Here at Met Radio, we’re closing out 2025 with a new round of year-end favourites! To cap off the year, our volunteers and staff are sharing their personal top-ten lists, highlighting the music, media, and gems that defined the past twelve months. New lists to explore and enjoy will be dropping on the Met Radio website every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday this December!
I’m Sean, Program Director at Met Radio, and host of Signal.bin (metradio.ca/show/signal-bin, Thursdays and Sundays at 9pm).
I’ve been at this for a while now, devouring music from a young age. Before long, I found myself seeking out sounds I’d not heard before, eventually able to identify the subtle variations within subgenres that make one stand out over another. As such, my list for the year is as usual firmly established in the more experimental realm of music, but I believe (or at least hope) there are accessible points now and again, and most certainly expect something new for everyone. Apparently, it has been the year of the cello, with 3 of the selected 10 releases prominently featuring this instrument or a variation based on it, but I already know long ago it was my favourite of the string family. Glad to finally prove it. In alphabetical order…
Aho Ssan & Resina – “Ego Death” (Subtext)
It appears that the French artist, Aho Ssan, is among my favourite these days, providing me with the lush ambient synth pads I always adore, and always building the serene soundscapes into crisply clipped and distorted noise blasts. On this album, paired with the Polish cellist, Resina, they develop the rich sound tapestry a cello provides into a 50-minute work complete with scarce operatic vocals, maximal swirling electronics, minimal drum stabs, and evocative cinematic moods.
The Armed – “The Future is Here and Everything Needs to be Destroyed” (Sargent House)
After what I considered a slight dud with 2023’s Perfect Saviors, this 6th full-length was a return to form for the Detroit collective. Back was the chaotic hardcore, wall of sound production, and synths filling in any remaining gaps, but retained was their signature peppy punk hooks, and added was some skronky sax. Seeing them perform an intimate high energy live show at Project Nowhere (projectnowhere.org) in the autumn of 2025 was the perfect nudge to tip the album into this list.
Demdike Stare & Kristen Pilon – “To Cut and Shoot” (Self-released)
A collaboration between a young New York composer and the long-running beloved Manchester electronic group. This release purportedly forms out of repurposing sounds from an experimental film, but comes across more so like the result of recording ghostly tapeloops, whirring outside the practice rooms of an nondescript music academy. Choral and piano cuts thrown about amidst dynamic soundscapes, plus the odd dance track the Demdike-duo are known for added in for good measure.
DJ Haram – “Beside Myself” (Hyperdub)
Pulling together an eclectic group of contributors, New York-based DJ Haram presents a monumental debut full-length album of hip-hop production, and experimental soundscapes. The quality lineup of guests includes Armand Hammer, BBymutha, and her own collaborator in 700 Bliss, Moor Mother, in addition to a number of up-and-coming emerging talents. The beats are impactful, utilizing samples from around the world, and creating atmospheres to usher in a world of shifting demographics.
Feeo – “Goodness” (AD 93)
A mature and diverse set of songs by a young British artist. Always cloaked in spacious mystique, this album deftly maneuvers tender R&B, adding gentle electronic drones, embellishing with drums if necessary, and added spoken word snippets. Bonus points for a tasteful slide guitar in the album closer. No surprise this is being released by one of the most interesting labels out there at the moment, AD 93, and I think it perfectly represents the contemporary era of artists realizing space is the place!
Heinali & Andriana-Yaroslava Saienko – “Гільдеґарда (Hildegard)“ (Unsound)
This is a special one. Contemporary takes on one of the most well-known women in music history, 11th century composer, Hildegard von Bingen. Both from Ukraine, Heinali and Saienko fuse minimal synth expanses and Ukrainian folk song traditions, stretching out a haunting aura for the liturgical pieces to linger within. A digital-only track inspired by a regional traditional rounds out the release with one of my favourite songs of 2025.
Ian Nyquist – “Gilded” (Flood)
I initially approached this release as an ambient album, but soon found myself journeying through a world built of contemporary experimental composition, passing by fields of found sound recordings, encountering new age folk pastures, and arriving in a cool wash of minimal club music. An incredible sonic adventure by an Irish composer clearly inspired by songs of old, dance of new, neo-classicism of cinema, and the more deconstructed end of the electronic music genres.
Mark Van Hoen – “The Eternal Present” (Dell’Orso)
I’ve known of UK-producer, Mark Van Hoen for decades at this point, but haven’t paid much attention to what he’s been up to for many years until the release of this stunning LP. Mixing pared down beats with delicate piano and vocal samples that emerge from the background, the real draw here is the beauty in the unreliable. Throughout the album, tempos almost imperceptably shift up and down by a few bpm, notes are struck subtly detuned, and chords slide eventually into place. The track “Multiplex” is worth the price alone, showing off the gliding nature of movement through the chord progression.
Osmium – “Osmium” (Invada)
An experimental supergroup have produced one of the wildest neo-classical industrial albums in recent memory: Hildur Guðnadóttir (Icelandic film soundtrack composer: Joker, Tár, Women Talking), Sam Slater (British musical engineer and sound designer for film), James Ginzburg (of British electronic group, Emptyset), Rully Shabara (of Indonesian doom duo, Senyawa). The entrancing and crushing sounds can only come from unique instruments: a halldorophone, a self-oscillating drum, and a unique device based on a monochord. Add to that indiscipherable, yet entirely enhancing wails, chants, and gutteral vocalisations, and we come upon one of the heaviest releases of the year.
Titanic – “Hagen” (Unheard of Hope)
Genres collide yet again on the second full-lenth album by Mexico-based cellist, Mabe Fratti and partner, Héctor Tosta. The album squirms between genres of prog, post-rock, psychedelia, and chamber pop. Replete with balladry, avant-garde experimentation, and Spanish lyrics, the album flows smoothly from slick 80s jazz, through melodic piano pop passages, over to unstable slabs of noise, and back again. An improvement from their already excellent debut.
Other fantastic releases in 2025 by:
Barker, Blawan, Brian Eno & Beatie Wolfe, Carrier, Cuneiform Tabs, CV Vision, Damon Locks, Derya Yıldırım & Grup Şimşek, Dorothy Carlos, Earthball, Enji, Family Man, Joy Moughanni, Kim Hiorthøy, Kuntari, Nikolaienko, Nkisi, Real Lies, Rian Treanor & Cara Tolmie, Romance, Sa Pa, Sanam.
A fantastic reissue: Moodymann – “Black Mahogani”
Fantastic artwork: Deftones – “Private Music”