How to open up to new music in 2025

While 2025 brought a number of new albums: From Zero | Linkin Park, Private Music | Deftones, Tall Tales | Thom Yorke and Mark Pritchard, we’re almost at the end with most of us not being even sure what was launched this year vs 2024. Why is that? 

Well, for one, we’ve all given up any intention of resisting social media, our own phones and our owb isolation so while we’re connected non-stop, we’re not actually talking with friends about music anymore. 

Secondly, instead of communities, we have now over-enhanced identities that tell us clearly: I’m not like you, I don’t do jazz or I’ve never followed Foo Fighters or whatever. No curiosity, no opening to ‘let me try to listen for a few days, see how it feels.

What a sad journey from the days when we were lending a vinyl or a CD and feeling like we’re sharing an intimate experience, a secret part of the other person.

Take Deftones, massive tour with US, UK and Europe days, including a Dias de los Deftones in San Diego. Dates in Germany, Paris, Bruxelles, Milano, album no. 10, following some legends like White Pony and Diamond Eyes. I really want to go back to friends saying: ‘do you want to try this CD? Just bring it back next week:)!

Or take Thom Yorke who after working on the new project, The Smile on a third studio album Cutouts, in Oct 2024, goes to release Tall Tales working with Mark Pritchard. Now where is the bar where you can go for a beer and hear some of the new Thom York songs and ask the bartender about it? This bar no longer exists, we will have to build ourselves if we don’t want music to become a distant, lonely memory.

Not to become to grim, there are a few miracles around us. Kulturfabrik carries much of the burden of keeping music true in Luxembourg. Take for example the upcoming 25 years anniversary for Japanese band Mono on Friday, November 14. Most of us would have never even heard of cinematographic rock, let alone have the chance to experience it.

Or the Beth Gibbons concert in Neimunster in Luxembourg, what an evening. But we need more than that. Talk about Portishead and check the new label, Invada Records managed by Geoff Barrow and Mike Patton. We need a label like this in Luxembourg to produce the like of billie nomates, Beak and Nick Cave working on soundtracks……..

But ‘One Battle After Another’ as the movie says. Haven’t seen it? Do that and let me know if you are ready to talk about the music that inspired you this year and/or the music that disappoints. And also, do you know some good places where people still talk about music over beer or over coffee? 

See you there or online if that place no longer exists or doesn’t exist yet! Bis direkt:)