The Ten Best Global Records of the Year 2025
Looking back on the musical landscape of global sounds that pushed boundaries. Presenting a selection of ten remarkable albums that defined the year in music.
10. The Percussionist Sarathy Korwar – There Already Is Beauty
The concept of a 40-minute, uninterrupted piece built on insistent drumming might not seem the most approachable musical proposition. But, Indian percussionist and producer Sarathy Korwar turns this driving beat into a strangely alluring work. Leading an ensemble of three drummers, Korwar creates a complex percussive language over the record's ten sections. The work references Steve Reich's phasing motifs as well as Indian classical phrasing, everything tethered in the recurrence of a persistent, driving figure. Over its duration, this refrain evokes the hypnotic repetition of ceremonial music, drawing the listener further into Korwar's unique percussive realm.
9. Yasmine Hamdan – I Forget, I Remember
Coming off an eight-year break, Arab singer-songwriter Yasmine Hamdan returns with a mournful album of songs. It continues exploring the Arabic-language, dub-influenced sound that established her as a fixture in the Middle Eastern independent music landscape since the nineties. Hamdan's voice is soft and thoughtful, delivering delicate melodies atop the bowing strings 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 quivering, yearning vocal technique against electronic lines with North African flavors and rattling electronic percussion. The musical backdrop is lean and understated, yet this austerity provides the ideal setting for Hamdan's emotive songwriting to shine through. It is truly deserving of the wait.
Number Eight: Debit – Slowed Down
Mexican producer Debit specializes in uncanny reimaginings of traditional music. For her latest release, Desaceleradas, she zeroes in on the 90s style of cumbia rebajada – a slowed, dub-inflected take of the rhythmic Latin American dance genre. Debit decelerates this sound down to a crawl, processing its characteristic synths and off-beat rhythm via sheets of distortion and noise to create a fresh, menacing beat. At turns atmospheric and uneasy, Debit morphs the celebratory dancefloor sound of cumbia into a enduring, ghostly afterimage.
7. The São Paulo Producer DJ K – Liberator Radio!
Maximalism is the operative word for the music of São Paulo producer Kaique Vieira, AKA DJ K. Coining his own genre of "bruxaria" (witchcraft), Vieira layers a tumult of sirens, pummeling bass tones and shouted lyrics over the longstanding Brazilian genre of baile funk. This captures the driving sound of favela street parties. On his second album, Radio Libertadora!, Vieira cranks up the intensity, adding 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 especially hyperactive and punishingly loud forty-minute listening experience. Give in to the noise and Vieira's brash productions become unexpectedly freeing.
6. The Singer Mohinder Kaur Bhamra – Disco Punjabi
Sikh devotional singer Mohinder Kaur Bhamra's record from 1982 of disco music and traditional Punjabi tunes is a rediscovered masterpiece. Produced by her son, music producer Kuljit Bhamra, Punjabi Disco's ten tracks offer an remarkably engaging combination of the sharp sound of electronic keyboards 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 traditional sound of the reed organ on tracks such as Pyar Mainu Kar. Elsewhere, bossa nova rhythm takes center stage on Soniya Mukh Tera, and Nainan Da Pyar De Gaya features a fast-paced disco bass groove. It's a party blend delivered more than ten years before the global breakthrough of South Asian electronic music.
Number Five: The Mongolian Artist Enji – Resonance
From Mongolia singer Enji's soft latest record, 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 eleven songs veer from the gentle jazz-pop melodics of downtempo number Ulbar to the German spoken-word lyrics and twanging guitar lines of Unadag Dugui. The album also includes a lively, funk-tinged cover of the 1980s Mongolian classic Eejiinhee Hairaar. Showcasing a ensemble rather than her typical setup of guitar and bass, Sonor's sound is still intimate, drawing the listener into the tender soundscape of her distinctive voice.
4. Derya Yıldırım and Her Band – Yarın Yoksa
Drawing on the psychedelic tradition of Turkish psychedelia pioneered by groups such as Moğollar, Turkish-born, Germany-based singer Derya Yıldırım's latest work alongside her group blends the distinctive buzz of the electrified saz with woozy keyboard and classic soul melodies. It's a retro-70s aesthetic grounded in Yıldırım's strong falsetto and influenced by producer Leon Michels' warm, tape-saturated sound. However, on Turkish standards such as the folk tune Hop Bico and 60s classic Ceylan, the group finds lively new territory. They create sinuous, slow-burning grooves and soaring vocals that give a novel, unconventional spin to the Turkish psych sound.
3. Lido Pimienta – La Belleza
Gregorian chants, Eastern European folk melodies and orchestral strings all come together on Colombian-born singer Lido Pimienta's stunning latest work. Orchestrating 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 interweaving lines of Aún Te Quiero and the rhythmic dembow rhythms of the woodwind-heavy El Dembow del Tiempo. It is Pim