Welcome to the twelfth edition of my mail-outs, all of which have been archived here.

This will be the second-to-last one for 2025. Like every year I will publish my personal EOTY list and recollections on the 31st of  December (see the 2024 edition here) and will send through a quick update on that—as well as some more official EOTY reflections—on that very day. What I can say now is that starting this mailing list and even modestly growing it has been a highlight in this otherwise difficult year. One reason why I started a mailing list instead of a newsletter is that I am given zero stats besides the member count. I do not know how many of you open my emails or click on links. I send every email into a gaping void. Hence, my only metric is when someone replies. This is very liberating in itself, and it is even more rewarding when someone gets in touch, or even recommends this mailing list to others. Having left most social media platforms, it makes me feel like my relationship to all of you has become more interactional than merely transactional. While I still want to promote my work here, it offers me the possibility to discuss culture with those to whom it matters as much as it does to me. That’s the reason why I got into this line of work in the first place. So, thank you for that.

Anyhow—as usual, please find an overview of my recent articles and radio features as well as some assorted/unsorted bonus recommendations below. Again I specifically point it out if a piece is available in an official or my own English translation.

But first things first, I am absolutely delighted and slightly bewildered to announce that I have been given the opportunity to host a listening session focusing on the storied career of Merzbow on the 12th of December during the venerable Wolke Verlag’s 45th birthday bash. I will try to provide a comprehensive overview all the way from 1980’s Fuckexercise to some of Masami Akita’s more recent collaborations. I’d like to thank Wolke CEO Patrick Becker for his trust in me and his support for my very silly idea. More info here. 

+++++ Stuff That I Wrote (or Said on the Radio)

— EOTY list season has started and/or is already over. Firstly, this meant that Spotify Wrapped things up and that a few radio stations called me to wrap up Spotify wrapping up. I was a guest at SWR’s Kultur am Abend to talk about the company’s balance sheet after 2025 and also alternatives to the market leader (this hasn’t been archived), while in conversation with Uwe Schulz over at WDR 5’s Morgenecho, we focused more on the impact it had on how we listen to music.

— Secondly and thirdly, I used the December instalment of my Found Sounds column for field notes to talk about 68 (!) releases from Berlin-based artists and/or labels that deserve more attention. Due to its sheer scope, the piece was split into two parts, the first of which is already online (German/English). The second one will follow shortly. My favourite EOTY list is one that I help putting together based on some incredibly lengthy longlists: HHV-Mag’s 50 albums, 25 compilations, 25 reissues, 25 12inches, 20 tapes, and 10 books of the year went online earlier this week—the English versions will follow shortly. My personal picks from the HHV store can be found here.

— Speaking of speaking about music for HHV-Mag, William Basinski’s The Disintegration Loops has recently been remastered and reissued through Temporary Residence, so I wrote a lil’ essay on grief work (German/English) for which I drew on my 2019 interview with the artist, after which I had to write down the addresses of Gucci stores around Berlin because he wanted those red suede boots very badly. According to the photos in a 2020 Wire cover story, he found them. I’ve also reviewed Širom’s In The Wind Of Night, Hard-Fallen Incantations Whisper (German/English) and Emily Jeanne’s Past Through Desire (German/English) for the same magazine.

— As I’ve said in my last mail-out, my club portrait series for DJ LAB has been discontinued. As a sort of coda, I have written about the so-called Clubsterben, the dying of clubs. The term has been used generously within the scene for, uh, decades, but as a phenomenon it is only now really becoming a reality at a broader scale—we’ve lost three major institutions in Berlin alone this year (though the opening of two new ones has been announced since the article’s publication). In the piece, I provide an overview on the developments in 2025 and end on a not-so-modest proposal: How about all those internationally active, successful DJ collectives give something back?

— Also for DJ LAB, I once more pleaded that we talk more about the impact YouTube had on music streaming more generally, how Content ID revolutionised the internet, and that we shouldn’t leave the conversation around remuneration on the service to people like Irving fucking Azoff. I built upon my contribution to a recent DLF Kultur Breitband episode from early November, in which I focused mainly on Content ID.

— You might have heard that German collecting society GEMA won their case against Open AI regarding ChatGPT’s reproduction of some song lyrics. I got on WDR’s Westart the day before to speculate whether or not GEMA would win, and then on DLF Kultur’s Tonart after it was announced that they had done so. The case is historic not only because all the major music companies are making deals left and right, dropping their cases against genAI services such as Udio and Suno, which leaves smaller actors trying to do the same out in the cold. It sets a precedent because the judge ruled that even though ChatGPT did not technically store and reproduce the data it has been trained on, it practically did. Open AI has announced that they will appeal this, however it must be said that the further up the ladder this case goes, the more wide-reaching the court’s decision will then be. In the meanwhile, GEMA is still suing Suno and judging from the snippets of songs they were able to generate by just feeding the programme some lyrics, they have a strong case there as well. GEMA has of course a vested interest in winning these lawsuits, but the fact that they didn’t use this as an opportunity to make a backroom deal and fuck over everyone else deserves applause. 

— Speaking of which, you have probably heard all those stories of AI slop topping the charts. Most of them are grossly exaggerated. That AI country song topping the digital sales chart? You can literally buy your way onto that one. Artificial artist Xania Monet racking up plays on streaming platforms? Who says people actually seek out her music, and that this isn’t another case of Velvet Sundown-esque shadow virality qua personalised playlists? And yes, she gets played on the radio, too. But that’s what radio stations do with novelty hits that are the talk of town. In the case of the Dutch far-right (rAIght?) songs charting on the national Spotify Top 50: There are indicators that not only the songs, but also the plays themselves were artificial, as I have argued in a radio piece for WDR Cosmo that unfortunately wasn’t archived. However, in streaming this means that this sort of sludge (maybe a better term than just slop in this context?) makes its way onto personalised playlists quite easily, like it happened to a German colleague of mine, Melanie Gollin. Producing, disseminating, and promoting music with far-right contents is not, as expert Dr. Thorsten Hindrichs told me, a means to recruit people. It is rather used to both simulate and facilitate the normalisation and cultural hegemony of far-right ideology. Algorithmic-heavy DSPs such as Spotify are veritable breeding grounds for these kinds of strategies (‘member the YouTube radicalisation pipeline?), so they as well as the distributors—who, with the notable exception of TuneCore and CD Baby, make a fucktonne of money by pumping AI sludge onto the services—should be held accountable, both Melanie and I think.  

— Wien Modern celebrated its 38th edition this year, and while I couldn’t attend this wonderful contemporary music festival, I did contribute something: the 678 pages-thick festival catalogue includes a roundtable between Arnold Haberl a.k.a. noid, Mia Zabelka, and Tiziana Bertoncini on the social and potential political implications of improvisation that was moderated by me.  

— Lastly, the wonderful Swiss zweikommasieben magazine has launched a new website! It has been ages since I last contributed to the actual magazine, however my interview—originally conducted for a shorter Spex piece—with Helena Hauff is now available online again in my own English translation (I think). We did that one somewhere in Berlin-Mitte after a sleepless night in … 2013! Time flies, etc. 

+++++ Some Unsorted Recommendations

My favourite smell in the world arises when you’re sautéing some mushrooms alongside some red onions and then throw in the garlic. I love this hearty potato stew precisely because it allows me to do just that, but also for other reasons. Be generous with the cocoa powder, and add some thyme and chili if that sounds like a good idea to you. The perfect winter comfort food. Speaking of which, more often than not my favourite records of the year come to me when the official EOTY year lists have already been handed in. I opened the promo for ZEA & Drumband Hallelujah Makkum’s in lichem fol beloften literally two days after we had finalised HHV-Mag’s top 50 list, but I do think it belongs on there. The Ex’s Arnold de Boer and his group teamed up with a marching band for one of the strangest, most beautiful folk rock (I guess that this is technically folk rock) albums I have ever heard in my life. De Boer sounds curiously detached and desolate throughout this album that is chock-full of simple, modest Frisian-language (!) songs that don’t rely too much on his father’s marching band (!!) featured here and use its powers very wisely. It will stay with me for a long, long time. Otherwise, I have been enjoying some ambient music again. Listen to any Celer album, and it will be good. But also make sure to check out apologist, who co-runs the very noisy No Rent label but in her solo practice mostly follows a quieter, more restrained approach. A lot of her work is field recordings-based and thus site-specific, and I think last year’s beautiful ode to her hometown Philadelphia should not be missed. And the fantastic Buh records will put out a second instalment of the series Antología. Obras para la Orquesta Experimental de Instrumentos Nativos with compositions by Cergio Prudencio. Also, Claire M Singer’s latest addition to her organ trilogy, Gleanne Ciùn, slaps, and Touch always deserves to be supported. If you prefer your musique to be concrète or enjoy switching frantically between radio stations, make sure to check out A/Version by P’derrigerreo for the wonderful Japanese zappak label, which had a veritable run in 2025 and puts out the most beautifully designed CDs you can get. But enough about music for now, and more on that by the end of the month. For now, I’d like to go on record to say that I enjoyed Bugonia, and that it was probably my favourite Giorgos Lanthimos movie so far—though it needs to be said that I usually leave the cinema in a state of fury about his pompous-yet-vacuous vibe movies. This one was different because it merely executed a simple, silly, and thoroughly predictable plot that was carried by two fantastic actors. Goofy fun, nothing more. This can’t be said about Die My Love (which I hated for its Lanthimos-esque aesthetics, Östlund-like repetitiveness, and Aster-inspired hyperescalation), The Assistant (which was very strikingly made and carried by a stunning performance), Animale (beautifully shot with a very surprising twist that makes up for the story seemingly going nowhere for about an hour), Reading Lolita in Tehran (clumsily made, but very effective in its portrayal of how systems of oppression shape our behaviour towards each other even when we oppose them theoretically), and Persepolis (it’s a classic for a reason, huh?)—turns out I watched a lil’ trilogy of five on patriarchal power and violence in November. It’s a good thing to do once in a while.

Thank you for your attention and until next time.