Uncut’s Top 30 archive releases of 2025

30 JACKIE MITTOO
Reggae Magic
SOUL JAZZ
While still a teenager, Jackie Mittoo became the keyboard guru of Studio One, leading a host of groups from The Skatalites to The Soul Vendors and working up his own hit songs – “Peanie Wallie”, for instance, later became The Wailers’ “Duppy Conqueror”. It’s just one of 18 gems on this fascinating, funky compilation, alongside a host of other classic Mittoo cuts from between 1967 and 1974.

29 THE EARLIES
These Were The Earlies
NAMES RECORDS/TWO PIERS
Hailed in these pages at the time as the best debut album of 2004, this 21st-anniversary reissue was a welcome reminder of the Lancashire-Texas collective’s ambitions. Their country-meets-psychedelia-meets-electronica symphonies were the fruit of several years of transatlantic remote jamming – and it still sounds remarkably cohesive.

28 BUCKINGHAM NICKS
Buckingham Nicks
RHINO
With original vinyl copies now fetching in excess of £100, this first official reissue of Lindsey and Stevie’s 1973 debut was long overdue. Best known as the album that convinced Fleetwood Mac to change course en route to soft-rock supremacy, Buckingham Nicks is a fabulous record in its right, full of finely wrought West Coast yearning.

27 VIOLETA PARRA
Las Últimas Composiciones De Violeta Parra
VAMPISOUL
As the title plainly puts it, this 1966 album collected the final songs of Parra, the Chilean folklorist, activist and songwriter of the nueva canción movement, who died a few months after its release. Remastered from the original tapes, and without the overdubbed strings of earlier reissues, it showcases Parra at her most powerful, the mournful “Gracias A La Vida” an eternally affecting calling card.

26 BILL EVANS
Haunted Heart: The Legendary Riverside Studio Recordings
CRAFT RECORDINGS
Handsome 5LP boxset containing virtually every note recorded in the studio by Evans’ tragically short-lived “classic trio”, prior to the death of virtuoso bassist Scott LaFaro in July 1961. To meticulously restored versions of the Portrait In Jazz and Explorations albums were added 26 outtakes, plus an eyewitness account by The Doors’ John Densmore.

25 THE BLASTERS
An American Music Story: The Complete Studio Recordings 1979–1985 LIBERATION HALL
A potent inventory of the rambunctious Los Angeles roots legends. Powered by the formidable combination of lead guitarist/songwriter Dave Alvin and his vocalist brother Phil, the five records collected here underscore their lively manifesto, mixing blues and rockabilly with punk vigour. But the Alvins were as combustible as their music, and while subsequent reunions have been welcome, these electrifying recordings are their essence.

24 VARIOUS ARTISTS
Stax Revue: Live In ’65!
STAX/CRAFT RECORDINGS
Kicking off with a thrilling high-speed gallop through “Green Onions”, live from a rowdy-sounding Club Paradise in Memphis, this double album put you right on the dancefloor, as a succession of soul legends – Wilson Pickett, David Porter, Rufus and Carla Thomas – showed you how to walk the dog.

23 DRIVE-BY TRUCKERS
The Definitive Decoration Day
NEW WEST
A landmark album in Truckers lore, 2003’s Decoration Day brought a fresh-faced Jason Isbell into the band, creating a triple-threat songwriting team along with Patterson Hood and Mike Cooley. This reissue included a previously unreleased live album: a stripped-down, acoustic set that showcased these sombre, inward-looking explorations of Southern life without the rampaging Crazy Horse storms of the album versions.

22 SUFJAN STEVENS
Carrie & Lowell (10th Anniversary Edition)
ASTHMATIC KITTY
When times are hard, sometimes you need to hear someone else’s pain. Stevens’ seventh album – inspired by the death of his mother, Carrie – provided just that, with a stunning, spectral artfulness. Alongside the original record, this 10th-anniversary reissue included seven bonus tracks and an enlightening essay by Stevens himself, in which he winningly described the final record as “a hot mess”. We beg to disagree.

21 LOTTI GOLDEN
Motor-Cycle
HIGH MOON
A great lost album properly reissued at last, 1969’s Motor-Cycle was a concept record about Golden’s six months immersed in New York’s countercultural scene. Signed to Atlantic and touted as a potential pop sensation, she instead offered up something more challenging: a mix of Southern soul, Motown and East Coast psychedelia, an epic canvas on which to bring to life her tales of partying, drugs and, of course, motorbikes.

20 SMALL FACES
The Autumn Stone
IMMEDIATE/NICE RECORDS
The original 1969 release of this posthumous comp was such a rush job that they even managed to omit the band’s name from the sleeve. Karma was restored with this lavish new edition, expanded across three discs with live tracks, stripped- down acoustic mixes and a newly unearthed Olympic Studios jam.

19 PULP
Different Class (30th Anniversary Edition)
ISLAND/UMR
With Pulp returning to claim 2025 as their own, it’s fitting that they also looked back 30 years to the last time they were on top of the world. A new inclusion here was the recording of their famous 1995 Glastonbury headline set, which marked the inspired live debut of “Sorted For E’s And Wizz” and instantly cemented “Common People” as a generational anthem.

18 SUSUMU YOKOTA
Skintone Edition Vol 1
LO RECORDINGS
Released a decade after his death, this 13LP (or 7CD) boxset chronicled the Japanese techno auteur’s swerve into pioneering ambient work in the late ’90s. Anything was possible in the playful albums collected here, from the drifting pianos, drones and beats of Grinning Cat (2001) to the experimental sound collages of Laputa (2003).

17 STEVE REICH
Collected Works
NONESUCH
This CD boxset – and at 27 discs, it’s very much a box – charted the changing face of avant-garde music and minimalism across six decades. The later works are impressive, but it’s the first decade or so that stuns: the early tape phase experiments of “Come Out” and “It’s Gonna Rain”, the mighty “Four Organs” and Drumming , and the mid-’70s masterpiece Music For 18 Musicians.

16 POLYGON WINDOW
Surfing On Sine Waves (Expanded Edition)
WARP
A crucial entry in the Richard D James/Aphex Twin canon, and therefore of British electronic music as a whole. Originally released a few weeks after Selected Ambient Works 85–92 but before the drill’n’bass madness of the late ’90s, Surfing On Sine Waves is a feast of rich, elemental acid techno. This new reissue added three tracks from 1993’s “Quoth” EP.

15 AKSAK MABOUL
Before Aksak Maboul: Documents & Experiments 1969–1977
CRAMMED DISCS
Something like a Belgian This Heat, Aksak Maboul wove a fascinating tapestry of post-punk, prog and European avant-garde music from 1977 to 1984 before reactivating in 2015. This release compiled Marc Hollander and friends’ pre-Aksal work, from freakouts like “Here And Now, A Free Rock Tentet” to organ/synth escapades such as “Lost In The Farmhouse”. They’re all essential, if a little more of-their-time than Aksak’s own futurist collage.

14 SPAIN
The Blue Moods Of Spain
RHINO
Cleverly styled to resemble a classic Blue Note release, the 1995 debut from Josh Haden’s Spain project expertly joined the dots between Chet Baker and Codeine to become a slowcore set text, endorsed by Johnny Cash, among others. This 2LP blue vinyl reissue provided the perfect excuse for a luxurious wallow. “Jesus, I don’t wanna die alone… ”

13 STARS OF THE LID
Music For Nitrous Oxide (30th Anniversary Edition)
ARTIFICIAL PINE ARCH MANUFACTURING
Anyone familiar only with the string- drenched, bucolic epics of Stars Of The Lid’s 21st-century work may be surprised by the Austin duo’s debut album, released on vinyl for the first time this year. A home-recorded set of guitar-based drones, it’s as unsettling as it is meditative, laced with samples of Twin Peaks , Star Trek: The Next Generation and Apocalypse Now.

12 THE BETA BAND
The Three EPs
BECAUSE MUSIC
The awkward buggers of the post-Britpop comedown made their triumphant live return this year, alongside this handy reminder of why we went gaga for them in the first place: a unique (verging on foolhardy) melange of folk, hip-hop, dub and psychedelia, heavy on the maracas, that still feels fresh as a Fife breeze.

11 GENESIS
The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway (50th Anniversary Super Deluxe Edition) RHINO
The prog Paradise Lost finally received the suitably epic reissue treatment across five LPs or four CDs. Did it help make sense of the story of poor old Rael, chased through the New York subway by the hideous Slippermen before having his “windscreen wiper” unceremoniously whipped off? Of course not. But it all sounded great, particularly the newly unearthed live set from LA’s Shrine Auditorium

10 CARDIACS
On Land And In The Sea
ALPHABET BUSINESS CONCERN
Coinciding with the release of long-awaited new album LSD, Cardiacs also went back to 1989 to spruce up the original tapes of their second long player. Stronger and even stranger than their early releases, Tim Smith and co’s mix of XTC, Peter Hammill and Henry Cow was becoming increasingly complex, with fan favourites such as “The Everso Closely Guarded Line” shimmering with frenzied invention.

9 BRIGITTE FONTAINE
Est… Folle!
WEWANTSOUNDS
The avant-garde French singer’s second album – arranged by Jean-Claude Vannier, showing off the tricks he’d soon bring to Serge Gainsbourg’s early-’70s classics – heralded a new era of chanson absurdism. Contemplative, provocative and manic in equal measure, the original album was presented here alongside a second LP of unearthed demos and instrumentals: a boundary-pushing landmark finally getting the deluxe treatment it deserved.

8 WILCO
A Ghost Is Born (Deluxe Edition)
NONESUCH
A critical release for Wilco, A Ghost Is Born provided ample evidence of Jeff Tweedy and co’s hugely rewarding decision to push far beyond their alt.country roots into rich, experimental terrain – a process that began on Yankee Hotel Foxtrot but was taken to new heights on its 2004 successor. The best of the many extra tracks on this expanded boxset were the “Fundamentals” jams, conceptual improvisations from which Wilco’s beloved classic emerged. Great Uncut cover CD, too.

7 JONI MITCHELL
Joni’s Jazz
RHINO
There was no chronological Archives volume this year; instead we got this career-spanning 8LP boxset investigating Joni’s jazzier side. It was a broad remit, taking in everything from Blue ’s title track to her latter-day collaborations with Kyle Eastwood and Herbie Hancock. For completists, there were previously unreleased demos of 1982 songs “Moon At The Window” and “Be Cool”.

6 WILLIAM BASINSKI
The Disintegration Loops (Arcadia Archive Edition)
TEMPORARY RESIDENCE
For an album that employed such an experimental process – tape loops played back and recorded as they literally fell apart – The Disintegration Loops had an impressively widespread impact. This edition presented the full five hours of Basinki’s meditation on time, memory and loss across eight LPs or four CDs, with appropriately deep liner notes from Laurie Anderson.

5 BOB DYLAN
Bootleg Series Vol 18: Through The Open Window 1956–1963 COLUMBIA/LEGACY
This latest excavation of Dylan’s archive unearthed much gold from the very start of his career, providing a companion piece to James Mangold’s biopic A Complete Unknown. His earliest known recordings in Minnesota are charming historical artefacts, but it’s the remarkable transformation from cocky Woody Guthrie acolyte into unstoppable songwriting force – all by the time he was 22 – that gave this gripping eight-disc set such a robust narrative.

4 HÜSKER DÜ
1985: The Miracle Year
NUMERO GROUP
More than just a collection of live recordings, this 4LP set attempted to convey the manic majesty of the Dü at their peak, beginning with a complete hometown show from First Avenue in Minneapolis. The clean-up job was exceptional, finding the band at a pivotal point: rampaging and frenetic, but pushing their songs into ever more dynamic realms.

3 DAVID BOWIE
I Can’t Give Everything Away (2002–2016)
PARLOPHONE
The last in the series of comprehensive Bowie boxsets proved that there was much to admire in the early-noughties peaks of Heathen and Reality, as well as his unexpected, Lazarus-like resurrection with The Next Day. But it’s still Blackstar that yields the most complex emotional responses: one last studio masterpiece, reminding us for the final time of his creative gifts and magnificent capacity for reinvention.

2 BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN
Nebraska ’82: Expanded Edition
SONY MUSIC
At last! Springsteen’s mythic full-band recordings of Nebraska finally saw the light of day, to coincide with Scott Cooper’s Deliver Me From Nowhere biopic. Nebraska ’82 – left off June’s equally essential Tracks II: The Lost Albums boxset – represented a poignant sliding-doors moment, when Springsteen’s early career could have taken another direction, as evidenced by radical versions of “Born In The USA” (heavy Suicide vibes) and “Downbound Train” (breakneck garage punk).

1 NICK DRAKE
The Making Of Five Leaves Left
ISLAND / UMR
“I’m afraid this is proving to be rather an unprofessional tape altogether,” says Nick Drake, midway through the recording of a demo in his Cambridge dorm room, “partly due to intoxication.” It’s always a treat to hear long-dead legends momentarily live again – especially when the popular image of that legend is as a tortured, lonely ghost, not necessarily given to self-deprecating humour while stoned out of his (fruit) tree.

The magic of The Making Of Five Leaves Left was that it helped to construct a much more well-rounded portrait of the artist as a young man, without breaking the spell cast by his music, via a fascinating trove of demos, outtakes and early versions leading up to the recording of his timeless debut album.

As it turns out, Drake was no trembling wallflower – “charisma was shining through”, recalls Ashley Hutchings in the superb liner notes – and he had a clear sense of his own destiny. Five Leaves Left was the product of two years of careful woodshedding. On the early demos here, Drake can be heard indicating where the flute and string parts should go, and he was steadfast enough to persuade producer Joe Boyd to abort the sessions they’d recorded with “the sort of people who’d do the Cilla Black show” and instead parachute in his untried uni pal, Robert Kirby. The rest, of course, is history – even if it took a couple of decades to become so.

In the process of making Five Leaves Left, Drake would cast aside several songs that most of his peers would have killed for. Others you can hear blossom into the wondrous things we know from the final album; the moment when Danny Thompson joins the sessions is like a treasure chest springing open. It remains a tragedy that Drake’s genius wasn’t recognised in his own time, but it’s certainly recognised now.

UNCUT’S TOP 10 COMPILATIONS OF 2025

1 All The Young Droids: Junkshop Synth Pop 1978–1985
NIGHT SCHOOL

2 Roots Rocking Zimbabwe: The Modern Sound Of Harare’ Townships 1975–1980
ANALOG AFRICA

3 Histoire De Coeur: Lost French Synth-Pop 7’ers & Euro-Bombs (1980–89)
CTR

4 2015–2025 Les Disques Bongo Joe: 10 Years Of Sonic Explorations
BONGO JOE

5 Eli Roth’s Red Light Disco: Dancefloor Seductions From Italian Sexploitation Cinema
CAM SUGAR

6 Gilles Peterson Presents: International Anthem
INTERNATIONAL ANTHEM

7 Telepathic Fish: Trawling The Early 90s Ambient Underground
FUNDAMENTAL FREQUENCIES

8 Electric Junk: Deutsche Rock, Psych And Kosmische 1970–1978
CHERRY RED

9 Sensitive: An Indie Pop Anthology
NEEDLE MYTHOLOGY

10 Habibi Funk 031: A Selection Of Music From Libyan Tapes
HABIBI FUNK