The time is here, the time is now! The 1st of December is upon us which means: it’s time to kick-off the 2025 edition of Jam of Today’s End of Year special! The entirety of December, I’ll go through my favourite albums of this year, starting off today with the 31st album on the list all the way up until the big reveal of my number 1 on the 31st of December. Who will claim the title Album of the Year? Which releases were this year’s absolute highlights, surprises or perhaps disappointments? Stay tuned throughout December to find out all about Jam of Today’s albums of this year.

I wonder if anyone still remembers the post I dropped here exactly one year ago, on the 1st of December 2024. The album that had the honour of being no. 31 on my list turned out to be Maxïmo Park’s ’Stream of Life’, though the word ‘honour’ is perhaps a bit too much credit. In fact, together with my review of RAT BOY’s ‘SUBURBIA CALLING’ the day after, I was straight up negative about both albums. It’s a bit unlike me to be cynical about the music I post on this blog so I’m happy to announce that this won’t be the case this year. See, as soon as I started drafting my Top 31 for 2025, I noticed it was significantly harder to figure out who to put at the bottom of the list. Luckily, this time because of the many high quality releases I added to my longlist over the course of the last 11 months.

So, who did I end up putting 31st on my list? Well, you probably already guessed by reading this post’s title: Polish experimental gabber duo LASY’s January release ‘999’ made just enough impact to be featured in this year’s special.

Back in 2024, I got to know LASY as this insane electronic duo (with live drums!) who were my absolute highlight of showcase festival Eurosonic that year. Songs ‘POKKKKEMON’, ’EPICKI’, and ‘FLANGER’ were subsequently highlighted on the blog with single ‘Australian Open’ following a year later. LASY’s 2023 IDM-EP ‘GŁAZY’ turned out to be one of my favourite finds of last year so I was getting progressively more excited as soon as I knew 3rd album ‘999’ was in the works. Once the 9-piece eventually dropped in January, I had to face the facts that perhaps my friends were right and this group was just a bit of a novelty after all. It seems like this full-length has shown LASY’s true colours. Songs like ‘Gabbstep’ and ‘Killer Hair Clipper’ are pretty funny tunes but also sound quite dated and other than the aforementioned ‘Australian Open’, I feel like ‘999’ just doesn’t quite live up to my expectations. I must say, ‘999’ certainly ends on a high: ‘Sylenth’ is one of the better tunes on this record and after transitioning into ‘Hauru24’ and ender ‘Zaronmi’, it shows that the duo saved the best for last. Overall, it’s safe to say LASY has produced one of the most original pieces of content in this year’s list: perhaps not one of the best, but definitely one of the most creative and surprising ones. Especially with Jacek Prościński being an absolute machine on the drums, ‘999’ is absolutely worth a mention and I’m more than happy to include it amongst my favourite albums of 2025, too.