Podcast Episode 25 – Steve Lacy – Gemini Rights

EP. 63 | Our Top 10 Albums of 2025 – This Is Not Happening – An Album Of The Month Podcast

Festive Greetings from This Is Not Happening and welcome to our year-end, 2025 wrap-up episode. As always we split the pod into Part 1 and Part 2.Part 1 features our Top 10 favourite albums of 2025. We use a proprietary algorithm to create our list our collective favourite albums, we're talking nascent data-science excellence! Every year it throws up some surprises as our tastes are so different (and in some ways so similar.Part 2 features a festive Spin It or Bin It. We each bring a candidate for track of the year and ask the age old question 'Spin It or Bin It' … will anyone really bin anyone elses Track of the Year? Probably.To retain the tension, I won't share any spoilers here … other than to share a 40 track playlist of some of our favourite 2025 tracks … here.Whatever you do at this time of year, who ever you do it with … have a good one.Please join us in January where we will go back to the usual format of Album of the Month + Spin It or Bin It.We've been writing the blog for years come and have a look – https://thisisnothappening.net/

1. EP. 63 | Our Top 10 Albums of 2025 01:20:41
2. EP. 62 | Juniper | Joy Crookes 01:14:05
3. EP.61 | Blood Orange | Essex Honey 01:12:50
4. EP.60 | Wet Leg | Moisturizer 01:11:11
5. EP.59 | Little Simz | Lotus 01:11:16

After a little summer break we’re back! We get deep into our Album of the Month, Steve Lacy’s Gemini Rights in Part 1. We dig a little deeper than most pods and make sure we’ve spent LOADS of time living with the album.  In Part 2 we have one of the best ‘Spin It or Bin It’ that I can remember – we each bring a track and ask each other ‘Spin It or Bin It?’

Part 1: Album of the Month – Steve Lacy’s ‘Gemini Rights’

It’s David’s choice this month and he chooses the intriguing ‘Gemini Rights’. Its a tight, punchy album but gives us loads to discuss Tik Tok, the tension between joyous music and often bitter lyrics, the influence of gender and sexuality on this album and the age of massive change that we’re in.

The chat references loads of music and we highly recommend that you check out the following if you’re not familiar already;

• Raphael Sadiq’s ‘Instant Vintage’  
•  Stevie Wonder’s ‘Innervisions’ 
• Frank Ocean’s ‘Channel Orange’
• Prince’s ‘Purple Rain’
• K-Os’ ‘Exit’
• … and my big shout out – Serpentwithfeet’s ‘Deacon’

Part 2: Spin It or Bin It – New Music (tracks from June 2022 onwards)

In Part 2 we get into one of the best Spin It or Bin It? that we’ve had. We each bring a track that meets a different brief every month. This month is simple – ‘New Music’. We then ask each other the binary question ‘Spin It or Bin It?’ and then choose a track of the month from the 4. Here’s our choices …

1.  Guy’s choice is Romare’s ‘Quiet Corners of My Mind’
2. Nolan’s choice is Danger Mouse and Black Thought’s ‘The Darkest Part’
3. Joey’s choice is Ela Minus and DJ Python’s ‘Parajos en Verano’
4. David’s choice is Sudan Archive’s ‘NBPQ (Topless)’

Next Month

Guy will be running the show and hosting the discussion on Hot Chip’s ‘Freakout Release’.

Other episodes of the pod and 10 years of the blog;

If you enjoyed this episode, please check out the others. If that’s not enough for you then there’s 10 years worth of music discussion on the blog at www.thisisnothappening.net, which runs alongside the podcast choices and much, much more. So check them out so to see what we like and where we clash, and comment if something catches your eye. We’d love to hear what you think.