As the new year has dawned, there are many new artists looking to make their mark with an early-year release, as well as many known artists looking to improve upon their catalogs early in 2025. I’m hoping that 2025 will provide some great music, so here are some of the first releases this year.
MatC - Parascapes
MatC is a pretty underground artist with no mainstream recognition at all, only sitting at just above 1000 monthly listeners on Spotify. However, I figured I would check out his newest album as it was getting good reviews. It’s a nature-bound ambient album filled with quiet and fun beats and sounds, and it really delivers as promised. Sometimes I feel that the natural influence takes over the music a little bit, and sometimes it is hard to differentiate between songs, but overall, as a project, it’s really good and a solid release to help start the year.
Favorite Track: National Forest Reserve
80/100
Asian Glow - 11100011
Asian Glow is a project from Shin Gyeongwon, and it’s focused on a slacker rock style. His newest album is more noise pop-focused, and it sounds really good. There are influences from the shoegaze and dream pop genres, and some electronic influences as well. It leans into the noise pop a lot with vocals often drowned out by the music, but it’s honestly a good thing, as the album’s instrumentals are fantastic. It only contains nine tracks, but it’s well worth a listen totaling 41 minutes. It’s another solid project coming out to kick off this year.
80/100
Mac Miller - Balloonerism
Mac Miller unfortunately died of an overdose in 2018, but his estate has been treating his legacy and unreleased music with great care. Balloonerism is another posthumous release done right by Mac’s estate. The album itself is pretty solid musically, and lyrically it’s very somber dealing with some really serious and sad topics. There are still those ounces of fun from Mac’s jazzy style peppered throughout, but it’s truly not a listen to have a lot of fun with. That’s certainly not to say there aren’t fun highlights, but the album as a whole takes a different tone. Unfortunately, there are a couple songs that just don’t do it for me, but as a project it’s another solid release from Mac’s estate.
75/100
Central Cee - CAN’T RUSH GREATNESS
Central Cee’s third lengthy project has finally dropped after BAND4BAND’s virality took over social media for a while. The British rapper is coming off some huge hits recently, so hopes were high for this album as a project. Unfortunately, it feels a little stale. The flows are really repetitive and even some of the lyrics are re-used, and it feels like Central Cee is afraid to step out of his box here. There are some good bars scattered throughout the album, but as a project it’s kind of weak, and it fails to deliver on many other aspects. Cee definitely has talent, but he’s not doing enough with it here.
50/100
Mogwai - The Bad Fire
Mogwai are a Scottish post-rock band, and The Bad Fire is their eleventh album. Aside from the awesome cover art, the album itself is also really good. It shows influence of shoegaze and dream pop alongside the post-rock elements that the band is known for, and it’s done super well. It’s all instrumental, and it does enough not to fade into ambience, which really helps out the album. I really liked it, specifically the opening track “God Gets You Back,” and it’s definitely something I’ll be returning to over time.
82/100