This 10 Top Worldwide Records of 2025
As the year draws to a close, we reflect on the international music that pushed boundaries. Presenting a selection of ten exceptional albums that defined the year in music.
Number Ten: Sarathy Korwar – There Already Is Beauty
An album consisting of a single, extended movement of insistent drumming could sound like it isn't the easiest musical proposition. However, Indian drummer and composer Sarathy Korwar transforms this insistent rhythm into a hypnotically captivating piece. Guiding an trio of three drummers, Korwar crafts a dense percussive vocabulary over the record's ten sections. The album draws from Steve Reich's phasing motifs alongside classical Indian rhythmic patterns, all anchored in the reiteration of a continual, thrumming figure. As the album progresses, this refrain starts to mirror the trance-inducing cycles of ceremonial music, pulling the listener further into Korwar's unique percussive world.
Number Nine: Yasmine Hamdan – I Forget, I Remember
After an hiatus of eight years, Arab vocalist and composer Yasmine Hamdan makes a comeback with a mournful collection of songs. The work builds upon the Arabic-sung, dub-influenced aesthetic that cemented her status in the Arab alternative scene since the nineties. Hamdan's vocal delivery is soft and introspective, delivering soft melodies over the string arrangements of a track like Hon and the rolling trip-hop groove of Vows. On livelier tracks such as Shadia and Abyss, she uses a quivering, yearning vocal technique over north African synth lines and rattling electronic percussion. The musical backdrop is lean and restrained, yet this minimalism provides the perfect setting for Hamdan's deeply felt lyricism to shine through. The album proves to be well worth the wait.
Number Eight: Debit – Slowed Down
Mexican producer Debit excels at uncanny reworkings of traditional music. On her most recent project, Desaceleradas, she zeroes in on the 1990s variant of cumbia rebajada – a decelerated, dubby version of the shuffling Latin American musical style. Debit drags this sound even further, processing its signature synths and syncopated rhythm via sheets of sludge and hiss to create a fresh, sinister rhythm. Sometimes atmospheric and uneasy, Debit morphs the joyous dancefloor sound of cumbia into a lasting, spectral afterimage.
Number Seven: The São Paulo Producer DJ K – Liberator Radio!
Maximalism is the operative word for the records of Brazilian producer Kaique Vieira, AKA DJ K. Pioneering his own genre of "bruxaria" (witchcraft), Vieira stacks a onslaught of alarms, pummeling bass tones and screamed lyrics over the enduring Brazilian dance style of baile funk. This emulates the propulsive sound of favela street parties. On his second album, Radio Libertadora!, Vieira escalates the ferocity, incorporating everything from four-on-the-floor techno beats to the sound of the Islamic call to prayer into his chaotic bruxaria mix. The result is a particularly hyperactive and overwhelmingly noisy forty-minute sonic journey. Submit to the cacophony and Vieira's brash productions become oddly freeing.
Number Six: The Singer Mohinder Kaur Bhamra – Disco Punjabi
Religious vocalist Mohinder Kaur Bhamra's record from 1982 of disco music and Punjabi folk melodies is a rediscovered treasure. Produced by her son, music producer Kuljit Bhamra, Punjabi Disco's ten tracks present an strikingly compelling fusion of the sharp sound of 1980s synthesisers and drum machines with her fluid classical Indian vocal technique. Electronic percussion mimics the wavelike tones of the traditional drums, while synth lines doubles the classic sound of the reed organ on tracks such as Pyar Mainu Kar. Meanwhile, bossa nova rhythm takes center stage on Soniya Mukh Tera, and Nainan Da Pyar De Gaya features a up-tempo funky bass rhythm. It's a dancefloor fusion created more than ten years before the Asian Underground explosion.
Number Five: The Mongolian Artist Enji – Resonance
Mongolian vocalist Enji's delicate new release, Sonor, expands on her jazz-influenced sound to offer some of her broadest music to date. Stepping outside her training in traditional Mongolian "long song" singing, the record's selection of pieces range from the gentle jazz-pop melodies of downtempo number Ulbar to the German-language narration lyrics and twanging guitar lines of Unadag Dugui. The album also includes a sprightly, funk-tinged cover of the 80s Mongolian pop hit Eejiinhee Hairaar. Featuring a ensemble rather than her standard setup of guitar and bass, Sonor's sound manages to stay personal, drawing the listener into the gentle soundscape of her distinctive voice.
4. Derya Yıldırım and Her Band – Yarın Yoksa
Drawing on the psychedelic tradition of Turkish psychedelia established by groups such as Moğollar, German-Turkish singer Derya Yıldırım's latest work alongside her group merges the distinctive buzz of the amplified traditional lute with dreamy Mellotron and classic soul melodies. It's a 1970s throwback sound rooted in Yıldırım's powerful high register and shaped by producer Leon Michels' warm, tape-saturated sound. However, on classic Turkish songs such as the folk tune Hop Bico and 60s classic Ceylan, the group reaches dynamic new territory. They develop slinking, downtempo grooves and powerful vocals that give a new, off-kilter interpretation to the Turkish psych sound.
3. Lido Pimienta – The Beauty
Gregorian chants, Czech harpsichord folksong and symphonic arrangements all come together on Colombian-born singer Lido Pimienta's stunning fourth album. Orchestrating music for the sixty-member Medellín Philharmonic Orchestra, Pimienta and producer Owen Pallett journey through a vast range including the liturgical vocals of opener Overturn (Obertura de la Luz Eterna) to the dramatic interweaving lines of Aún Te Quiero and the rhythmic reggaeton-inspired beats of the woodwind-heavy El Dembow del Tiempo. It is Pim
