Our 10 Greatest Worldwide Records of 2025
As the year draws to a close, we reflect on the worldwide releases that pushed boundaries. Here is a countdown of ten notable albums that characterized the year in music.
10. The Percussionist Sarathy Korwar – There Is Beauty, There Already
An album consisting of a single, extended movement of repetitive percussion may not appear the most approachable listening experience. Yet, Indian drummer and composer Sarathy Korwar transforms this insistent rhythm into a unexpectedly magnetic work. Leading an group of three drummers, Korwar crafts a complex percussive dialect throughout the record's ten parts. The work draws from the phasing techniques of Steve Reich combined with classical Indian rhythmic patterns, all anchored in the recurrence of a persistent, pulsing figure. As the album progresses, this refrain begins to emulate the trance-inducing cycles of ritual music, luring the listener further into Korwar's unique percussive world.
Number Nine: The Lebanese Artist Yasmine Hamdan – I Remember I Forget
After an eight-year break, Arab singer-songwriter Yasmine Hamdan makes a comeback with a mournful album of songs. It continues exploring the Arabic-language, dub-tinged aesthetic that cemented her status in the Arab alternative scene since the nineties. Hamdan's vocal delivery is gentle and thoughtful, delivering soft melodies atop the bowing strings of a track like Hon and the deep trip-hop beat of Vows. On livelier tracks such as Shadia and Abyss, she employs a quivering, longing vocal technique against north African synth lines and skittering electronic percussion. The album's sound is lean and subtle, yet this minimalism provides the perfect setting for Hamdan's deeply felt lyricism to take center stage. It is truly deserving of the long anticipation.
Number Eight: The Mexican Producer Debit – Desaceleradas
Mexican electronic artist Debit has a knack for uncanny reworkings of historical sounds. For her new album, Desaceleradas, she zeroes in on the 1990s variant of cumbia rebajada – a decelerated, dubby interpretation of the rhythmic Latin American dance genre. Debit slows this sound even further, processing its characteristic synths and off-beat rhythm through sheets of distortion and hiss to generate a new, menacing rhythm. Sometimes atmospheric and unsettling, Debit morphs the exuberant dancefloor sound of cumbia into a lasting, ethereal afterimage.
Number Seven: The São Paulo Producer DJ K – Liberator Radio!
Sensory overload is the key term for the output of São Paulo producer Kaique Vieira, who performs as DJ K. Coining his own genre of "bruxaria" (witchcraft), Vieira layers a tumult of alarms, pummeling bass tones and screamed lyrics over the longstanding Brazilian dance style of baile funk. This emulates the energetic sound of urban celebrations. On his new record, Radio Libertadora!, Vieira ramps up the energy, adding everything from four-on-the-floor techno beats to samples of the Islamic call to prayer into his frantic bruxaria mix. The result is a especially frenetic and deafeningly intense 40-minute sonic journey. Surrender to the cacophony and Vieira's unapologetic productions become unexpectedly freeing.
6. Mohinder Kaur Bhamra – Disco Punjabi
Religious vocalist Mohinder Kaur Bhamra's 1982 album of disco beats and Punjabi folk melodies is a rediscovered treasure. Recorded by her son, music producer Kuljit Bhamra, Punjabi Disco's ten tracks present an unusually engaging fusion of the synthetic sound of electronic keyboards and drum machines with her fluid Indian classical vocal technique. Electronic percussion mirrors the wavelike tones of the tabla, while synth lines parallels the classic sound of the reed organ on tracks such as Pyar Mainu Kar. Elsewhere, Latin-inflected grooves comes to the fore on Soniya Mukh Tera, and Nainan Da Pyar De Gaya features a fast-paced funky bass rhythm. It's a dancefloor fusion created over a decade before the global breakthrough of South Asian electronic music.
5. The Mongolian Artist Enji – Sonor
From Mongolia singer Enji's delicate fourth album, Sonor, expands on her jazz-influenced sound to offer some of her most diverse music yet. Stepping outside 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 spoken-word 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 live band rather than her typical setup of guitar and bass, Sonor's sound manages to stay intimate, drawing the listener into the tender soundscape of her distinctive voice.
4. Derya Yıldırım and Her Band – Yarın Yoksa
Drawing on the 1960s legacy of Anatolian rock pioneered by groups such as Moğollar, German-Turkish singer Derya Yıldırım's third record with her band Grup Şimşek blends the electric jangle of the electrified saz with woozy Mellotron and R&B-inflected lines. It's a retro-70s aesthetic anchored in Yıldırım's powerful falsetto and influenced by producer Leon Michels' analogue tape aesthetic. However, on Turkish standards such as the nursery rhyme Hop Bico and 60s classic Ceylan, the group reaches dynamic new territory. They develop slinking, slow-burning grooves and lifting vocals that lend a novel, unconventional interpretation to the Anatolian psychedelic style.
3. Lido Pimienta – The Beauty
Sacred music, Eastern European folk melodies and orchestral strings all come together on Colombian singer Lido Pimienta's remarkable latest work. Orchestrating music for the 60-piece 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 counterpoint melodies of Aún Te Quiero and the syncopated reggaeton-inspired beats of the brass and woodwind-led El Dembow del Tiempo. It is Pim
