20. 36 & zake – Stasis Sounds for Long-Distance Space Travel III (Past Inside the Present)
For the last five years, 36 & zake have been crafting epic longform meditations on life in deep space with the Stasis Sounds for Long-Distance Space Travel series. The prolific pair end the triptych on a high note, as Stasis Sounds for Long-Distance Space Travel III manages to capture both the sublime awe and existential terror of space travel with all the attention to space and detail of a room full of Rothkos. Although they’d never say so themselves, being far too soft-spoken and understated, 36 and zake continue to be some of the most striking, imaginative ambient artists currently working. – J Simpson
19. Jessica Shand – Transmutations (Independent)
Providence-based Jessica Shand is a flutist, producer, composer, and researcher whose diverse influences include contemporary jazz, electronic music, and creative improvisation. As one of nine young creators selected for the Steve Jobs Archive’s inaugural fellowship, Shand recorded Transmutations in 2024 with Grammy award-winning engineer Joseph Branciforte. Each of the album’s tracks begins with a short sample, which is then transformed using a constrained set of digital signal processing techniques.
The result is 12 tracks that vary from lush, intergalactic soundscapes to brief, staccato bursts of flute, employing a compositional framework Shand developed alongside her research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Transmutations is one of those experimental recordings that sounds, upon initial description, like a lot of process-based art that could leave some listeners cold and unmoved, but the result is the opposite. It’s an album filled with sonic possibilities, stretching the limits of what someone can do with an instrument and accompanying digital techniques. It’s the sound of technology, imbued with a distinct, deep warmth. – Chris Ingalls
18. caroline – caroline 2 (Rough Trade)
Warm, intimate, intricate, expansive, detailed, caroline 2 is a detailed snapshot of post-rock in 2025. It has the knotty, gnarled progressive structures that made Black Country New Road such an immediate sensation, but it’s more personal. Caroline 2 invites you into the room to tell you all their most cherished secrets and buried nightmares. Most importantly, caroline 2 doesn’t sound defeatist in any way. The nihilistic resignation of Godspeed You! Black Emperor’s “East Hastings” is swapped out in favor of warm, arty Talk Talk naturalism. Many battles have been lost in the last 25 years, but the war is far from over. – J Simpson
17. Matthew Ryals with effe effe – Exalge (Infrequent Seams)
The new album from synthesist, composer, and improviser Matthew Ryals is a fascinating and uncomplicated way to dive into the artist’s works. A totally improvisational live recording at a venue of the same name in Milan, Exalge is a direct, unvarnished sonic landscape, a real-time performance of the modular synthesizer, divided into five tracks.
Collaborating with Ryals on three of those five tracks – on viola and effects – is Italian musician Federica Furlani, also known as effe effe. The songs range from “Ancient Crimes”, a magnificent beast of a track, sparse noise tumbling into cavernous echoes, to the somewhat tentative and vulnerable “Limb-Loosener”, with Ryals’ synths and effe effe’s viola going head-to-head in a sort of cosmic duel. By collaborating with a fellow improviser and performing it on stage for an audience, Ryals has once again expanded the possibilities of experimentation and improvisation. –Chris Ingalls
16. Kevin Drumm – Sheer Hellish Miasma II (Erstwhile)
Age is supposed to mellow us, help us find nuance in complicated subjects, while enjoying whatever everyday quotidian comforts we can grab. It says a lot that the sequel to Kevin Drumm’s masterful, influential noise opus, Sheer Hellish Miasma, is five times as brutal and relentless as the first installment nearly 25 years later. Instead of the meditative sound sculptures and tone poems of the original,
Sheer Hellish Miasma II is an hour and 45 minutes of raw, relentless white noise, piercing feedback, and gut-shredding shrieks. It’s the sonic equivalent of a pleasure stroll through Centralia, Pennsylvania, a soundtrack for choking on noxious fumes. It’s pure catharsis in a world that seems like it could topple into the void at any given second. – J Simpson
15. Jorge Espinal – Bombos y Cencerros (Buh)
Born in Peru but currently based in Buenos Aires, Jorge Espinal has spent more than a decade developing a musical approach in which body and instrument function as a single unit. After participating in various collaborations, Espinal released his debut solo album this year, using prepared electric guitar, bass drum, cowbell, pedals, and a laptop to trigger samples, build loops, and freeze sounds. As his official bio states, “the guitar becomes a source of rhythm rather than harmony”.
The record was recorded in a single session in December 2023, simultaneously played using hands and feet, but comprised a series of pieces that condensed years of practice. Espinal explores the intersection of noise, repetition, and accident. The result is noisy, chaotic, and fascinating, and is a wild, unbounded combination of sound that is exciting, revolutionary, and never dull. – Chris Ingalls
14. Jefre Cantu-Ledesma – Gift Songs (Mexican Summer)
Jefre Cantu-Ledesma is a generous man. For almost 20 years, he’s released multiple thoughtful, imaginative, and unique ambient albums exploring everything from identity to philosophy to modernist literature, with an expansive mind and an empathetic heart. No matter what he’s writing about or what genre he’s working in, be it mind-pulverizing shoegaze or meditative drone, you get the sense that everything’s going to be okay.
While always a much-appreciated balm, that reassurance feels almost revolutionary in 2025, where we face fresh hells and new apocalypses every week. Nevertheless, Gift Songs’ tender, ruminative piano sketches, airy beats, and cryogenic drones help us persist even when the odds seem insurmountable. – J Simpson
13. Cyrus Pireh – Thank You, Guitar (Palilalia)
On his fourth album of what he describes as “transcendental shred electric guitar music”, musician and composer Cyrus Pireh continues to do what he does best: Craft unique, oddly melodic, cathartic music using the raw power of the electric guitar and little else. It’s no surprise that Thank You, Guitar is on Palilalia Records, the label formed by fellow trailblazing guitar weirdo Bill Orcutt. There are certainly parallels between Pireh’s approach and Orcutt’s (not to mention kindred spirits like Wendy Eisenberg, Jessica Ackerley, Henry Kaiser, and Ava Mendoza).
Pireh’s circular, often minimalist style is countered by the noise, distortion, and repetition of his execution. Anyone who finds inspiration in the unique playing of current greats like Orcutt or legends like Gary Lucas (particularly his work with Captain Beefheart) will find plenty to enjoy on Cyrus Pireh’s Thank You, Guitar, from a guitarist whose combined skill set and original ideas make for a completely new and welcome type of guitar hero. – Chris Ingalls
12. Abul Mogard – Quiet Pieces (Soft Echoes)
On Quiet Pieces, Abul Mogard continues to blend the personal and the conceptual, combining the emotional landscapes of Biosphere or Wolfgang Voigt’s Gas project; the immersive sonic worldbuilding of Loscil and Murcof, and the intimate memoir of the Caretaker to stunning effect. This time, the Italian musician draws inspiration from a crate of battered classical records rescued from his uncle, which he then proceeds to slather with a thick glaze of almost impenetrable reverb, like some haunting, mournful melody drifting through a brutalist structure cloaked in fog. – J Simpson
11. Bill Orcutt Guitar Quartet – HausLive4 (Hausu Mountain)
Miami-born, San Francisco-based experimental guitarist Bill Orcutt gained notoriety in the 1990s with the influential noise band Harry Pussy, and has been releasing odd (and oddly moving) instrumental guitar albums for the past several years. His 2022 record, Music for Four Guitars, featured Orcutt multitracking himself through a series of rigidly structured musical phrases, all with a distinctly sharp tone and bits of distortion-fueled riffs.
HausLive 4 brings that project to an audience with spectacular results. Recorded at the experimental-tilted Chicago venue Constellation, HausLive 4 is the latest in a series of audience-recorded live albums from the Hausu Mountain label. This particular release includes Orcutt and fellow guitarists Wendy Eisenberg, Ava Mendoza, and Shane Parish, taking the basic tenets of those earlier compositions and often adding bits of improvisation, occasionally lengthening the tracks.
It’s an acquired taste, and anyone not particularly interested in hearing four electric guitars simultaneously pounding out inspired, amplified noise should probably stay away. Still, noise rock fans who yearn for the sound of a quartet at the absolute peak of their powers will gain a great deal by scooping this one up. – Chris Ingalls