The 10 Greatest Worldwide Records of the Year 2025
The past twelve months have offered a rich tapestry of worldwide releases that expanded horizons. Here is a countdown of ten remarkable albums that defined the year in music.
Number Ten: The Percussionist Sarathy Korwar – There Is Beauty, There Already
A continuous, 40-minute suite of repetitive percussion could sound like it isn't the most approachable musical proposition. However, Indian drummer and composer Sarathy Korwar turns this driving beat into a hypnotically captivating piece. Leading an ensemble of three drummers, Korwar creates a dense percussive dialect throughout the record's ten sections. The album references the phasing techniques of Steve Reich as well as traditional Indian musical phrasing, everything tethered in the reiteration of a ongoing, pulsing motif. The longer one listens, this refrain evokes the hypnotic repetition of ritual music, drawing the listener deeper into Korwar's distinctive percussive world.
Number Nine: Yasmine Hamdan – I Remember I Forget
Following an eight-year break, Lebanese singer-songwriter Yasmine Hamdan makes a comeback with a contemplative set of songs. The work builds upon the Arabic-sung, dub-influenced style that made her a staple in the region's indie music scene since the nineties. Hamdan's voice is gentle and thoughtful, delivering delicate melodies over the string arrangements of a track like Hon and the rolling trip-hop beat of Vows. For more upbeat numbers such as Shadia and Abyss, she uses a quivering, longing vocal technique against electronic lines with North African flavors and rattling electronic percussion. The musical backdrop is minimal and subtle, yet this simplicity offers the perfect canvas for Hamdan's emotive songwriting to resonate. It is truly deserving of the wait.
Number Eight: Debit – Slowed Down
Mexican producer Debit specializes in haunting reimaginings of traditional music. On her new album, Desaceleradas, she focuses on the 90s style of cumbia rebajada – a slowed, dubby interpretation of the shuffling Latin American dance genre. Debit drags this sound down to a crawl, processing its characteristic synths and syncopated rhythm through layers of distortion and static to produce a fresh, foreboding groove. Sometimes atmospheric and uneasy, Debit transforms the celebratory party music of cumbia into a enduring, ethereal memory.
Number Seven: The São Paulo Producer DJ K – Liberator Radio!
Sensory overload is the operative word for the records of Brazilian producer Kaique Vieira, AKA DJ K. Inventing his own genre of "bruxaria" (witchcraft), Vieira piles a onslaught of alarms, pummeling bass tones and screamed lyrics over the enduring Brazilian genre of baile funk. This emulates the propulsive sound of urban celebrations. On his new record, Radio Libertadora!, Vieira escalates the energy, adding everything from driving techno rhythms to samples of the Islamic call to prayer into his unruly bruxaria mix. The result is a particularly manic and overwhelmingly noisy forty-minute listening experience. Give in to the cacophony and Vieira's brash productions become oddly freeing.
Number Six: Mohinder Kaur Bhamra – Disco Punjabi
Sikh devotional singer Mohinder Kaur Bhamra's record from 1982 of disco beats and Punjabi folk melodies is a reissued treasure. Recorded by her son, music producer Kuljit Bhamra, Punjabi Disco's ten tracks present an unusually compelling blend of the synthetic sound of early synthesizers and drum machines with her melismatic classical Indian singing style. Electronic percussion echoes the undulating tones of the traditional drums, while synth lines parallels the traditional sound of the harmonium on tracks such as Pyar Mainu Kar. Elsewhere, bossa nova rhythm is prominent on Soniya Mukh Tera, and Nainan Da Pyar De Gaya features a driving disco bass groove. It's a party blend delivered over a decade before the global breakthrough of South Asian electronic music.
Number Five: The Mongolian Artist Enji – Sonor
From Mongolia vocalist Enji's gentle fourth album, Sonor, develops her jazz-inflected sound to deliver some of her broadest music to date. Stepping outside her background in traditional Mongolian "long song" singing, the record's eleven songs travel from the gentle jazz-pop melodics of downtempo 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. Featuring a full backing band rather than her standard setup of guitar and bass, Sonor's sound is still close, inviting the listener into the gentle soundscape of her distinctive voice.
4. Derya Yıldırım and Her Band – If There Is No Tomorrow
Channeling the psychedelic tradition of Turkish psychedelia established by groups such as Moğollar, German-Turkish singer Derya Yıldırım's third record with her band Grup Şimşek blends the distinctive buzz of the electrified saz with dreamy keyboard and R&B-inflected lines. It's a 1970s throwback sound rooted in Yıldırım's commanding high register and shaped by producer Leon Michels' analogue tape aesthetic. But, on classic Turkish songs such as the nursery rhyme Hop Bico and 1960s song Ceylan, the group reaches lively new territory. They develop smooth, slow-burning grooves and lifting vocals that lend a fresh, quirky interpretation to the Turkish psych sound.
Number Three: The Colombian Artist Lido Pimienta – The Beauty
Gregorian chants, Eastern European folk melodies and orchestral strings all come together on Colombian-born singer Lido Pimienta's stunning fourth album. Orchestrating music for the sixty-member Medellín Philharmonic Orchestra, Pimienta and producer Owen Pallett traverse everything from the liturgical vocals of opener Overturn (Obertura de la Luz Eterna) to the dramatic interweaving lines of Aún Te Quiero and the syncopated reggaeton-inspired beats of the brass and woodwind-led El Dembow del Tiempo. Ultimately, it is Pim
