This 10 Best Global Records of 2025
The past twelve months have offered a rich tapestry of international music that pushed boundaries. Here is a countdown of ten remarkable albums that characterized the year in music.
10. Sarathy Korwar – There Already Is Beauty
A continuous, 40-minute suite of repetitive percussion may not appear the most approachable listening experience. However, Indian drummer and composer Sarathy Korwar turns this driving beat into a unexpectedly magnetic album. Directing an group of three drummers, Korwar crafts a dense percussive dialect throughout the record's ten sections. The work references the phasing techniques of Steve Reich alongside traditional Indian musical phrasing, each grounded in the recurrence of a ongoing, pulsing refrain. As the album progresses, this refrain starts to mirror the trance-inducing cycles of ritual music, pulling the listener further into Korwar's unique percussive universe.
Number Nine: The Lebanese Artist Yasmine Hamdan – I Forget, I Remember
Following an eight-year break, Arab vocalist and composer Yasmine Hamdan makes a comeback with a mournful album of songs. She expands on the Arabic-sung, dub-influenced style that established her as a fixture in the region's indie music scene since the 1990s. Hamdan's vocal delivery is soft and ruminative, delivering delicate melodies over the string arrangements of a track like Hon and the rumbling trip-hop groove of Vows. During more energetic moments such as Shadia and Abyss, she uses a wavering, yearning vibrato over north African synth lines and skittering electronic percussion. The production is sparse and subtle, yet this simplicity offers the perfect setting for Hamdan's deeply felt compositions to shine through. It is well worth the wait.
8. Debit – Desaceleradas
From Mexico electronic artist Debit has a knack for eerie reinterpretations of traditional music. On her most recent project, Desaceleradas, she focuses on the 90s style of cumbia rebajada – a slowed, dubby version of the shuffling Latin American musical style. Debit decelerates this sound to a near-halt, running its signature synths and syncopated rhythm via layers of murk and static to create a fresh, menacing rhythm. At turns ambient and discomfiting, Debit transforms the celebratory dancefloor sound of cumbia into a lasting, ghostly afterimage.
Number Seven: DJ K – Radio Libertadora!
Maximalism is the key term for the output of Brazilian producer Kaique Vieira, AKA DJ K. Coining his own genre of "bruxaria" (witchcraft), Vieira stacks a tumult of sirens, explosive bass tones and shouted lyrics over the enduring Brazilian dance style of baile funk. This captures the propulsive sound of urban celebrations. On his second album, Radio Libertadora!, Vieira ramps up the intensity, throwing in everything from four-on-the-floor techno beats to samples of the Islamic call to prayer into his unruly bruxaria mix. The result is a particularly manic and deafeningly intense forty-minute listening experience. Surrender to the assault and Vieira's bold productions become oddly freeing.
Number Six: Mohinder Kaur Bhamra – Punjabi Disco
Sikh devotional singer Mohinder Kaur Bhamra's 1982 album of disco beats and traditional Punjabi tunes is a rediscovered treasure. Recorded by her son, music producer Kuljit Bhamra, Punjabi Disco's ten tracks offer an remarkably captivating blend of the sharp sound of 1980s synthesisers and drum machines with her melismatic Indian classical vocal technique. Electronic percussion mirrors the wavelike tones of the traditional drums, while synth lines parallels the traditional sound of the harmonium on tracks such as Pyar Mainu Kar. Elsewhere, bossa nova rhythm comes to the fore on Soniya Mukh Tera, and Nainan Da Pyar De Gaya channels a driving funky bass rhythm. It's a party blend created more than ten years before the rise of Asian Underground music.
Number Five: Enji – Sonor
From Mongolia singer Enji's soft fourth album, Sonor, develops her jazz-inflected sound to deliver some of her most wide-ranging music to date. Stepping outside her training in traditional Mongolian "long song" singing, the record's 11 tracks travel from the gentle jazz-pop melodies of slow-burning number Ulbar to the German-language narration lyrics and twanging guitar lines of Unadag Dugui. The album also includes a sprightly, funk-inflected cover of the 1980s Mongolian classic Eejiinhee Hairaar. Utilizing a ensemble rather than her usual setup of guitar and bass, Sonor's sound remains personal, drawing the listener into the tender soundscape of her singular voice.
Number Four: Derya Yıldırım & Grup Şimşek – Yarın Yoksa
Drawing on the 1960s legacy of Anatolian rock established by groups such as Moğollar, Turkish-born, Germany-based singer Derya Yıldırım's third record with her band Grup Şimşek fuses the distinctive buzz of the amplified traditional lute with dreamy Mellotron and classic soul melodies. It's a retro-70s aesthetic anchored in Yıldırım's commanding high register and shaped by producer Leon Michels' warm, tape-saturated aesthetic. But, on classic Turkish songs such as the nursery rhyme Hop Bico and 1960s song Ceylan, the group reaches lively new territory. They craft smooth, slow-burning grooves and soaring vocals that give a new, off-kilter interpretation to the Anatolian psychedelic style.
3. The Colombian Artist Lido Pimienta – The Beauty
Gregorian chants, Czech harpsichord folksong and orchestral strings all come together on Colombian-born singer Lido Pimienta's extraordinary fourth album. Orchestrating music for the sixty-member Medellín Philharmonic Orchestra, Pimienta and producer Owen Pallett traverse everything from the liturgical vocals of opener Overturn (Obertura de la Luz Eterna) to the theatrical interweaving lines of Aún Te Quiero and the syncopated reggaeton-inspired beats of the woodwind-heavy El Dembow del Tiempo. Ultimately, it is Pim
