Gastr, always

a young girl curiously eyeing smoke from a fallen, heeled figure

women in flowing white tending a shrouded body amid vapor

More dream songs

Dream song 5, third stanza

Nick Drake: The Life by Richard Morton Jack

Kate Bush: Under the Ivy by Graeme Thomson

Saint Etienne: International The Italia ‘90 edition

One book finished, another begun, and in between, International, a goodbye
to friends of 35 years.

English suburbia at its best.

Melvyn Bragg, respect ✊🏻

@rockingbob.bsky.social @bobpetesarah.bsky.social @stetiennedisco.bsky.social

1 SAINT ETIENNE, The Night

This is pop disintegrating into ambient, William Basinski in English suburbia, part Spirit of Eden, part Chill Out. Penultimate chapter of a 35-year love letter to pop, the people we used to be, the ones we might still become: nikolatamindzic.substack.com/p/twenty-alb...

All roads lead here. Every detour, every surprise, every “wait, how is this not higher?” moment has been building to the #1 record. And here it is: the top of my 20 Albums I Loved This Year (So Far). The crown jewel. The slow burn. The annoying choice: nikolatamindzic.substack.com/p/twenty-alb...

2 ELI KESZLER, Eli Keszler

Everyone keeps calling it “Lynchian.” I will too, if it gets you to listen. I still don’t understand what Keszler does to his drums, or how, or why. I just know that neither you nor I have ever heard anything like it: nikolatamindzic.substack.com/p/twenty-alb...

3 ROCÍO MÁRQUEZ, Himno vertical

She pushes the limits of voice to do what flamenco demands: dislocate comfort, seduce w/o smoothing. The Bride in Kill Bill: years of training, deadly elegance, every cut intentional. You’re laid bare & still thank her: nikolatamindzic.substack.com/p/twenty-alb...

4 STEREOLAB, Instant Holograms on Metal Film

If you think this is nostalgia, then step aside. This thing will run you over and leave nothing but a snide smirk smeared across the asphalt. Instant Holograms is huge. Cinematic. Furious. Fleshy. Alive: nikolatamindzic.substack.com/p/twenty-alb...

5 DJRUM, Under Tangled Science

...Djrum is rethinking what electronic music can be. He could’ve made club tools, or pretty piano studies. Instead, this: a record too restless for genre, too emotional for minimalism, too precise for chaos: nikolatamindzic.substack.com/p/twenty-alb...

6 NICK LEÓN, A Tropical Entropy
León’s masterpiece: dembow drums like rattling rebar, synths like dying air conditioners, the sound of a city sweating through its denial. Miami may sink, memory may blur, but el qlo keeps on keeping time. Eppur si muove: nikolatamindzic.substack.com/p/twenty-alb...

7 THESE NEW PURITANS, Crooked Wing

Organ-and-drum art rock for the post-faith generation.
Caroline Polachek haunts Industrial Love Song, a duet between two cranes who’ll never touch. Grand, strange, not built for easy playbacks. But the ambition sticks: nikolatamindzic.substack.com/p/twenty-alb...

Twenty Albums I Loved In 2025 (So Far), vol. 3: #6-10 Into the deep end we go: pop confessions, dirty money, drums, faith, and sinking cities.

"In fact, I haven’t felt this hopeful about pop since 2008, back when the economy collapsed and Katy Perry set her t**s on fire. We survived that. We’ll survive this. With better songs, too."

nikolatamindzic.substack.com/p/twenty-alb...

8 AMORE, Top Hits, Ballads, etc...
The chaos isn’t just a vibe: it’s the form, the method, the only honest response to a life this strange. Music held together by the unteachable glue of voice & vision. Pop unshackled, freakish, hilarious, sad, alive: nikolatamindzic.substack.com/p/twenty-alb...

9 MARK ERNESTUS’ NDAGGA RHYTHM FORCE, Khadim

The rhythm is the engine, the language, the ground. Sabar drums land like verdicts. Four tracks, four prayers, four vessels of resistance. Basic Channel’s Ernestus adds subtraction, the band delivers gravity: nikolatamindzic.substack.com/p/twenty-alb...

11 THE MARS VOLTA, Lucro sucio

They used to come at you like a firehose of acid and prog. Now they sneak in sideways. Not maximalist, just maximal, Latin, abstract & unbothered by you.“Filthiest profit lies in the unknown,” Cedric sings. Step right in: nikolatamindzic.substack.com/p/twenty-alb...

11 DEMDIKE STARE & KRISTEN PILON, To Cut and Shoot

A fever-drenched cut-up of film score, musique concrète & sleep paralysis. Don't mistake this for comfort, background or vibes music. This is fractured & frayed, like Francis Bacon scoring Inland Empire: nikolatamindzic.substack.com/p/twenty-alb...

12 SQUID, Cowards

Cowards is a brutal concept album about complicity, cannibalism, murder, silence: evil not as spectacle, but a ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. But damn, it’s a beautiful album too, lush & narcotic. A finger pressed firmly to your forehead, pressure steady:

nikolatamindzic.substack.com/p/twenty-alb...

13 SALLY SHAPIRO, Ready to Live a Lie

Breathless Italo-pop that glides like a perfume ad? Pass. And yet: Ready to Live a Lie is flawless. Came in sneering, came out shattered. Now I’m yelling about it like it’s the last good thing in a world going dark:

nikolatamindzic.substack.com/p/twenty-alb...

14 NAZAR, Demilitarize

Nazar turns the war inward. Demilitarize swaps the battlefield for the sickbed, stitching kuduro rhythms into a fever dream of illness, desire, and recovery. Eliot's Waste Land with a beat, a war record where surrender is victory.

nikolatamindzic.substack.com/p/twenty-alb...

15 PULP, More

A middle-aged disco dirge from the gutter. Jarvis still dances, still lusts, only now the clock’s louder. Their most French album since Different Class, therefore their best in decades.

Full review: nikolatamindzic.substack.com/p/twenty-alb...

16 SWANS, Birthing

Swans aren’t done, but this incarnation is. Birthing is a 2-hour exhale, ritualistic, radiant, full of beauty. The climax is still there, but something’s shifted: less grind, more awe. A monument to excess, sun-drunk & unforgettable.

nikolatamindzic.substack.com/p/twenty-alb...

17 ABUL MOGARD, Quiet Places

Granular hiss, tectonic drones, slow, physical, shimmering like heat haze. Supposedly stitched together from unreleased fragments and his uncle’s 78s. Classic Mogard mythmaking. Doesn’t matter. This one’s got blood in it.

nikolatamindzic.substack.com/p/twenty-alb...

18 DERADOORIAN, Ready for Heaven

Psychedelia for the sleep-deprived: Broadcast on benediction, ESG at 3 a.m., bass that could raise the dead, vocals that leave the body behind. Heaven’s not a place but a direction, and we’re all along for the ride.

nikolatamindzic.substack.com/p/twenty-alb...

19 HAYDEN PEDIGO, I’ll Be Waving as You Drive Away

The funniest guy in town made the most haunting guitar record of the year. Just space, shimmer, and a wave goodbye that cuts deeper than it should. Ambient Americana, if that gets you to press play.

nikolatamindzic.substack.com/p/twenty-alb...

Cov

20 Little Simz, Lotus

Start with Thief and you’ll know something’s shifted. Fewer brass sections, more bruises. Dread in place of swing. The voice is closer: laughing, grieving, letting go. No reset, no return. Just breath, tension, maybe her best yet.

nikolatamindzic.substack.com/p/twenty-alb...

Nikola Tamindzic | Substack Tbd. Ride with me until that happens. Click to read Nikola Tamindzic, a Substack publication. Launched 6 days ago.

I started writing again after 25 years. Music first, because I missed it. First I'm reviewing 20 records I loved in the first half of 2025. Turns out once you start, it’s hard to stop. Coming up: photo breakdowns, conversation, critiques, ethics of the gaze. All free: nikolatamindzic.substack.com

Each entry on TPL, and the way you threaded personal memory through cultural archaeology, changed how I heard everything that came before & after. I hope you keep writing & publishing, or don’t, if that feels better. Either way, thank you for reminding me why any of this mattered in the first place.