee’s film HIHGHEST TO LOWEST
Well if you mean old but new to me, and not a reissue or remaster or box set, then I always have my eyes open for albums by a few very prolific artists that I’m very fond of, but still haven’t managed to find all albums by. When I find them, I buy them, and this year I found a couple of older albums by Swedish recording machine Anders F Rönnblom and a couple of albums by the always brilliant Taj Mahal.
Not from either musician’s best periods, but all well worth listening to. 90s Taj Mahal? Surprisingly enjoyable! Especially “Dancing the Blues” from 1993 was a nice surprise.
Shirley Bassey. Wikipedia says there are 34 studio albums and 25 comps (but there are many, many, more). Every time I see one in a charity shop, I pick it up, but it often turns out to be a rerelease of something else with different sleeve artwork on a label like MFP or Contour.
Her run from 1969 to 1974 with Johnny Harris as MD were the peak years for me and the ones I have played the most.
Your recent posts have been directly responsible for my purchase of a Shirley Bassey comp.
Hurrah! That makes two of you reading my drivel. Which comp did you get? There are hundreds!
This one:
https://www.discogs.com/release/4823856-Shirley-Bassey-Bassey-The-EMIUA-Years-1959-1979
Ah yes, that’s good, (second half of CD2 to first half of CD4 are the prime) although inexplicably misses off Jezahel from And I Love You So.
I can ‘help’ with that.
@fitterstoke Could I interest sir in a very fine bridge?
Does it come with a monorail?
I could tell sir a fib about the existence of a monorail but as I’m not some come day, go day grifter I am honour bound to inform sir that this once in a lifetime offer is sadly sans monorail.
Would that be the Comic Sans monorail?
(Arf…)
My most listened to record of 2025 is from 2005, courtesy of a Bluesky post from Rhodri Marsden.
“Yes!” by Do Me Bad Things, a nine-piece English blues/rock/soul/metal band with three vocalists. They really sabotaged themselves with bad management, marketing and general decision-making. Calling your first single “What’s Hideous”, for example. Have a listen
I think I paid a quid for that in Berwick Street twenty years ago.
*Scuttles off to D section of CD cupboard.*
Never heard of them before. The riffs are my kind of thing, and there’s a soul vibe. I’m intrigued…
You’ll love the album, then 🤘
Well, I am flattered. This thread is coming up with some treats, for sure.
I had two festival discoveries of the year. Lying flat on my back in the August sunshine at Shrewsbury with The Firelight Trio on the Village Stage. Fiddle, nyckelharpa and accordion blending in perfection, on the one hand danceable, on the other entirely suitable for doing absolutely nothing else but listening. ‘It’s got the quality of chamber music’ as one of my compatriots put it and, as some of you know, I’m all in favour of chamber folk. So, where have they been all my life? Well, Scotland, as it happens. Their debut album is well crafted and will hold up for years to come, I know, but it came out in 2023.
Even with my niche love, my knowledge of Breton folk music is superficial, and dictated by the chance of who is booked at Le Festival des Panards each year. Trio Roblin-Evain-Badeau brought an album out this year that made my chart, but it’s not a patch on their debut from 2017. Les Trois Moulins is everything an album should be from a dance band. It’s bookended by tunes that have you bouncing off the walls. Lively, spritely, on its feet, leaving you pleading for more. The band do that thing where they come out and play in the middle of the dancers, which is just so effective; clarinet, gurdy and box in your midst, and there they are on the album cover doing just that. It’s the essence of a good time, bottled. This is my album of 2025, whether it came out in the current year or not.
Wonderful stuff, @thecheshirecat.
Thanks lot for bringing the Firelight Trio and Trio Roblin-Evain-Badeau to our attention.
Both are an excellent listen, even for us non-dancers.