[…continued from last post]

SINGLES OF THE YEAR

1. Steven Jones + Fluid Japan: Truth
2. The Blow Monkeys: Birdsong
3. Jan Linton + Fluid Japan: Forbidden Colours
4. Fluid Japan: Rise + Shine
5. Autumn: Venice
6. Men Without Hats: I ♥ The 80s
7. Gary Numan: Like A B Film
8. Ariel Maniki + The Black Halos: Pieces
9. Stefan Netschio + A State of Flux: Dislocation
10. Les Longs Adieux: Valover
11. Fluid Japan: [Sometimes I Feel] I Just Can’t Carry On
12. Rainsurfer + Fluid Japan: In A Different World
13. Heaven 17: There’s Something About You
14. Sunshine Blind: Unreleased Vol. 1
15. Intelligentsia + Fluid Japan: Live Life Loud [Fluid Japan’s Sealab Remix Radio Edit]
16. Black Boiler [Feat. Bloom]: Pilot
17. Chopper Franklin: The Hexed Dub
18. Jan Linton + Fluid Japan: Goodnight Mr. Ginger [Last Dreaming]
19. Steven Jones + Fluid Japan: Truth [May Be Horizon Remix]
20. Ductape: Fade Away
21. Scenius: Beat The Light
22. Midniter: Alarmist
23. Ariel Maniki + The Black Halos: Witches
24. Ductape: Blue Black
25. Simple Minds: Your Name In Lights [Pyramid Mix]
26. Figures On A Beach: Play
27. Morgan King + Lene Lovich: Retrospective 2025
28. Scenius: Swift As Light
29. Roxy Music: Love Is the Drug [Greg Wilson Edit]
30. Les Longs Adieux: Perfect Day
31. Vamberator: I Need Contact [Rolo McGinty Remix]
32. Jan Linton: Can I Feel Your Love?
33. Bass Kittens: Something New
34. René Peraza: The World Is Your Oyster
35. Fluid Japan: Encryption
36. Papillion De Nuit: Frozen Charlotte

There were a lot of singles this year. You’ve got to love them. I know I do! Even if they are mostly immaterial now. The joy of a single is that they are still an impulse buy for me. Priced from a dollar to maybe three at most, they are never a budget drain and when I see one I need to have, there’s no hesitation on my part. Boom! Yummy! On Bandcamp, I even get to pay more than the usually low-balled asking price. Good music deserves my financial support and if I’m buying one or two singles per week two at most, two to three dollars is as good as one.

The Bandcamp environment is also nice because once you buy from an artist, [and I always join the mailing lists] you get updates when there’s new music. I tend to follow bands I like to the best of my ability. So there’s a lot of Fluid Japan in these singles. They released nine singles this year! That’s about an album worth of material. And their collaborative ethic knows no boundaries! Two thirds of their singles are teamups; vibrant ones, with bands that I either already follow or are otherwise completely new to me.

The big one this year was the joining of Steven Jones with Fluid Japan for the highly compelling “Truth” single. With two great tastes that taste great together, it’s vibe and poise was immaculate and breathtaking. Fortunately, there’s more in the works with an EP mooted down the road when time allows for it all to be polished for offering. Working and sleeping can be overrated sometimes!

My second favorite single was the pre-release by Blow Monkeys that was so damned funky that I stopped the preview about 15 seconds in and just bought the thing! Even though it would be redundant after buying the album! And then the album came without an email from Blow Monkeys central so I still need to remind myself to buy a copy already as I was ! After I find out how to do that. The album dropped at the end of August. A bad time for me in terms of attention span and finances this year as I was traveling all over the place and seeing friends and concerts aplenty.

There were two covers in my top 10 singles this year. But they were so gratifying to hear. In the case of Jan Linton and Fluid Japan, they had the audacity to tackle the Sakamoto/Sylvian classic “Forbidden Colours” and make it their own. A special shout-out to Jan Linton for thinking it was a great idea to work himself into the piano version of the song that Fluid Japan released a year earlier…he was right! And the re-jigging by Fluid Japan after his performances were added took the song to the top.

Then Stefan Netschio + A State of Flux looked at the Ultravox classic “Dislocation” and felt the same way. Not everyone could get away with such a conceit and the vocal phrasing of Mr. Netschio, and the bombastic synths of A State Of Flux coupled with the abstract guitar of Pete [Kill Shelter] Burns went way off the road from the familiar FoxxVox classic. Huzzah! It was one of those promo tracks that arrived at the in box that were so great I went to Bandcamp and bought the single any way! Yes, this really happens.

Men Without Hats are still at the forefront of my mind after seeing them live in 2024 and loving it to pieces. When I heard they had a new single I was on it like white on rice. That it had the loaded title of “I ♥ The 80s” meant that there were numerous snares for the band to sidestep in order to convey that conceit successfully…then they just did it! And in a way to bring a big smile to me face.

Literally the least likely thing I was expecting in 2025 was the news of an unfinished Gary Numan track from the almighty “Telekon” album sessions [one of my absolute favorites by him] dusted off and sent out into the world 45 years later. Wow! It’s a real temporal anomaly but I’ll take them when they are this great!

There are always new Goth artists popping out of the woodwork and when they are as great as Arial Maniki and the Black Halos all I can say is “gimme more!” Ariel with Eve Red and Jan Black make music with gusto and flavor to the max. And Ariel’s superb baritone vocals make me want to hear more. The two singles this year were just lovely and I’m ready for more.

Speaking of Goth bands with great vocals full of feeling, we certainly enjoyed new singles from Autumn and Les Longs Adieux. That they have each guitarists to match the voices is only justice. The bands reached my ears first in 2024 and I’m game to keep up with their further exploits.

Fluid Japan released great singles that weren’t collaborations and the vibe of “Rise And Shine” hit me like a ton of bricks. I want to hear that sound extrapolated into a full album…now! While “[Sometimes I Feel] I Just Can’t Carry On” was a deceptively calm and poised treatment of some really dark themes. For those frissons of thematic and stylistic dissonance that just thrill me.

Meanwhile their collaboration with Rainsurfer was more a case of icing on the cake! Rainsurfer certainly brought prime goods to the table and all Fluid Japan had to do was to polish that gem a little with their usual good taste. Their collaboration with Jan Linton felt like more a case of each artist contributing on more equal terms. At least that’s what it seemed like. And I could say the same about intelligentsia as well.

A new Heaven 17 single dropped out of the sky this summer and I had long given up on that ship making it back to port. And it was powered by the most adroit drum programming I can remember hearing in a dog’s age.

Chopper Franklin kept relatively quiet this year save for a taster of his next Spaghetti Western/Dub project with “The Hexed.” The “Spaghetti Western Dub Vol. 1” album from last year was tied for my number one album! So I’m eager to hear more in that vein from the talented Mr. Franklin and his vocalist, Mather Louth.

New to me bands like Black Boiler and Midniter and Scenius kept the magic flowing this year with great singles. Each of these bands were examples of how Synthpop managed to diversify its approach over the decades as bands were all plowing their own furrows of music quite different from one another.

Ductape had a pair of great singles this year. Actually, they had four, but the later two dropped while I was on travel during the fall season, so I missed them completely! Figures On A Beach joined Sunshine Blind in reissuing unreleased single material from decades earlier [just like Gary Numan, come to think of it…] that managed to captivate my ears as orphaned singles got released instead of orphaned albums. And I reviewed the new Sunshine Blind single “Scarred But Fearless,” but as it dropped the day before yet another trip, I completely forgot to buy it…until right now! Meaning that it missed getting in this years roundup of purchases. Whooops!

While I thrilled to Lene Lovich live [twice!], I also soaked up some of her digital only tracks and releases. She duetted with her drummer/backing vocalist Morgan King on his single “Retrospective 2025” and I still need to review this melancholy slice of dignified adult pop given a sprinkling of Lovich magic.

Finally, old favorites Simple Minds and Roxy Music released a remixed track as a standalone singles. Roxy gave us a post-modern re-edit 12″ of “Love Is the Drug” that would cause no hardliners any apoplexy as it was bereft of any anachronistic hi-jinx. With Simple Minds, they released a slightly remixed version of their 2025 single “Your Name In Lights.” I would have liked to have heard something a little more daring, but it was still a fine [if slight] modern Pop song from the band. I’m always happy to hear something other than stadium ready from them!

Next: …Forward…Into The Past!