Our 10 Top Global Records of the Year 2025
Looking back on the musical landscape of worldwide sounds that pushed boundaries. Here is a countdown of ten notable albums that shaped the year in music.
10. The Percussionist Sarathy Korwar – There Is Beauty, There Already
A continuous, 40-minute suite of insistent percussion could sound like it isn't the most accessible listening experience. Yet, south Asian percussionist and producer Sarathy Korwar transforms this driving beat into a strangely alluring album. Directing an ensemble of three drummers, Korwar develops a complex percussive vocabulary across the record's 10 movements. His composition channels minimalist concepts from Steve Reich combined with Indian classical phrasing, each grounded in the recurrence of a ongoing, thrumming refrain. The longer one listens, this refrain starts to mirror the hypnotic repetition of ritual music, luring the listener further into Korwar's singular percussive world.
Number Nine: The Lebanese Artist Yasmine Hamdan – I Remember I Forget
After an eight-year break, Lebanese singer-songwriter Yasmine Hamdan re-emerges with a contemplative album of songs. The work builds upon the Arabic-language, dub-tinged style that cemented her status in the region's indie music scene since the nineties. Hamdan's vocal delivery is quiet and thoughtful, delivering soft melodies over the bowing strings of a track like Hon and the rumbling trip-hop groove of Vows. During more energetic moments such as Shadia and Abyss, she adopts a quivering, longing vocal technique against north African synth lines and rattling electronic percussion. The production is sparse and understated, yet this simplicity provides the perfect environment for Hamdan's expressive compositions to take center stage. It is truly deserving of the wait.
Number Eight: Debit – Slowed Down
From Mexico electronic artist Debit has a knack for eerie reworkings of archival audio. On her latest release, Desaceleradas, she focuses on the 90s style of cumbia rebajada – a slowed, dub-inflected version of the shuffling Latin American musical style. Debit slows this sound down to a crawl, filtering its characteristic synths and off-beat rhythm via sheets of distortion and hiss to produce a novel, menacing beat. Periodically atmospheric and unsettling, Debit transforms the joyous dancefloor sound of cumbia into a persistent, ethereal afterimage.
Number Seven: DJ K – Radio Libertadora!
Sensory overload is the key term for the music of São Paulo producer Kaique Vieira, also known as DJ K. Coining his own genre of "bruxaria" (witchcraft), Vieira layers a cacophony of alarms, pummeling bass tones and shouted lyrics on top of the enduring Brazilian genre of baile funk. This recreates the energetic sound of urban celebrations. On his follow-up release, Radio Libertadora!, Vieira escalates the ferocity, adding everything from techno kick drums to samples of the Islamic call to prayer into his chaotic bruxaria mix. The result is a notably hyperactive and punishingly loud 40-minute listening experience. Give in to the assault and Vieira's bold productions become strangely liberating.
Number Six: The Singer Mohinder Kaur Bhamra – Disco Punjabi
Sikh devotional singer Mohinder Kaur Bhamra's early-80s release of disco beats and Punjabi folk melodies is a newly appreciated treasure. Recorded by her son, music producer Kuljit Bhamra, Punjabi Disco's ten tracks deliver an unusually captivating combination of the synthetic sound of electronic keyboards and programmed drums with her ornate Indian classical singing style. Electronic percussion echoes the rolling tones of the traditional drums, while synth lines replicates the classic sound of the harmonium on tracks such as Pyar Mainu Kar. At other times, bossa nova rhythm comes to the fore on Soniya Mukh Tera, and Nainan Da Pyar De Gaya channels a fast-paced disco bass groove. It's a club-ready hybrid delivered over a decade before the rise of Asian Underground music.
5. Enji – Sonor
Mongolian vocalist Enji's delicate new release, Sonor, develops her jazz-inflected sound to deliver some of her most wide-ranging music so far. Departing from her background in traditional Mongolian "long song" singing, the record's selection of pieces travel from the gentle Norah Jones-esque melodics of downtempo number Ulbar to the German-language narration lyrics and twanging guitar lines of Unadag Dugui. The album also includes a lively, funk-inflected cover of the 80s Mongolian pop hit Eejiinhee Hairaar. Featuring a live band rather than her standard setup of guitar and bass, Sonor's sound manages to stay close, inviting the listener into the tender soundscape of her distinctive voice.
4. Derya Yıldırım & Grup Şimşek – Yarın Yoksa
Channeling the 1960s legacy of Turkish psychedelia pioneered by groups such as Moğollar, Turkish-born, Germany-based singer Derya Yıldırım's third record with her band Grup Şimşek fuses the metallic twang of the electrified saz with drifting Mellotron and R&B-inflected lines. It's a nostalgic vibe rooted in Yıldırım's strong falsetto and shaped by producer Leon Michels' analogue tape sound. However, on classic Turkish songs such as the nursery rhyme Hop Bico and 60s classic Ceylan, the group finds lively new territory. They develop smooth, slow-burning grooves and soaring vocals that lend a new, quirky twist to the Turkish psych sound.
3. The Colombian Artist Lido Pimienta – La Belleza
Catholic requiem mass music, Eastern European folk melodies and symphonic arrangements converge 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 Gregorian chants of opener Overturn (Obertura de la Luz Eterna) to the dramatic interweaving lines of Aún Te Quiero and the rhythmic dembow rhythms of the brass and woodwind-led El Dembow del Tiempo. Yet, it is Pim
