The Note Wrapped ‘25
We asked The Note’s music nerds to give us their end of year lists.
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Millah Hansberry – Local Editor
Best Release: Ball Park Music’s Like Love. This pick is so on brand for me but I can’t help it. It’s such an uplifting and heartbreaking record - the atmosphere it creates is otherworldly.
Best Gig: I’m biased, as I ran it, but the Sickest 100 at Unibar in Feb with LOLA, TOWNHOUSE and THE FUSS. The countdown brings the SA scene together like no other, so witnessing it with a huge crowd of mates was tear inducing.
Best Local Release: Impossible question. For today, let’s say The Tullamarines ‘Gimme Luv’.
Best Festival: Chilled Out ‘N’ Fired Up Fest in Caltowie. Regional camping festivals have my heart. It’s never really about the lineup; it’s about the people. Plus, who can say no to The Superjesus AND Molly Rocket?
One To Watch: The Fuss, Molly Rocket, LOLA, The Tullamarines + so many more. Stop me in the street and I’ll recommend a million.
Tobias Handke – Digital Writer
Best Release: Rosalía – Lux. Listen to this album through top-quality headphones in the dark. It will blow your mind.
Best Gig: Oasis. Enough said.
Best Local Release: Bad//Dreems - 'SHADOWLAND'. These guys can do no wrong, and this track is another ode to the unseen Australia that only a few ever truly experience.
Best Festival: Way Out West. Charli xcx, Iggy Pop, Chappell Roan, Pet Shop Boys, Little Simz, Blackstar and loads more. The Swedes have it sorted when it comes to throwing a musical festival.
One To Watch: Ella Ion. There's a heartwarming intimacy to her music that gives me chills.
OLLY RAGGATT – Director
Best Release: IDLES – TANGK
Best Gig: AC/DC & Amyl and The Sniffers. Maybe down to recency bias, or the fact that Amyl and The Sniffers were going to be my pick anyway. But hey, Amyl and The Sniffers were incredible as always. AC/DC were incredible to see.
Best Local Release: The Shadow Ministers - Vol II
Best Festival: Harvest Rock - Stoked to have it back again. Let's hope they do it over two days next year.
One To Watch: It's been a big year for Ella Ion and I think it will keep on getting better interstate and internationally.
OSCAR ELLERY–Account Manager
Best Release: Tropical Fuck Storm – Fairyland Codex. A grimy, dark, and warped noise rock album, packed with angular guitar tones and twisted lyrics.
Best Gig: Two weeks in New York, arguably the best music city in the world, delivered my 2025 moment. At Smalls Jazz Club, Greenwich Village, I packed into a 100-person room to watch a quartet play with electricity and almost spiritual intensity. In New York, these performances happen every night.
Best Local Release: The Shadow Ministers – ‘Stay’. All killer no filler, balls to the floor rock n roll. The world’s better with more of this stuff.
Best Festival: WOMADelaide. As always, my favourite festival on earth. Nils Frahm and Roisin Murphy were standouts.
One To Watch: Ella Ion - world-class songwriting. It’s only a matter of time before she gets seriously noticed.
Wayne Saunders – Graphic Designer
Best Release: Clipse - Let God Sort Em Out. Only need one word to describe this. Hard. Back-to-back bangers, next-level production and cold bars.
Best Gig: I’m going to be honest; I haven’t been to many gigs this year. Life gets like that sometimes. A standout though was Killing Heidi at The Gov, purely for nostalgia's sake.
Best Local Release: Cagefly - Cagefly. Haunting. Beautiful. Introspective. Existential. These are the words that come to mind when I listen to this. Good stuff.
Best Festival: Good Things. Leaning into my elder millennial status with this one. Plus, where else would you see Tool, Weezer, Knocked Loose and James Reyne on the same line-up? Nowhere, that’s where.
One To Watch: Cagefly. An original sound that cuts through the noise of the local scene. Keen to see where they take their sound in the future.
EMILY WILSON – Contributor
Best Release: Geese - Getting Killed. Listening to the album is an emotionally crushing experience, but it also feels, by the end, as if you are being reborn.
Best Gig: Placement’s album launch at The Cranker. It was Twine’s last hometown show before their line-up change, so it was an emotional night. It was also the night my partner asked me out. Gigs can be the stuff of romance, kids!
Best Local Release: short snarl - Self Noise. Thea Martin is one of the most intelligent musicians I know, and Self Noise is such a delicate, intricate collection of sound and language.
Best Festival: Harvest Rock. The abysmal weather created a rallying community spirit. And Julian Casablancas actually yelled “Raidelaide, my freaks!” into his mic.
One To Watch: Perfect 50, Swapmeet, Any Young Mechanic - big things happening in Adelaide!
Will Oakeshott – Contributor
Best Release: Near-Death Travel Services – Deadguy. New Jersey’s royalty of mathcore; 30 years after their game-changing debut, they finally released another magnum opus.
Best Gig: Chelsea Wolfe with Aphir - May 27, 2025, at The Gov. Chelsea’s bewitching adventures into folk, gothic rock, doom metal, industrial, trip-hop, and electronica are enrapturing.
Best Local Release: Fugue - Raccoon City. An intense journey of raw emotional post-hardcore that recalls the astounding early era of Thursday. Raccoon City sit poetically ‘Between Rupture & Rapture.’
Best Festival: Dark Mofo. Live car crashes, Beth Gibbons, Black Metal, experimental art and performance, plus the best food and wine.
One To Watch: Freedom Of Fear. This tech-death metal outfit are working on their highly anticipated third LP, and it will be a contender for 2026.
