2025 Number 8: Gazpacho

Gemma's Top Ten Albums of 2025

Number 8: Gazpacho - Magic 8-Ball 

 

 

Rating a new Gazpacho album is always a tricky one. Their albums need months, years, to percolate and mature. Their best one remains 2007’s Night, and that’s an album that took me years to appreciate.

This one strikes me as a more song-based and immediate album… by Gazpacho standards, so not very immediate at all. Nevertheless, a song like We Are Strangers nestles itself in your brain. Gazpacho were always a warm, organic sounding band, but even with electronics, vocoders and synthesizers they manage to conjure up their signature otherworldly beauty.

After a cluster of strong opening songs, the album downshifts a bit into some slower songs that don’t really seem to have as much going on on the surface, but don’t let it lull you into a false sense of security. The title track has a surprising bite to it, and then the closing salvo of “Immerwahr” and “Unrisen” go straight for the throat, reminding us all why Gazpacho is a band that inspires so much devotion around the world. 

Will this turn out to be another timeless Gazpacho classic in the long run, or is this to be one of their less essential releases? We may not know until another few years have passed. But I like what I’m hearing, so a place in the lower regions of the top ten seems my safest bet. Putting an album called "Magic 8-Ball" at number 8 is too good not to. Expect more Norwegians on my list.