The 25 Best Electronic Albums of 2025

12. Weval – Chorophobia (Technicolour)

For Chorophobia, the Dutch duo of Harm Coolen and Merijn Scholte Albers made it their mission to get people onto the dancefloor. It’s a record that found them keeping their immersive, melancholic tendencies to a minimum as they did their best not to overthink themselves. Criss-crossing genres, upping the BPM and finding room for those big club-ready drops, Weval abandoned themselves to the unconstrained freedom of the dancefloor.

In the gloriously kinetic “Movement”, breakbeat percussion provided the backbone for a delirious surge of synth lines that led the listener straight to the heart of the action. Musical ideas tumbled out of them as they rushed seamlessly into the gorgeous “Just Friends” before the barnstorming “Head First” matched the momentum. “Open Up That Door” came across like a Young Fathers/ Kendrick Lamar collaboration, which, in a just world, should have been a crossover hit. As it stands, it was one of many standouts on an album that trained its gaze firmly on the dizzying, heady energy of the dancefloor. – Paul Carr

11. Oklou – Choke Enough (True Panther)

On her debut, French avant-pop producer Oklou performs an act of impeccable pop alchemy, transforming the hyperactive novocaine hyperpop of Sophie, PC Music, and GFOTY into a silky smooth downbeat meditation that feels intimate and personal yet universal enough for mass appeal. Oklou’s going to be one to watch in the next few years, mark our words. – J Simpson

10. Maribou State – Hallucinating Love (Ninja Tune)

There are a few clues on the album, but Hallucinating Love was born from a very dark place for British duo Maribou State. Serious health issues derailed the group, forcing them to cancel numerous gigs and take an extended break from the thing they love. It would be understandable then if their latest record were a morose, introspective affair, detailing a time lost to melancholy. In fact, it’s a joyous listen from a band who clearly needed their music to act as the light at the end of a particularly dark tunnel.

It’s best exemplified by the stunning “Otherside” with its tight, springy rhythms anchored by a popping funk bassline. It’s longtime collaborator Holly Walker who turns into something breathtakingly beautiful with her gift for a soaring melody. Elsewhere, songs such as “Bloom” and “All I Need” float by on a chilled-out wave of gently massaged synths, all sprinkled with their signature jazzy guitar. Even on more dancefloor-focused tracks such as ‘Eko’s’, the harder edges are softened by gliding strings and shimmering synths.

The album also benefits from the pair’s desire to collaborate. British electronic artist North Downs adds warped breaks in “Dance on the World”, while  Sudanese singer-songwriter Gaidaa adds soulful R&B to “Bloom”. However, it falls to Andreya Triana to deliver the album’s standout, as her neo-soul vocals prove the perfect fit for the sublime “All I Need”. These collaborators bring out the best in the group by challenging themselves to think differently and broaden their sound. While it may have come from a dark place, Hallucinating Love may be Maribou State’s brightest and most uplifting work to date. – Paul Carr

9. Paul St. Hilaire – w/ the Producers (Independent)

The history of dub techno cannot be told without Paul St. Hilaire. Ever since he pioneered the genre alongside Mark Ernestus and Moritz von Oswald (of Basic Channel fame) in the 1990s, Hilaire’s vocals—subdued yet reassuring, peaceful yet sinister—have lent humanness and warmth to a style of music known for being cold, foggy, and impenetrable. W/ the Producers continues in this vein while still breaking new ground. It’s a work of mind-bending, soft-focus radiance. It hisses, crackles, and glitches, but also sings, breathing life into the nether regions of dub. 

Perhaps what sets Hilaire apart is that he understands dub techno is, at its core, rooted in dance music. Tracks like “Free Your Mind” and “Let the Night Start” have a real club-like energy, distilling dance music down to its barest essence. This is dance music’s bones and ectoplasm, if you will, at once incredibly bleak and skeletal yet rich and teeming with life. Listening to it makes you feel like you’re submerged ten thousand feet underwater, yet you don’t mind—all you want to do is dive deeper into the murk. – Parker Desautell

8. Daniel Avery – Tremor (Domino)

After pushing himself to a creative high on the previous album, Ultra-Truth, British electronic DJ and producer Daniel Avery felt the need to return to the idea of collaboration. The need to be with other musicians and just create. The result is a new record, Tremor, unlike any other Avery has produced before. Inspired by everything from director David Fincher to the abstract work of painter Mark Rothko, it pulls from the darkness. What sets it apart, though, is the collaborative element, as Avery brought together a whole raft of collaborators to guide the listener through the shadows.

In “Rapture in Blue”, Cecile Believe’s dreamy vocals sink into the subconscious while “Haze” sees Wolf Alice frontwoman Ellie Rowsell take on the role of rock goddess on a super-sleek, electro-rock monolith.  In “A Silent Shadow”, Bdrmm’s driving, sonic pulse wonderfully complements Avery’s textured electronics as the two co-pilot the track to a fresh, exciting place.

Every collaborator brings something fresh and exciting, from the nursery-rhyme vocals of Singaporean singer Yeule on “Disturb Me” to the Kills’ Alison Mosshart, who, rather shockingly, goes full death-metal troll. Tremor feels like the start of a brand new chapter for Avery. While he paints with many familiar colours, he also uses many new shades. Clearly, collaboration brought out the best in him. – Paul Carr

7. Blawan – SickElixir (XL)

Rarely does crushing distortion sound so good. Overdriven audio is often used to suggest aggression and overwhelm – needles buried deep in the red analogous to a nervous system on the edge of collapse. Less frequently, it’s meant to soothe, burying you alive in crushed velvet and opium. On SickElixir, Blawan submerges his knotted, gnarled grooves; pounding, thudding beats and club vocals in a shroud of obliterating distortion, similar to the rough industrial techno of Regis or Surgeon.

While those artists often feel like waking up in a serial killer’s dungeon, however, SickElixir feels more like a joyride through an endless go-kart track spiralling through time and space. It’s the soundtrack for letting go, giving in, letting the sheer maximalist overload of modern living break over you like a tsunami. – J Simpson 

6. Sudan Archives – The BPM (Stones Throw)

With her new album, Sudan Archives wanted to make “movement” her mission. After realising at one of her shows that both the crowd and the artist were too static, she decided to make music that would electrify the listener. The result was a high-tech, futuristic odyssey, full of heaving, sweaty, dance-floor-ready anthems.

Dynamic and restless, tracks like “DEAD” and ‘COME AND FIND YOU” find her pushing herself to create music as high-energy as possible. Finding a niche somewhere between Detroit house and glitchy R&B songs like “A BUGS LIFE” and “THE NATURE OF POWER” fizz and pop, while the title track “THE BPM” is a riotous, rave-up replete with its own slogan in “The BPM is the power.” The BPM is also a profoundly sexy record, with her throwing herself headlong into intimacy on “TOUCH ME” and delighting in sex in all its glorious forms on “MS PAC MAN”.

The BPM is a cybernetic force of nature that introduces a new Sudan Archives to the world. This new version is sometimes silly, sometimes spiritual, occasionally vulnerable, but always engaging. It’s an album that’s constantly in motion with each musical idea turned up and tested to the absolute limit. If movement was her mission, then mission accomplished. – Paul Carr

5. Guedra Guedra – Mutant (Domino)

Guedra Guedra, the moniker under which producer Abdellah M. Hassak crafts energetic electronic landscapes, invokes a specific scene in and of itself. Among Amazigh groups indigenous to Hassak’s native Morocco and other parts of North Africa, the guedra is a dance and a cooking pot that can be converted into a drum, embodying music, movement, and life.

It suits Hassak’s music on the new Guedra Guedra album Mutant, a breathtaking record filled with thoughtful assemblages of field recordings, digital and analog beats, and some of the year’s most luscious dancefloor melodies. It’s scintillating work from an artist deeply invested in every sound he touches. – Adriane Pontecorvo

4. Djurm – Untangled Under Silence (Houndstooth)

Felix Manuel has established a reputation as one of electronic music’s biggest iconoclasts, mainly thanks to his genre-/death-defying, anything-goes DJ sets, in which three turntables whip through a head-swirling mixture of techno, hip-hop, and new age faster than even the savviest trainspotter can hope to track. This same anarchic, idiosyncratic spirit can be heard on Under Tangled Silence, with Djrum turning his attention to blissed-out piano textures. Somehow, Manuel goes from Keith Jarrett-worthy solo-piano sublimity to crisp, sleek IDM to new-age synthesis without missing a beat. Djrum is pointing us towards a future less defined by marketing trends and instead guided by heart, imagination, and creativity. – J Simpson 

3. Yeule – Evangelic Girl Is a Gun (Ninja Tune)

With their latest album, Evangelic Girl Is a Gun, Yuele has both feet on the sidewalk. Flirtations, rejections, bipolar leanings, crushes, heartbreaks, all the boons and fallouts of craving and impermanence are present. Lyrically, they may still be trying to reconcile any number of impulses, terrestrial and extraterrestrial, but they’re garbed and psyched for pop primetime.

With Evangelic Girl, Ćmiel completes a trilogy: “orbit” (Glitch Princess), “atmospheric entry” (softscars), and, now, “assimilation”. That said, you can remove the princess from outer space, but you can’t remove outer space from the princess. Yuele has come a long way from their early years traveling distant galaxies. Now a committed earthling, they’ll hopefully never forget where they came from. – John Amen

2. FKA Twigs – Eusexua (Young and Atlantic)

FKA Twigs’ third album, EURSEXUA, can justifiably lay claim to being the sexiest album on this list. Every single song drips with the sweat of desire as she explores her most carnal urges. At the heart of it is a pervading sense of sexual freedom from the pleasure-seeking “Girl Feels Good” to the uncomplicated coupling on “Perfect Stranger”. Twigs achieves that rare feat of making songs about sex sound actually sexy. Inspired by the club scene of central Europe, the record began life as a celebration of the dancefloor before becoming much more personal.

As a result, these songs play out like a bold sonic statement from an artist boldly straddling the apex of personal and musical liberation. Throughout, FKA Twigs uses dance music as a balm employing techno, trip hop, and house to ameliorate the soul. In “Keep It, Hold It”, she unpacks a past relationship but refuses to let it define her, while “Striptease” sees her letting go of her inhibitions and embracing her vulnerability. EURSEXUA is an exhilarating testament to the healing power of music while surrendering to the joys of intimacy. – Paul Carr

1. Barry Can’t Swim – Loner (Ninja Tune)

For British electronic artist Barry Cant Swim, the stakes could not have been higher. After a stunning debut, When Will We Land? saw him shortlisted for the prestigious Mercury Prize and garnered critical acclaim across the music press; any follow-up had to cement his place as an artist in it for the long haul. Consequently, Loner is a snapshot of what happens when an artist suddenly gets shot into the stratosphere.

It finds an artist taking stock of where they are and where they want to be. Thankfully, it’s also full of grade A bangers. “Different” is a whirling mix of quick-fire beats and ambient breaks. The pumping acid techno of “About to Begin” should be the dance soundtrack for Gen Z, while uber-confident “Still Riding” is the kind of anthem that a host of his peers would kill for.

However, there is also plenty of diversity on show. The twinkling piano breaks, the perfectly chosen vocal samples, and the warm, evocative synths of “Kimpton” take it to somewhere wondrous. Similarly, “The Person You’d Like to Be” is a bold artistic statement that frames Scottish Poet Seamus’s abstract poetry over blaring car-alarm synths. Despite the pressure, Loner reaches the highest heights without any artistic compromises. In turn, it cemented him as one of the most exciting new talents in dance music. – Paul Carr