Our Ten Greatest Global Records of the Year 2025
Looking back on the musical landscape of worldwide releases that defied expectations. Presenting a selection of ten notable albums that defined the year in music.
Number Ten: The Percussionist Sarathy Korwar – There Already Is Beauty
An album consisting of a single, extended movement of cyclical drumming might not seem the most accessible listening experience. However, south Asian drummer and composer Sarathy Korwar turns this insistent rhythm into a unexpectedly magnetic piece. Guiding an group of three drummers, Korwar develops a intricate percussive dialect across the record's ten sections. The work channels the phasing techniques of Steve Reich alongside Indian classical phrasing, each grounded in the reiteration of a continual, driving figure. As the album progresses, this refrain evokes the trance-inducing cycles of ceremonial music, drawing the listener deeper into Korwar's distinctive percussive world.
9. Yasmine Hamdan – I Forget, I Remember
Coming off an eight-year break, Arab vocalist and composer Yasmine Hamdan returns with a contemplative collection of songs. The work builds upon the Arabic-sung, dub-influenced style that established her as a fixture in the Arab alternative scene since the 1990s. Hamdan's vocal delivery is soft and introspective, singing tender melodies atop the bowing strings of a track like Hon and the deep trip-hop beat of Vows. For more upbeat numbers such as Shadia and Abyss, she employs a quivering, longing vibrato against electronic lines with North African flavors and rattling electronic percussion. The album's sound is lean and restrained, yet this minimalism creates the ideal environment for Hamdan's emotive songwriting to take center stage. It is truly deserving of the long anticipation.
Number Eight: The Mexican Producer Debit – Slowed Down
Mexican electronic artist Debit has a knack for eerie reinterpretations of traditional music. On her latest release, Desaceleradas, she zeroes in on the 90s style of cumbia rebajada – a decelerated, dub-inflected version of the shuffling Latin American dance genre. Debit decelerates this sound to a near-halt, filtering its signature synths and syncopated rhythm via layers of murk and hiss to generate a novel, foreboding rhythm. At turns atmospheric and discomfiting, Debit morphs the exuberant party music of cumbia into a lasting, ethereal echo.
7. The São Paulo Producer DJ K – Liberator Radio!
Maximalism is the defining principle for the records of São Paulo producer Kaique Vieira, who performs as DJ K. Pioneering his own genre of "bruxaria" (witchcraft), Vieira layers a onslaught of alarms, pummeling bass tones and shouted lyrics on top of the classic Brazilian dance style of baile funk. This recreates the driving sound of favela street parties. On his new record, Radio Libertadora!, Vieira ramps up the intensity, adding everything from driving techno rhythms 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 noise and Vieira's bold productions become strangely freeing.
6. Mohinder Kaur Bhamra – Punjabi Disco
Sikh devotional singer Mohinder Kaur Bhamra's record from 1982 of disco music and traditional Punjabi tunes is a reissued masterpiece. Recorded by her son, music producer Kuljit Bhamra, Punjabi Disco's ten tracks deliver an unusually engaging combination of the sharp sound of 1980s synthesisers and programmed drums with her fluid classical Indian vocal technique. Drum machine patterns mirrors the rolling tones of the tabla, while synthesiser melody parallels the traditional sound of the harmonium on tracks such as Pyar Mainu Kar. Elsewhere, Latin-inflected grooves is prominent on Soniya Mukh Tera, and Nainan Da Pyar De Gaya features a driving walking disco bassline. It's a dancefloor fusion delivered more than ten years before the rise of Asian Underground music.
Number Five: Enji – Resonance
From Mongolia singer Enji's soft latest record, Sonor, builds upon her jazz-influenced sound to present some of her most diverse music to date. Stepping outside her background in traditional Mongolian "long song" singing, the record's 11 tracks range from the soft jazz-pop melodics 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. Featuring a full backing band rather than her usual setup of guitar and bass, Sonor's sound remains personal, drawing the listener into the tender acoustics of her singular voice.
Number Four: Derya Yıldırım and Her Band – If There Is No Tomorrow
Channeling the 1960s legacy of Turkish psychedelia pioneered by groups such as Moğollar, German-Turkish singer Derya Yıldırım's third record with her band Grup Şimşek merges the distinctive buzz of the amplified traditional lute with woozy Mellotron and R&B-inflected lines. It's a nostalgic vibe grounded in Yıldırım's commanding high register and shaped by producer Leon Michels' warm, tape-saturated aesthetic. Yet, on classic Turkish songs such as the folk tune Hop Bico and 60s classic Ceylan, the group reaches lively new territory. They create slinking, downtempo grooves and powerful vocals that give a novel, unconventional spin to the Turkish psych sound.
3. Lido Pimienta – The Beauty
Sacred music, Eastern European folk melodies and orchestral strings converge on Colombian singer Lido Pimienta's extraordinary latest work. Arranging music for the sixty-member Medellín Philharmonic Orchestra, Pimienta and producer Owen Pallett traverse a vast range including the Gregorian chants of opener Overturn (Obertura de la Luz Eterna) to the dramatic counterpoint melodies of Aún Te Quiero and the syncopated dembow rhythms of the brass and woodwind-led El Dembow del Tiempo. It is Pim
