Posted in Music chat, Playlists, podcast, Spin it or Bin It, Uncategorized

Podcast Ep. 63 | Our Top 10 Albums of 2025

Welcome to Episode 64 of This Is Not Happening. An Album of the Month podcast. In Part 1, we review and Album of the Month. This month Joey brings perhaps the most critically acclaimed album of 2025, Rosalia's 'LUX'.In Part 2, we play Spin It or Bin It, we pick a theme and all pick songs that represent that theme. As it's January and everybody is back in the gym or re-starting running program's we've picked 'songs to get injured to'._______________________Part 1 | Album of the Month | Rosalia | LUX________________________This is a big one. Big in many ways. Massively popular, globally. But more importantly MASSIVE in scope, scale and ambition. Rosalia's 4th album takes a major turn from the reggaeton, digital urgency of Motomami. This a symphonic, spiritual, complex and challenging collection of songs presented in 4 movements (if you're on vinyl). It requires you to focus, engage and consume with purpose.It's undeniable that it is ambitious, its brilliance is clear … but will any of us actually like it? Does it make you want to listen to it? Are you drawn to come back to it?Listen to the album here.Watch some of the videos for the tracks here.Check out the Zane Lowe interview with Rosalia here.___________________Part 2 | Spin It or Bin It | Songs To Get Injured To _____________________New Year New Me. The gyms are packed. People are begging to get injured. What should you chose as your soundtrack to that achilles rupture or that rotator cuff tear? The answer is probably in this 16 track play list that we created.We each pick 4 tracks for the playlist and submit 1 track and ask the simple question 'Spin It Or Bin It'?Joey chose 'Baddadan' by Chase & Status et al.Guy chose 'Go' by Chemical Brothers.David chose 'Kool Thing' by Sonic Youth.Nolan chose 'Stop What You're Doing' by Apathy.We've been writing the blog for years come and have a look – https://thisisnothappening.net/
  1. EP. 64 | Rosalia | LUX
  2. EP. 63 | Our Top 10 Albums of 2025
  3. EP. 62 | Juniper | Joy Crookes
  4. EP.61 | Blood Orange | Essex Honey
  5. EP.60 | Wet Leg | Moisturizer

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.

Posted in Music chat, New Albums, New Tunes, podcast, Spin it or Bin It

Podcast Episode 40 | 2023 Top 10 Albums

Welcome to Episode 64 of This Is Not Happening. An Album of the Month podcast. In Part 1, we review and Album of the Month. This month Joey brings perhaps the most critically acclaimed album of 2025, Rosalia's 'LUX'.In Part 2, we play Spin It or Bin It, we pick a theme and all pick songs that represent that theme. As it's January and everybody is back in the gym or re-starting running program's we've picked 'songs to get injured to'._______________________Part 1 | Album of the Month | Rosalia | LUX________________________This is a big one. Big in many ways. Massively popular, globally. But more importantly MASSIVE in scope, scale and ambition. Rosalia's 4th album takes a major turn from the reggaeton, digital urgency of Motomami. This a symphonic, spiritual, complex and challenging collection of songs presented in 4 movements (if you're on vinyl). It requires you to focus, engage and consume with purpose.It's undeniable that it is ambitious, its brilliance is clear … but will any of us actually like it? Does it make you want to listen to it? Are you drawn to come back to it?Listen to the album here.Watch some of the videos for the tracks here.Check out the Zane Lowe interview with Rosalia here.___________________Part 2 | Spin It or Bin It | Songs To Get Injured To _____________________New Year New Me. The gyms are packed. People are begging to get injured. What should you chose as your soundtrack to that achilles rupture or that rotator cuff tear? The answer is probably in this 16 track play list that we created.We each pick 4 tracks for the playlist and submit 1 track and ask the simple question 'Spin It Or Bin It'?Joey chose 'Baddadan' by Chase & Status et al.Guy chose 'Go' by Chemical Brothers.David chose 'Kool Thing' by Sonic Youth.Nolan chose 'Stop What You're Doing' by Apathy.We've been writing the blog for years come and have a look – https://thisisnothappening.net/
  1. EP. 64 | Rosalia | LUX
  2. EP. 63 | Our Top 10 Albums of 2025
  3. EP. 62 | Juniper | Joy Crookes
  4. EP.61 | Blood Orange | Essex Honey
  5. EP.60 | Wet Leg | Moisturizer

Welcome to Episode 40 of This is Not Happening. An Album of the Month Podcast where we usually review an album in depth and play something called ‘Spin It or Bin It’ … but not this month.

We’re celebrating our big 4-0 in style. It’s end of year review time. We select our top 10 albums of 2023 and each pick our Track of 2023.

Part 1 – 2023 Top 10 Albums

We all independently picked our top 10s. We run those choices through a series of deep learning models commonly known as ‘Algo Dave’ and we create a mathematically generated combined Top 10. We made our selections and recorded this pod WAAAAAY ahead of any body else’s lists coming out so we are not influenced by the mainstream musical media (which is why our list looks SO different to everyone else’s). We’re super proud of our 10 and chuffed to bits that our No.1 is an album that we all love and one that we’ve loved since the start of the year. No recency bias here my friends.

Part 2- 2023 Tracks of the Year

We each select a track of the year. Simple as that. We explain why it’s our track of 2023 and have a little critique of each others choices.

*** Enjoy the Episode ***

Posted in Album of the Month, podcast

Podcast Episode | Top 10 Albums & Top Tracks of 2022

Welcome to Episode 64 of This Is Not Happening. An Album of the Month podcast. In Part 1, we review and Album of the Month. This month Joey brings perhaps the most critically acclaimed album of 2025, Rosalia's 'LUX'.In Part 2, we play Spin It or Bin It, we pick a theme and all pick songs that represent that theme. As it's January and everybody is back in the gym or re-starting running program's we've picked 'songs to get injured to'._______________________Part 1 | Album of the Month | Rosalia | LUX________________________This is a big one. Big in many ways. Massively popular, globally. But more importantly MASSIVE in scope, scale and ambition. Rosalia's 4th album takes a major turn from the reggaeton, digital urgency of Motomami. This a symphonic, spiritual, complex and challenging collection of songs presented in 4 movements (if you're on vinyl). It requires you to focus, engage and consume with purpose.It's undeniable that it is ambitious, its brilliance is clear … but will any of us actually like it? Does it make you want to listen to it? Are you drawn to come back to it?Listen to the album here.Watch some of the videos for the tracks here.Check out the Zane Lowe interview with Rosalia here.___________________Part 2 | Spin It or Bin It | Songs To Get Injured To _____________________New Year New Me. The gyms are packed. People are begging to get injured. What should you chose as your soundtrack to that achilles rupture or that rotator cuff tear? The answer is probably in this 16 track play list that we created.We each pick 4 tracks for the playlist and submit 1 track and ask the simple question 'Spin It Or Bin It'?Joey chose 'Baddadan' by Chase & Status et al.Guy chose 'Go' by Chemical Brothers.David chose 'Kool Thing' by Sonic Youth.Nolan chose 'Stop What You're Doing' by Apathy.We've been writing the blog for years come and have a look – https://thisisnothappening.net/
  1. EP. 64 | Rosalia | LUX
  2. EP. 63 | Our Top 10 Albums of 2025
  3. EP. 62 | Juniper | Joy Crookes
  4. EP.61 | Blood Orange | Essex Honey
  5. EP.60 | Wet Leg | Moisturizer

It’s that time of year again, we dust off David’s scoring-algorithm for the end of year review. This is the one we look forward to and we hope you enjoy it.

This month, in Part 1 we run through our collective, This is Not Happening Top-10 albums. In Part 2 we all introduce our Track of the year.

Part 1 | 2022 This is Not Happening Top 10 Albums

So, there’s for of us. We all independently chose our Top 10 albums. This data is fed into deep learning algorithm that considers all of the knowns and most of the unknowns and create a singular, collective This is Not Happening Top 10. Its a controversial approach but its as fair as we can make it. 

This year only 2 albums were chosen by all 4 of us. Only 3 albums were chosen by 3 of us. However, the Top 10 feels more ‘shared’ than we’ve ever done. I think it’s a really solid top 10 and we should be proud of it.

Our number one is an absolute belter! We can hold our heads high with this one.

Part 2 | Tracks of the Year

How do you sum up an entire year in one track? Is it even possible? Two, important  questions, to which our answers are; ‘with difficulty’ and ‘yes’. We chose 4 tracks from 4 different genres. There’s more than a whiff of melancholy that links our Top tracks but we think is kind of fitting for one of the oddest of years.

Next Month

If we’re honest, we’re not 100% sure what we’ll be reviewing. Every year there are albums released later in the year that we miss or simply don’t have the time to get our teeth into. So Nolan will pick one of these albums and we’ll all spend the holidays getting stuck into that with our families (if it’s vaguely appropriate for very young or very old ears).