The 10 Greatest Worldwide Records of 2025
Looking back on the musical landscape of worldwide releases that pushed boundaries. Presenting a selection of ten notable albums that shaped the year in music.
Number Ten: The Percussionist Sarathy Korwar – There Is Beauty, There Already
The concept of a 40-minute, uninterrupted piece built on cyclical percussion might not seem the easiest listening experience. But, south Asian percussionist and producer Sarathy Korwar turns this persistent pulse into a hypnotically captivating album. Guiding an group of three drummers, Korwar crafts a dense percussive vocabulary throughout the record's 10 movements. The work draws from the phasing techniques of Steve Reich alongside Indian classical phrasing, all anchored in the recurrence of a continual, thrumming figure. As the album progresses, this refrain begins to emulate the trance-inducing cycles of ceremonial music, luring the listener further into Korwar's unique percussive realm.
9. Yasmine Hamdan – I Remember I Forget
Coming off an hiatus of eight years, Lebanese vocalist and composer Yasmine Hamdan re-emerges with a mournful set of songs. It continues exploring the Arabic-sung, dub-influenced sound that cemented her status in the Arab alternative scene since the nineties. Hamdan's voice is gentle and thoughtful, delivering soft melodies atop the bowing strings of a track like Hon and the rolling trip-hop beat of Vows. During more energetic moments such as Shadia and Abyss, she adopts a trembling, longing vibrato against electronic lines with North African flavors and skittering electronic percussion. The album's sound is sparse and restrained, yet this minimalism offers the ideal environment for Hamdan's emotive lyricism to take center stage. This is a record well worth the wait.
Number Eight: Debit – Slowed Down
Mexican producer Debit excels at eerie reworkings of traditional music. On her most recent project, Desaceleradas, she zeroes in on the 1990s variant of cumbia rebajada – a slowed, dub-inflected version of the shuffling Latin American dance genre. Debit drags this sound even further, running its signature synths and off-beat rhythm through veils of sludge and noise to create a new, sinister rhythm. Sometimes atmospheric and discomfiting, Debit converts the exuberant dancefloor sound of cumbia into a persistent, ethereal memory.
7. DJ K – Radio Libertadora!
Sheer intensity is the defining principle for the records of São Paulo producer Kaique Vieira, AKA DJ K. Pioneering his own genre of "bruxaria" (witchcraft), Vieira stacks a cacophony of sirens, explosive bass tones and shouted lyrics on top of the enduring Brazilian genre of baile funk. This emulates the driving sound of urban celebrations. On his new record, Radio Libertadora!, Vieira escalates the ferocity, throwing in everything from techno kick drums to the sound of the Islamic call to prayer into his frantic bruxaria mix. The result is a especially frenetic and deafeningly intense forty-minute sonic journey. Submit to the assault and Vieira's brash productions become strangely exhilarating.
6. Mohinder Kaur Bhamra – Punjabi Disco
Sikh devotional singer Mohinder Kaur Bhamra's 1982 album of disco music and Punjabi folk melodies is a newly appreciated masterpiece. Recorded by her son, music producer Kuljit Bhamra, Punjabi Disco's ten tracks offer an strikingly captivating combination of the metallic sound of 1980s synthesisers and programmed drums with her fluid classical Indian singing style. Drum machine patterns mimics the undulating tones of the traditional drums, while synthesiser melody parallels the classic sound of the reed organ 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 boasts a driving funky bass rhythm. It's a club-ready hybrid created more than ten years before the global breakthrough of South Asian electronic music.
Number Five: The Mongolian Artist Enji – Sonor
From Mongolia singer Enji's gentle new release, Sonor, expands on her jazz-inflected sound to offer some of her broadest music yet. Stepping outside her background in traditional Mongolian "long song" singing, the record's selection of pieces veer from the gentle Norah Jones-esque melodies of slow-burning number Ulbar to the German-language narration lyrics and trilling guitar lines of Unadag Dugui. The album also includes a sprightly, funk-tinged cover of the 80s Mongolian pop hit Eejiinhee Hairaar. Showcasing a full backing band rather than her usual setup of guitar and bass, Sonor's sound remains close, inviting the listener into the warm soundscape of her unique voice.
4. Derya Yıldırım & Grup Şimşek – Yarın Yoksa
Channeling the psychedelic tradition of Anatolian rock pioneered by groups such as Moğollar, German-Turkish singer Derya Yıldırım's latest work with her band Grup Şimşek blends the distinctive buzz of the amplified traditional lute with drifting keyboard and R&B-inflected lines. It's a 1970s throwback sound anchored in Yıldırım's strong high register and influenced by producer Leon Michels' analogue tape aesthetic. But, on Turkish standards such as the nursery rhyme Hop Bico and 60s classic Ceylan, the group finds lively new territory. They craft slinking, slow-burning grooves and powerful vocals that give a new, off-kilter interpretation to the Anatolian psychedelic style.
3. The Colombian Artist Lido Pimienta – The Beauty
Catholic requiem mass music, Eastern European folk melodies and symphonic arrangements all come together on Colombian-born singer Lido Pimienta's remarkable latest work. Orchestrating music for the sixty-member Medellín Philharmonic Orchestra, Pimienta and producer Owen Pallett explore 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
