Dear London/ers,

This, the inaugural edition of London Electronic Organ—YES & NO’s experimental, London-centric initiative—is something like a love letter to the cultural capital of the world, the Londoner’s London…. And anyone else, for that matter, who also feels a genuine love and care for one of the world’s greatest cities (some would argue the greatest, warts and all), its present and its future.

For the first L.E.O. offering we invited a handful of Londoners to give us a review of their Tops of 2025. Mark Moore, record producer, DJ, and the mastermind behind the classic British electro-dance group S’Express, presents his Top 13 movies from the past year. Not only is Mark a pre-eminent Music Man but, as you will see from his list, he’s also a consummate aficionado when it comes to movies. Mark was on the jury of the 2025 edition of the Trieste Science+Fiction Film Festival, established in 2000.

Tree culture, including the tree hugging movement, has become a real thing. Especially since 2020. Ed Spurr, creator of the Acorn Vase and co-founder of Ilex Studios, has an ardent and long-standing passion for trees and parks. His mission is to promote the connection between people and nature. It is a mission that borders on a profound belief system, an obsession and not just a faddish casual interest. Here, Ed gives us his Top 13 favourite open spaces in London where he unearths buried secrets of arguably the world’s loveliest, most exceptional, and beloved parks; city spaces to be explored, places where one can find re-creation any time of the year.

Every city has its own peculiar relationship with music; the place and the art form coexist like heart and soul. But there’s something about London that inspires musicians from all over the world (and artists in general) to want to be here in order to create and, perhaps most importantly, to have their creations acknowledged and appreciated by Londoners. Last year, in Battersea Park, a green plaque honouring Bob Marley was unveiled. When Marley was in London recording the 1977 album Exodus, he trained and played football in the park. For him London was like a home from home. It’s a mysterious thing, but whether London is your home or not, a success here still gives validation like few other places, a sense of achievement. Patrick Clarke, the London-based journalist and music historian, and author of the stunningly well-reviewed book Bedsit Land: The Strange Worlds Of Soft Cell, presents his Top 13 albums and Top 13 tunes of the past 12 months.

And, if it’s not too late to mention, here’s wishing you and yours all the best for a brilliant, and beautifully balanced, 2026.

Cassius

YES & NO Founder and Editor

TOP 13 MOVIES OF 2025

by Mark Moore

13—Superman (Dir. James Gunn). Woke Superman fights the fascist government of the USA (and their allies). TRAILER

12—The Restoration At Grayson Manor (Dir. Glenn McQuaid). Boyd Grayson’s rich mother invests in radical technology to help her queer, handless son. They hate each other. TRAILER

11—Redux Redux (Dirs. Kevin McManus and Matthew McManus). Mother takes revenge on her daughter’s murderer. Again and again in parallel universes. TRAILER

10—Dog Of God (Dirs. Lauris Abele and Raitis Abele). 17th c. witch trial with bonus werewolf. Sex and violence in rotoscope. TRAILER

9—Pee-Wee As Himself (Dir. Matt Wolf). The life of Paul Reubens filmed just before his passing. TRAILER

8—Sly Lives! (aka The Burden Of Black Genius) (Dir. Questlove). Questlove captures the funk and essence of Sly Stone. TRAILER

7—Enigma (Dir. Zackary Drucker). Amanda Lear v. April Ashley doc. TRAILER

6—Pillion (Dir. Harry Lighton). Sub-man meets impossibly handsome dom-biker. Charming rom-com. Take your parents. TRAILER

5—Frankenstein (Dir. Guillermo del Toro). Del Toro's gothic take on the Creature with visual inspiration from Bernie Wrightson. TRAILER

4—Bulk (Dir. Ben Wheatley). Wheatley’s surrealist string theory experiment with nods to early Dr Who. TRAILER

3—Weapons (Dir. Zach Cregger). Kids vanish on the same night at exactly the same time. Why? TRAILER

2—Junk World (Dir. Takahide Hori). Robin the robot’s sci-fi odyssey through the Apocalypse and Time itself. Stop-motion animation head trip. TRAILER

1—One Battle After Another (Dir. Paul Thomas Anderson). Ageing ex-revolutionary in a thrilling battle to remember his codes and passwords. TRAILER

(L-R) Sean Penn, Chase Infiniti, Leonardo DiCaprio, Teyana Taylor, and Benicio del Toro attend the London photocall for *One Battle After Another* on September 15, 2025 in London, England. (Photo; Jeff Spicer/Getty Images for Warner Bros. Pictures) © 2025 Getty Images

TOP 12 FAVOURITE PARKS IN LONDON

by Ed Spurr

London is far more than a concrete metropolis; it is part of an evolving “urban jungle.” The capital contains over 4,000 parks, woodlands, playing fields, nature reserves, city farms, rivers, and canals, all woven into a continuous green network across the city. With a bit of planning, you can walk from one park to the next and remain almost entirely within green space. From my studio in Hammersmith, I can set off through Ravenscourt Park, pass through the beautiful park in St Peter’s Square, follow riverside paths and towpaths, slip under highways and over bridges, move through wetlands and commons, and eventually reach Richmond Park without stepping off the green routes. Here is a list of some of my favourite parks….

12—Chiswick House and Gardens. Chiswick House and Gardens is an early and influential example of the English Landscape Movement, with sweeping lawns, reflective water, and a classical villa forming its central axis. The gardens are known for their calm, open design that frames long views across the site. The cedar trees here are particularly notable: one is traditionally said to have been planted by Giuseppe Garibaldi during his visit to London, and the trees later became part of pop culture history when The Beatles filmed the promotional video for their 1966 single Rain beneath their wide branches, an early forerunner of the modern music video.

11—Wimbledon Common. Wimbledon Common is an expansive area of heath, woodland, and bog that feels distinct from the rest of London’s green spaces. Its scale and variety make it ideal for long, quiet walks through natural habitats rich in birdlife and insects. The Common contains many ancient pollarded beeches and oaks, some with hollowed centres and broad low limbs, showing the long history of traditional woodland use in this part of London.

A 1938 London Transport poster by Man Ray

10—Ravenscourt Park. Ravenscourt Park is a neighbourhood park shaped by the remains of the manor estate that once stood here, with ponds, old garden walls, and quiet paths creating a strong sense of history. Its most striking tree is a huge, squat London plane that stands alone near the centre, its car-sized trunk and unusual form visible from all sides. A local story claims it was struck by the Luftwaffe during the Blitz, though this remains unverified. Other old lime and plane trees across the park date to the nineteenth-century estate period.

9—St James’s Park. St James’s Park lies between Buckingham Palace and Whitehall and has a soft, ornamental character defined by its lake, bridges, and curving paths. Colourful planting and resident waterbirds give it a lively, changing atmosphere through the year. Several old plane trees around the lake show the broad bases and heavy limbs typical of long-established London specimens, while the park’s pelicans, first introduced in the seventeenth century, remain one of its most unusual and enduring features.

8—Battersea Park. Battersea Park offers one of London’s most varied landscapes, with riverside paths, subtropical planting, a boating lake, and quiet ornamental gardens. It manages to feel sheltered despite the busy roads around it. Near the Sub-Tropical Garden stand mature magnolias and London planes, key to the park’s mild microclimate and layered planting character that sets it apart from many Victorian parks.

Vintage Battersea Park poster features Henry Moore’s *Three Standing Figures* (1947) Grade II listed donated to the park in 1950

7—Bushy Park. Bushy Park sits beside Hampton Court Palace and is known for its wide grassy avenues, open meadowland, and roaming herds of red and fallow deer. Water channels and ponds run through the centre, giving the landscape a rhythm similar to Richmond but at a gentler scale. Chestnut Avenue, designed by Sir Christopher Wren, forms one of the park’s strongest sightlines, its mature horse chestnuts creating a long natural corridor towards the palace.

6—Osterley Park and House. Osterley Park is a grand eighteenth-century estate preserved in west London, with meadows, woodland, and water arranged around Robert Adam’s impressive mansion. The park often feels calm and open despite its scale, making it well suited to long steady walks. One of its most distinctive trees is a Cork Oak planted in 1855, among the oldest in the country. Standing just south of the house, it keeps its evergreen foliage through winter and reflects the species’ Mediterranean origins, where cork bark has long been harvested for wine stoppers.

5—Greenwich Park. Greenwich Park combines steep slopes, historic avenues, and long views across the Thames towards Canary Wharf. The Royal Observatory and the Prime Meridian line anchor its long history, while the lower gardens and orchards offer quieter, sheltered areas. The ancient sweet chestnut avenue, believed to date from the seventeenth century, is one of the park’s most striking features, with deeply furrowed trunks that speak to their great age and continued resilience.

London’s Tramways poster from 1932 featuring Greenwich Park

4—Hampstead Heath. Hampstead Heath feels more like countryside than city, with woodland, ponds, open heath, and uneven paths giving it a wild, layered quality. Parliament Hill offers one of London’s most open skyline views, especially striking at dawn and dusk. Scattered across the Heath are old pollarded oaks and hornbeams, shaped by centuries of traditional woodland management, their twisted trunks and broad crowns creating natural sculptures along the trails.

3—Regent’s Park. Regent’s Park mixes formal gardens, open lawns, and long avenues that give it a clarity and structure rare in London. Queen Mary’s Gardens are the highlight, especially in midsummer when thousands of roses reach their peak. The park also contains many early nineteenth-century London planes, some forming tall architectural lines along the Outer Circle. Each autumn the landscape becomes an open-air gallery during Frieze Sculpture, a public art exhibition that runs from September to early November alongside the Frieze Art Fair.

2—Richmond Park. Richmond Park is London’s largest Royal Park and its closest equivalent to a natural landscape, with wide, rolling grassland, heaths, and ancient woodland shaped over centuries by grazing deer. Red and fallow herds still define the park’s character, moving through the terrain with ease. Richmond also holds one of Britain’s greatest collections of ancient oaks, some more than 500 years old, forming a nationally important veteran tree habitat.

1—Hyde Park. Hyde Park remains one of central London’s most open landscapes, offering long straight paths, broad lawns, and the Serpentine running through its centre. Despite its popularity, the park contains quieter pockets, especially around the Rose Garden where one of London’s most remarkable trees stands: a mature Caucasian zelkova, considered one of the finest examples in England. Its tall fluted trunk and soaring branches make it a rare and commanding presence in the heart of the city.

Vintage Hyde Park poster—The Stage Of London Life

TOP 13 ALBUMS OF 2025

by Patrick Clarke

13—Joy Moughanni – A Separation From Habit. Created in Lebanon in the midst of conflict, A Separation From Habit dwells on feelings of displacement, grief, rage and sorrow, deploying ancient poetry, 20th century newscasts, and modern abstracted electronics. MORE

12—These New Puritans – Crooked Wing. Deeply Romantic (with a capital R, in the 18th century sense), These New Puritans’ fifth album is the clearest distillation yet of their intoxicating mixture of softness and power. MORE

11—Kasai – 〽 Japanese binman, care worker and part time farmer Kasai finds an unlikely intersection between ancient Minyo and modern footwork, striking parallels between their respective fractured and scattered grooves. MORE

10—Širom – In The Wind Of Night, Hard-Fallen Incantations Whisper. Self-described ‘imaginary folk’ musicians, Slovenia’s Širom take Balkan tradition and transform it into something expansive, a psychedelic new sound that is ceaselessly future facing. MORE

9—aya – Hexed! Aya takes techno, industrial, noise and dance and blends them into an abrasive thing of her very own. Utterly relentless. MORE

8—The Worm – Pantilde. A work of staggering imagination, Cornwall-based Amy Lawrence travels to a parallel Celtic universe and discovers some of the strangest and most playful songs you will ever hear. MORE

7—DJ K – Radio Libertadora! Pioneering a genre of his very own, bruxaria funk (witchcraft funk), São Paulo producer DJ K delivers the most chaotic, uncompromising and energising album of 2025. MORE

6—Jim Ghedi – Wasteland. The sound of a collapsing planet as articulated through ferocious traditional folksong, the Sheffield musician’s latest bubbles with dark, stark and beautiful intensity. MORE

5—caroline – caroline 2. Constantly shifting between high and low fidelity, bursts of searing emotion and stretches of disorienting abstraction, explorative impulses and tight perfectionism, caroline’s second record is a work with immensities to offer. MORE

4—Nadeem Din-Gabisi – Offshore. Speaking through an alias garbed in English football gear and flying the St. George’s flag, British-Sierra Leonean multi-disciplinarian Nadeem Din-Gabisi explores knotty issues of nationalism and diasporic identity with simultaneous lightness and depth. MORE

3—Nourished By Time – The Passionate Ones. Tackling the drudgery of everyday existence via a tornado of synth pop, R&B, lo-fi, house, post punk and freestyle, unified by a glistening eye on danceable melodies. MORE

2—Richard Dawson – End Of The Middle. The Newcastle singer-songwriter presents delicate vignettes from the everyday, out of which moments of overpowering emotion burst like steam from a geyser. MORE

1—Milkweed – Remscéla. Fragments from the introductory passages of the great epic of Irish mythology, the Táin Bó Cúailnge, chopped up and ran through a mangle of avant-garde lo-fi production to utterly magnetic results. MORE

Milkweed – *Remscéla*. Cropped image of Milkweed © Poppy Waring

TOP 13 TUNES OF 2025

by Patrick Clarke

13—No Joy – Garbage Dream House. Much has been made of the return of shoe-gaze and dream pop into the modern indie palette, but few are utilising it as creatively as No Joy does on Garbage Dream House. TUNE

12—Danny Brown – Starburst. Even in the thick of the most prolific period of his career, the labyrinthine and chaotic Starburst stands out as one of Danny Brown’s most magnetic moments to date. TUNE

11—Elijah Minnelli – Canaan Land feat. Dennis Bovell. The enigmatic and brilliant young dub producer Elijah Minnelli teams up with one of the all time greats in Dennis Bovell for a moody, slinky gem of a track. TUNE

10—Lankum – Ghost Town. The Irish doom folk quartet’s take on The Specials’ classic starts as you might expect, lurching and eerie, but then twists into a remarkable psychedelic rave. TUNE

9—Rosalía – Berghain feat. Björk & Yves Tumour. There are bold creative swings, and then there’s Rosalía’s decision to follow up 2022’s breakout experimental pop smash Motomami with a Baroque orchestral epic featuring storming guest spots from Bjork and Yves Tumor. A triumph. TUNE

8—Backxwash – 9th Heaven. The beat alone on 9th Heaven is overspilling with intensity. Add in the Canadian-Zambian rapper’s unflinching meditation on suicidal ideation and her battle against it, and you have something truly breathtaking. TUNE

7—aya – Off To The Esso. The manic, relentless centrepiece of aya’s new LP Hexed! depicts the endless loop of a hedonistic lifestyle that’s long since gone sour via frantic, constantly shifting aural terrorism. TUNE

6—Water From Your Eyes – Nights In Armor. A curious mixture of calculated maximalism and anything-goes scrappiness, Nights In Armor attacks in fits and starts, tripping and stumbling under its own weight but never fully collapsing. TUNE

5—Nadeem Din-Gabisi – Enter Claim. Flittering between English and Sierra Leonean Krio as a means to articulate an immigrant’s warring inner monologues while weaving a smooth up-tempo flow, Enter Claim exemplifies Nadeem Din-Gabisi’s ability to dissect heavy themes via accessible sonics. TUNE

4—Charli XCX – House feat. John Cale. Following up the all-conquering Brat was always going to be a challenge, but by recruiting John Cale for a cut of overwhelming gothic power electronics, it’s something Charli XCX has managed effortlessly. TUNE

3—Perfume Genius – It’s A Mirror. Oozing with rich melancholy, riding a sweep of rich Americana, Perfume Genius cements his role as one of his generation’s greatest pop songwriters. TUNE

2—caroline – Total Euphoria. Sometimes a song can be boiled down entirely to its name. Soaring upwards into the stratosphere, Total Euphoria delivers exactly that. TUNE

1—Nourished By Time – 9 2 5. An ode to keeping the dream alive, however futile it might seem, deep soul set to a dizzying spin of skittering beats and twinkling electronics. TUNE