This Ten Top International Records of 2025
Looking back on the musical landscape of international music that expanded horizons. Presenting a selection of ten remarkable albums that defined the year in music.
Number Ten: The Percussionist Sarathy Korwar – There Already Is Beauty
The concept of a 40-minute, uninterrupted piece built on cyclical percussion might not seem the easiest musical proposition. However, south Asian percussionist and producer Sarathy Korwar transforms this persistent pulse into a strangely alluring album. Guiding an group of three drummers, Korwar develops a dense percussive vocabulary across the record's ten parts. The work channels Steve Reich's phasing motifs combined with Indian classical phrasing, each grounded in the repetition of a ongoing, thrumming refrain. As the album progresses, this refrain begins to emulate the trance-inducing cycles of devotional music, drawing the listener further into Korwar's singular percussive realm.
Number Nine: Yasmine Hamdan – I Forget, I Remember
Coming off an hiatus of eight years, Arab singer-songwriter Yasmine Hamdan returns with a mournful set of songs. The work builds upon the Arabic-language, dub-tinged sound that established her as a fixture in the Arab alternative scene since the 1990s. Hamdan's vocal delivery is gentle and introspective, singing delicate melodies atop the string arrangements of a track like Hon and the rumbling trip-hop beat of Vows. During more energetic moments such as Shadia and Abyss, she employs a trembling, yearning vocal technique over north African synth lines and rattling electronic percussion. The musical backdrop is minimal and restrained, yet this simplicity creates the ideal canvas for Hamdan's deeply felt lyricism to resonate. It is that justifies the long anticipation.
Number Eight: The Mexican Producer Debit – Slowed Down
From Mexico electronic artist Debit excels at haunting reinterpretations of historical sounds. On her new album, Desaceleradas, she turns her attention to the 90s style of cumbia rebajada – a slowed, dub-inflected version of the shuffling Latin American dance genre. Debit decelerates this sound to a near-halt, filtering its characteristic synths and syncopated rhythm through sheets of distortion and static to generate a novel, menacing rhythm. At turns atmospheric and unsettling, Debit transforms the joyous party music of cumbia into a lasting, ethereal afterimage.
7. The São Paulo Producer DJ K – Radio Libertadora!
Maximalism is the defining principle for the records of São Paulo producer Kaique Vieira, also known as DJ K. Pioneering his own genre of "bruxaria" (witchcraft), Vieira stacks a cacophony of alarms, explosive bass tones and shouted lyrics on top of the enduring Brazilian dance style of baile funk. This emulates the driving sound of favela street parties. On his second album, Radio Libertadora!, Vieira escalates the intensity, throwing in everything from four-on-the-floor techno beats to the sound of the Islamic call to prayer into his frantic bruxaria mix. The result is a notably frenetic and overwhelmingly noisy forty-minute listening experience. Surrender to the cacophony and Vieira's unapologetic productions become unexpectedly freeing.
Number Six: The Singer Mohinder Kaur Bhamra – Punjabi Disco
Religious vocalist Mohinder Kaur Bhamra's 1982 album of disco music and traditional Punjabi tunes is a reissued treasure. Recorded by her son, music producer Kuljit Bhamra, Punjabi Disco's ten tracks deliver an remarkably engaging fusion of the metallic sound of 1980s synthesisers and drum machines with her ornate classical Indian vocal technique. Drum machine patterns mimics the wavelike tones of the tabla, while synth lines parallels the traditional sound of the reed organ 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 fast-paced walking disco bassline. It's a club-ready hybrid pioneered more than ten years before the Asian Underground explosion.
5. Enji – Sonor
Mongolian singer Enji's gentle fourth album, Sonor, builds upon her jazz-inflected sound to offer some of her most diverse music yet. Stepping outside her background in traditional Mongolian "long song" singing, the record's eleven songs veer from the soft jazz-pop melodics of downtempo number Ulbar to the German-language narration lyrics and twanging guitar lines of Unadag Dugui. The album also includes a energetic, funk-inflected 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 manages to stay personal, pulling the listener into the gentle acoustics of her distinctive voice.
Number Four: Derya Yıldırım and Her Band – Yarın Yoksa
Drawing on the psychedelic tradition of Turkish psychedelia pioneered by groups such as Moğollar, German-Turkish singer Derya Yıldırım's third record alongside her group merges the metallic twang of the electrified saz with woozy keyboard and soulful tunes. It's a retro-70s aesthetic grounded in Yıldırım's powerful falsetto and influenced by producer Leon Michels' analogue tape aesthetic. However, on classic Turkish songs such as the folk tune Hop Bico and 1960s song Ceylan, the group finds vibrant new territory. They craft slinking, downtempo grooves and lifting vocals that impart a new, unconventional twist to the Anatolian psychedelic style.
Number Three: Lido Pimienta – La Belleza
Sacred music, Czech harpsichord folksong and orchestral strings all come together on Colombian singer Lido Pimienta's stunning latest work. Orchestrating 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 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
