Prestige Format Picks 🍳 9 September 2025

No Joy - Bugland

An album of fantastic rock and roll that is jammed full of the kinds of sonic elements that perfectly places it in 2025. It could easily exist alongside the Breeders in 1995 or the 4AD crew in 1985 but it’s so very very NOW that it would feel like insane future music in either of those decades. Absolutely essential, up there for album of the year.

Grapefruit - Stolen Highway

There are a lot of bands with the name Grapefruit but from what I can tell, this is this Grapefruit, from Portland, OR. This is a lovely album of synth jams with a heavy helping of guitar delay. It’s perfect for night drives or diving into cyberspace or escaping NY or LA or just chilling.

Suryummy - Prismatic Escalator

Another album, like the above, originally released on tape by the Constellation Tatsu record label in the early twenty-teens. And it’s a bunch of gorgeous instrumental synth that sets the mood for robot dance parties, meeting silicon-based life forms, or getting down to business and editing a spreadsheet.

Chuck Person - Eccojams, Vol. 1

This is one of a handful of albums that could be considered the foundation of vaporwave, which is probably one of the most influential genres of music to come out of this century. This one is a collection of edits of songs you probably know, assembled by the guy who would later record music as Oneohtrix Point Never. If you’re actively listening to this, you might find it a bit repetitive, but put this on some headphones and do something else and instantly your life becomes a slow-motion lofi remix.