Our Ten Best Worldwide Albums of the Year 2025
Looking back on the musical landscape of international releases that defied expectations. Here is a countdown of ten remarkable albums that characterized the year in music.
10. Sarathy Korwar – There Is Beauty, There Already
A continuous, 40-minute suite of cyclical percussion may not appear the most accessible musical proposition. However, south Asian percussionist and producer Sarathy Korwar turns this insistent rhythm into a hypnotically captivating work. Directing an group of three drummers, Korwar creates a complex percussive vocabulary across the record's 10 movements. The work references Steve Reich's phasing motifs combined with Indian classical phrasing, each grounded in the repetition of a ongoing, driving figure. The longer one listens, this refrain begins to emulate the trance-inducing cycles of ritual music, luring the listener further into Korwar's singular percussive world.
9. Yasmine Hamdan – I Remember I Forget
Coming off an hiatus of eight years, Arab vocalist and composer Yasmine Hamdan makes a comeback with a mournful album of songs. The work builds upon the Arabic-language, dub-tinged sound that cemented her status in the region's indie music scene since the 1990s. Hamdan's vocal delivery is soft and thoughtful, delivering soft melodies atop the bowing strings of a track like Hon and the rumbling trip-hop groove of Vows. On livelier tracks such as Shadia and Abyss, she adopts a trembling, yearning vibrato over north African synth lines and rattling electronic percussion. The musical backdrop is minimal and understated, yet this simplicity offers the perfect environment for Hamdan's emotive compositions to shine through. It is well worth the long anticipation.
Number Eight: The Mexican Producer Debit – Desaceleradas
From Mexico producer Debit has a knack for eerie reimaginings of historical sounds. For her most recent project, Desaceleradas, she turns her attention to the 1990s variant of cumbia rebajada – a slowed, dub-inflected interpretation of the rhythmic Latin American dance music genre. Debit decelerates this sound even further, filtering its characteristic synths and off-beat rhythm via sheets of sludge and static to generate a new, sinister rhythm. Sometimes ambient and uneasy, Debit converts the joyous dancefloor sound of cumbia into a enduring, ghostly memory.
7. DJ K – Liberator Radio!
Sensory overload is the key term for the output of São Paulo producer Kaique Vieira, AKA DJ K. Pioneering his own genre of "bruxaria" (witchcraft), Vieira stacks a cacophony of alarms, pummeling bass tones and screamed lyrics on top of the longstanding Brazilian dance style of baile funk. This emulates the propulsive sound of favela street parties. On his second album, Radio Libertadora!, Vieira cranks up the energy, throwing in everything from driving techno rhythms to the sound of the Islamic call to prayer into his chaotic bruxaria mix. The result is a notably frenetic and overwhelmingly noisy forty-minute listening experience. Surrender to the assault and Vieira's bold productions become strangely exhilarating.
6. The Singer Mohinder Kaur Bhamra – Disco Punjabi
Sikh devotional singer Mohinder Kaur Bhamra's early-80s release of disco music and Punjabi folk melodies is a newly appreciated masterpiece. Produced by her son, music producer Kuljit Bhamra, Punjabi Disco's ten tracks deliver an unusually engaging blend of the synthetic sound of 1980s synthesisers and programmed drums with her melismatic Indian classical vocal technique. Electronic percussion echoes the undulating tones of the tabla, while synth lines replicates the traditional sound of the harmonium 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 driving walking disco bassline. It's a club-ready hybrid pioneered over a decade before the rise of Asian Underground music.
Number Five: Enji – Sonor
Mongolian singer Enji's gentle latest record, Sonor, builds upon her jazz-inflected sound to present some of her most diverse music yet. Stepping outside her training in traditional Mongolian "long song" singing, the record's 11 tracks veer from the gentle Norah Jones-esque melodics of slow-burning 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 live band rather than her typical setup of guitar and bass, Sonor's sound manages to stay close, inviting the listener into the gentle soundscape of her unique voice.
Number Four: Derya Yıldırım and Her Band – If There Is No Tomorrow
Drawing on the 60s heritage of Anatolian rock pioneered by groups such as Moğollar, Turkish-born, Germany-based singer Derya Yıldırım's latest work with her band Grup Şimşek merges the distinctive buzz of the electrified saz with woozy Mellotron and soulful tunes. It's a 1970s throwback sound grounded in Yıldırım's powerful falsetto and shaped by producer Leon Michels' analogue tape aesthetic. But, on Turkish standards such as the folk tune Hop Bico and 60s classic Ceylan, the group ventures into vibrant new territory. They develop slinking, slow-burning grooves and powerful vocals that impart a fresh, quirky spin to the Turkish psych sound.
3. Lido Pimienta – The Beauty
Gregorian chants, Eastern European folk melodies and orchestral strings converge on Colombian-born singer Lido Pimienta's extraordinary latest work. Arranging music for the 60-piece Medellín Philharmonic Orchestra, Pimienta and producer Owen Pallett journey through everything from the Gregorian chants 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. Ultimately, it is Pim
