Holiday Pickups, Sonic Addictions, & Looking Ahead
Happy New Year. I started writing this yesterday, but that’s indicative of how 2025 went, generally. It’s been a year, in other words, one I’d rather forget. Except for the music, that is. Pretty soon I’ll kick off all the various end-of-year lists, but before fully shoving 2025’s ass out the door I wanted to take a few minutes and look back over some of my discoveries, addictions, and other music-related highlights of the year. It’s also been a hot minute since I did one of those “What I got over the holiday/break/vacation” deals, so we’ll start with the incoming holiday music (pictured in the header) and move on to my other predilections and penchants when it came to music in 2025.
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Imperial Triumphant: Goldstar (2025)
Maybe I’m just basic. An imposter. But let me explain my take on Imperial Triumphant and their whole vibe/aesthetic (not to mention their discography) and why now I’m more confident and sincere when I say I’m a fan. Because Goldstar is not only their best, most accessible album, it also helped me to analyze my own complicated feelings when it comes to bands everyone else loves, and I just don’t get. I’m sure that wasn’t their intention, but I think they’d be happy to know their brazen concoction of jazzy technical death metal helped me feel more comfortable about, well…me.
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The 9C Files: Kryptograf’s Kryptonomicon
Shocking, I know: the stoner rock guy fell hard for the new album by Scandinavian retro rockers Kryptograf. What can I say? I’m an easy mark, one made easier by the fact that since their 2020 self-titled debut the group have been churning out an intoxicating brew of stoner rock and doom in the vein of classic Black Sabbath mixed with more modern sensibilities – think Witchcraft in their heyday. And had Kryptograf stayed the course with album number three, the wonderfully titled Kryptonomicon, I would have been content. But rather than stayed glued to a proven formula, there are enough tweaks here that I came away even more impressed with how the band can absorb influences and spit them out in a cohesive whole uniquely their own.
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(Un)Focused Definition Ep. 82: Ho, Ho, Ho…
Happy Holidays if you celebrate. if not, I hope the closing of the year finds you in a place of peace and comfort. Me? I’m celebrating with friends, in a house filled with too much noise, dog hair everywhere…and I love it. My soul needed it, and so I’m making this quick so I can get back to games and naps and too many cookies and laugh. This playlist is a quick compilation of the rock and roll holiday songs that soundtracked our travels to family and back again. We run the gamut from classic rock to punk to metal to…Cheech and Chong. Enjoy.
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Nankai TRIO: Antarctica (2025)
Hope everyone out there is having a good holiday if you celebrate, or just a good day if you don’t. On the music front, I received some lovely gifts from family, including a few killer records and the complete recording of Henry Cow I’ll eventually get to. Nothing from 2025, though (are you surprised?) so as I kick back post-Christmas with a cup of coffee, let’s talk jazz fusion. Since seeing the sublime ridiculousness of the cover art, I’ve been hooked on Nankai Trio and their debut Antarctica. The Japanese trio take the technical virtuosity of classic fusion groups like Return to Forever and inject some modern shred into their songs, and the result is one of the most enjoyable, exciting albums I’ve heard this year.
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Psychedelic Porn Crumpets: Carpe Diem, Moonman (2025)
Discovering Psychedelic Porn Crumpets was a happy accident, one of the good things that came out of my VNYL subscription years ago. I thought there was something fun about 2019’s And Now For The Whatchamacallit, the Australian band’s sophomore collection of psych, prog, and gnarly garage rock. There were similarities to what I was digging and discovering in King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard, and this year with the May release of Carpe Diem, Moonman (not to mention the October’s Pogo Rodeo) the group have risen up with the kind of driving rock I’ve come to love, and miss from the ’70s southern boogie KG&LW have been putting out lately.
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Consuming the Tangible 