The Real Gone End Of Year Round-Up, 2025

We’ve reached the end of another year, and for Real Gone, 2025 was a special one. Not only did we celebrate our sixteenth year online, but we gained a truckload of new and regular supporters – both from an industry perspective and in terms of regular readership. Our visitor stats have seen a huge increase on 2024, and the materials we’ve been sent for review have been more varied than ever.

We’ve heard a lot of enjoyable albums and EPs over the past twelve months, but as is traditional, we’ve whittled our favourites down to ten, and then given a well deserved shout out to a few titles we think are also worth checking out. As always, our picks for the best of the year are limited to releases we actually reviewed – it’s only fair. We hope you’ll check out some of the artists and releases featured below, if you’ve not already done so.

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DRAGON WELDING – The Naughty Step

In terms of musical invention, Dragon Welding’s self titled debut from 2019 was a very interesting record. The duo mixed genres with glee: ‘The Builders’ hit the audience with a huge post-punk riff; ‘One Miserable Summer’ flaunted a lo-fi indie sound; ‘Join The Dots’ took the rock-centric core and applied that to a fuzzy backdrop that sounded like a Queens of The Stone Age cast off, and ‘Lament For Common Sense’ closed everything with a seven minute experimental drone owing a little more to Krautrock. Not that any of this prepared their audience for the sonic experiments that would follow. 2021’s completely instrumental ‘Lights Behind The Eyes’ took in elements of post-rock (‘Liquid’), the intricacies of California Guitar Trio (the brilliant title track) and even something that sounded like Mike Oldfield in a very bad mood (‘On’).

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THE REAL GONE SINGLES BAR #100

Welcome back to the Real Gone Singles Bar, the place where we explore some of the individual tracks that have dropped into our inbox over the past few weeks. This time out, there’s another single from a now familiar electronica act, a quirky piece of hard edged dance-pop, a great track from a much-loved rock band, a smart cover tune, and more besides. There’s even something that doesn’t quite work, but has been included as a point of interest. As always, we hope you find something new to enjoy…

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THE REAL GONE SINGLES BAR #85

For our first Singles Bar feature of 2025, we’ve brought together an interesting selection of tunes. You’ll find a “typical” Real Gone backbone of rock, but with the help of some great, spiky synth sounds, a couple of singer songwriters, and even a country infused bar room sneer from a familiar musical figure, there’s enough here to attract anyone with a curious ear. As we prepare to embark on another year of great musical discovery, we hope you find something of interest here!

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