This 10 Best Global Records of the Year 2025
Looking back on the musical landscape of international music that defied expectations. We explore ten exceptional albums that shaped the year in music.
Number Ten: The Percussionist Sarathy Korwar – There Is Beauty, There Already
An album consisting of a single, extended movement of repetitive drumming may not appear the most approachable musical proposition. Yet, south Asian drummer and composer Sarathy Korwar converts this insistent rhythm into a strangely alluring piece. Guiding an ensemble of three drummers, Korwar develops a intricate percussive vocabulary over the record's 10 movements. The album references the phasing techniques of Steve Reich alongside traditional Indian musical phrasing, all anchored in the recurrence of a continual, driving motif. Over its duration, this refrain evokes the trance-inducing cycles of ritual music, pulling the listener further into Korwar's distinctive percussive realm.
Number Nine: The Lebanese Artist Yasmine Hamdan – I Remember I Forget
Following an hiatus of eight years, Arab singer-songwriter Yasmine Hamdan returns with a melancholy set of songs. It continues exploring the Arabic-language, dub-tinged style that cemented her status in the Arab alternative scene since the 1990s. Hamdan's voice is quiet and ruminative, singing soft melodies atop the bowing strings of a track like Hon and the rumbling trip-hop beat of Vows. During more energetic moments such as Shadia and Abyss, she uses a wavering, yearning vocal technique against north African synth lines and rattling electronic percussion. The musical backdrop is minimal and subtle, yet this minimalism provides the perfect setting for Hamdan's expressive compositions to take center stage. It is well worth the long anticipation.
Number Eight: Debit – Desaceleradas
From Mexico electronic artist Debit has a knack for haunting reinterpretations of traditional music. For her new album, Desaceleradas, she turns her attention to the 90s style of cumbia rebajada – a slowed, dubby take of the rhythmic Latin American dance music genre. Debit decelerates this sound to a near-halt, processing its signature synths and off-beat rhythm through sheets of distortion and noise to create a novel, sinister groove. Sometimes atmospheric and uneasy, Debit morphs the joyous dancefloor sound of cumbia into a enduring, spectral afterimage.
7. DJ K – Liberator Radio!
Sensory overload is the key term for the output of São Paulo producer Kaique Vieira, AKA DJ K. Coining his own genre of "bruxaria" (witchcraft), Vieira piles a cacophony of sirens, explosive bass tones and screamed lyrics on top of the classic Brazilian dance style of baile funk. This emulates the propulsive sound of urban celebrations. On his second album, Radio Libertadora!, Vieira cranks up the intensity, incorporating 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 especially hyperactive and deafeningly intense forty-minute listening experience. Submit to the assault and Vieira's unapologetic productions become oddly liberating.
Number Six: Mohinder Kaur Bhamra – Disco Punjabi
Sikh devotional singer Mohinder Kaur Bhamra's record from 1982 of disco music and Punjabi folk melodies is a reissued masterpiece. Recorded by her son, music producer Kuljit Bhamra, Punjabi Disco's ten tracks present an remarkably engaging combination of the synthetic sound of electronic keyboards and drum machines with her ornate classical Indian singing style. Drum machine patterns mirrors the undulating tones of the traditional drums, while synth lines replicates the classic sound of the harmonium on tracks such as Pyar Mainu Kar. At other times, Latin-inflected grooves takes center stage on Soniya Mukh Tera, and Nainan Da Pyar De Gaya channels a driving walking disco bassline. It's a dancefloor fusion pioneered more than ten years before the global breakthrough of South Asian electronic music.
Number Five: The Mongolian Artist Enji – Resonance
Mongolian vocalist Enji's gentle new release, Sonor, builds upon her jazz-inflected sound to present some of her most wide-ranging music so far. Departing from her background in traditional Mongolian "long song" singing, the record's selection of pieces travel from the gentle jazz-pop melodies of slow-burning number Ulbar to the German-language narration lyrics and trilling guitar lines of Unadag Dugui. The album also includes a energetic, funk-tinged cover of the 80s Mongolian pop hit Eejiinhee Hairaar. Showcasing a ensemble rather than her typical setup of guitar and bass, Sonor's sound remains personal, inviting the listener into the warm acoustics of her singular voice.
4. Derya Yıldırım and Her Band – If There Is No Tomorrow
Channeling the 1960s legacy of Anatolian rock established by groups such as Moğollar, German-Turkish singer Derya Yıldırım's new album alongside her group fuses the metallic twang of the electrified saz with woozy keyboard and R&B-inflected lines. It's a 1970s throwback sound grounded in Yıldırım's commanding falsetto and shaped by producer Leon Michels' warm, tape-saturated sound. Yet, on Turkish standards such as the folk tune Hop Bico and 1960s song Ceylan, the group ventures into dynamic new territory. They craft sinuous, downtempo grooves and lifting vocals that lend a fresh, quirky twist to the Anatolian psychedelic style.
Number Three: The Colombian Artist Lido Pimienta – The Beauty
Sacred music, Czech harpsichord folksong and symphonic arrangements converge on Colombian singer Lido Pimienta's remarkable fourth album. Arranging music for the 60-piece 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 theatrical interweaving lines of Aún Te Quiero and the syncopated dembow rhythms of the brass and woodwind-led El Dembow del Tiempo. It is Pim
