This Ten Greatest Worldwide Records of 2025
The past twelve months have offered a rich tapestry of worldwide sounds that pushed boundaries. We explore ten exceptional albums that shaped the year in music.
10. The Percussionist Sarathy Korwar – There Is Beauty, There Already
A continuous, 40-minute suite of insistent drumming may not appear the most accessible listening experience. But, south Asian drummer and composer Sarathy Korwar converts this persistent pulse into a strangely alluring work. Guiding an ensemble of three drummers, Korwar crafts a complex percussive language over the record's ten sections. The album channels Steve Reich's phasing motifs as well as classical Indian rhythmic patterns, everything tethered in the reiteration of a continual, driving figure. Over its duration, this refrain starts to mirror the trance-inducing cycles of devotional music, pulling the listener deeper into Korwar's unique percussive world.
9. The Lebanese Artist Yasmine Hamdan – I Forget, I Remember
After an long absence, Lebanese vocalist and composer Yasmine Hamdan re-emerges with a melancholy set of songs. She expands on the Arabic-sung, dub-influenced style that established her as a fixture in the Middle Eastern independent music landscape since the 1990s. Hamdan's voice is gentle and ruminative, singing tender melodies over the bowing strings of a track like Hon and the rolling trip-hop groove of Vows. During more energetic moments such as Shadia and Abyss, she employs a trembling, yearning vocal technique over Maghrebi-inspired synth melodies and rattling electronic percussion. The album's sound is sparse and subtle, yet this minimalism creates the ideal setting for Hamdan's deeply felt songwriting to resonate. The album proves to be that justifies the long anticipation.
Number Eight: The Mexican Producer Debit – Slowed Down
Mexican producer Debit has a knack for haunting reinterpretations of archival audio. For her most recent project, Desaceleradas, she turns her attention to the 90s style of cumbia rebajada – a decelerated, dub-inflected take of the shuffling Latin American dance music genre. Debit decelerates this sound to a near-halt, processing its characteristic synths and off-beat rhythm through veils of sludge and hiss to generate a new, foreboding rhythm. Periodically ambient and discomfiting, Debit morphs the exuberant party music of cumbia into a enduring, spectral memory.
Number Seven: DJ K – Liberator Radio!
Maximalism is the operative word for the records of São Paulo producer Kaique Vieira, AKA DJ K. Coining his own genre of "bruxaria" (witchcraft), Vieira layers a cacophony of sirens, pummeling bass tones and screamed lyrics on top of the enduring Brazilian genre of baile funk. This recreates the energetic sound of favela street parties. On his follow-up release, Radio Libertadora!, Vieira cranks up the intensity, incorporating everything from techno kick drums to the sound of the Islamic call to prayer into his frantic bruxaria mix. The result is a notably manic and punishingly loud forty-minute listening experience. Submit to the noise and Vieira's brash productions become oddly liberating.
6. The Singer Mohinder Kaur Bhamra – Punjabi Disco
Sikh devotional singer Mohinder Kaur Bhamra's 1982 album of disco beats and traditional Punjabi tunes is a reissued treasure. Produced by her son, music producer Kuljit Bhamra, Punjabi Disco's ten tracks present an remarkably engaging blend of the metallic sound of early synthesizers and programmed drums with her fluid Indian classical vocal technique. Drum machine patterns mimics the undulating tones of the traditional drums, while synthesiser melody parallels the traditional sound of the reed organ on tracks such as Pyar Mainu Kar. Elsewhere, Latin-inflected grooves is prominent on Soniya Mukh Tera, and Nainan Da Pyar De Gaya channels a driving disco bass groove. It's a club-ready hybrid pioneered more than ten years before the global breakthrough of South Asian electronic music.
Number Five: Enji – Sonor
Mongolian vocalist Enji's soft fourth album, Sonor, develops her jazz-influenced sound to present some of her broadest music so far. Moving away from her training in traditional Mongolian "long song" singing, the record's eleven songs range from the soft jazz-pop melodics of slow-burning number Ulbar to the German spoken-word lyrics and trilling guitar lines of Unadag Dugui. The album also includes a sprightly, funk-tinged cover of the 1980s Mongolian classic Eejiinhee Hairaar. Utilizing a live band rather than her typical setup of guitar and bass, Sonor's sound is still close, drawing the listener into the gentle acoustics of her singular voice.
Number Four: Derya Yıldırım and Her Band – If There Is No Tomorrow
Inspired by the psychedelic tradition of Turkish psychedelia established by groups such as Moğollar, Turkish-born, Germany-based singer Derya Yıldırım's new album with her band Grup Şimşek merges the metallic twang of the electrified saz with dreamy Mellotron and R&B-inflected lines. It's a 1970s throwback sound anchored in Yıldırım's commanding falsetto and influenced by producer Leon Michels' analogue tape aesthetic. But, on classic Turkish songs such as the nursery rhyme Hop Bico and 60s classic Ceylan, the group finds lively new territory. They craft slinking, downtempo grooves and lifting vocals that give a new, off-kilter twist to the Turkish psych sound.
Number Three: Lido Pimienta – La Belleza
Catholic requiem mass music, Eastern European folk melodies and symphonic arrangements converge on Colombian-born singer Lido Pimienta's stunning fourth album. Arranging music for the 60-piece Medellín Philharmonic Orchestra, Pimienta and producer Owen Pallett explore everything from the liturgical vocals of opener Overturn (Obertura de la Luz Eterna) to the theatrical counterpoint melodies of Aún Te Quiero and the syncopated dembow rhythms of the woodwind-heavy El Dembow del Tiempo. It is Pim
