Our Ten Best Global Albums of the Year 2025
Looking back on the musical landscape of international music 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 cyclical percussion might not seem the easiest musical proposition. Yet, south Asian drummer and composer Sarathy Korwar turns this insistent rhythm into a unexpectedly magnetic work. Guiding an trio of three drummers, Korwar crafts a complex percussive language across the record's ten parts. The album draws from Steve Reich's phasing motifs combined with Indian classical phrasing, each grounded in the recurrence of a ongoing, thrumming figure. The longer one listens, this refrain begins to emulate the hypnotic repetition of devotional music, drawing the listener deeper into Korwar's unique percussive world.
9. Yasmine Hamdan – I Remember I Forget
After an long absence, Lebanese singer-songwriter Yasmine Hamdan makes a comeback with a mournful collection of songs. It continues exploring the Arabic-language, dub-influenced sound that established her as a fixture in the Middle Eastern independent music landscape since the nineties. Hamdan's vocal delivery is gentle and ruminative, singing delicate melodies atop the string arrangements of a track like Hon and the rumbling trip-hop groove of Vows. For more upbeat numbers such as Shadia and Abyss, she uses a quivering, yearning vibrato over electronic lines with North African flavors and clattering electronic percussion. The production is lean and subtle, yet this austerity creates the ideal environment for Hamdan's expressive compositions to resonate. This is a record truly deserving of the wait.
8. The Mexican Producer Debit – Desaceleradas
Mexican producer Debit specializes in eerie reinterpretations of archival audio. On her latest release, Desaceleradas, she turns her attention to the 90s style of cumbia rebajada – a slowed, dub-inflected interpretation of the shuffling Latin American musical style. Debit decelerates this sound even further, filtering its signature synths and off-beat rhythm via sheets of sludge and static to produce a new, menacing beat. Sometimes ambient and unsettling, Debit morphs the joyous party music of cumbia into a lasting, ethereal echo.
Number Seven: DJ K – Liberator Radio!
Maximalism is the operative word for the music of Brazilian producer Kaique Vieira, AKA DJ K. Inventing his own genre of "bruxaria" (witchcraft), Vieira stacks a onslaught of alarms, explosive bass tones and screamed lyrics over the enduring Brazilian dance style of baile funk. This captures the driving sound of urban celebrations. On his second album, Radio Libertadora!, Vieira escalates the intensity, throwing in everything from driving techno rhythms to samples of the Islamic call to prayer into his frantic bruxaria mix. The result is a notably frenetic and deafeningly intense forty-minute listening experience. Surrender to the cacophony and Vieira's brash productions become strangely freeing.
Number Six: Mohinder Kaur Bhamra – Punjabi Disco
Sikh devotional singer Mohinder Kaur Bhamra's 1982 album of disco music and traditional Punjabi tunes is a reissued masterpiece. Recorded by her son, music producer Kuljit Bhamra, Punjabi Disco's ten tracks present an remarkably compelling combination of the synthetic sound of electronic keyboards and drum machines with her melismatic Indian classical singing style. Electronic percussion mimics the rolling tones of the tabla, while synthesiser melody parallels the classic sound of the harmonium on tracks such as Pyar Mainu Kar. Elsewhere, Latin-inflected grooves comes to the fore on Soniya Mukh Tera, and Nainan Da Pyar De Gaya features a up-tempo walking disco bassline. It's a party blend pioneered more than ten years before the rise of Asian Underground music.
Number Five: The Mongolian Artist Enji – Sonor
From Mongolia vocalist Enji's delicate new release, Sonor, builds upon her jazz-inflected sound to offer some of her most wide-ranging music so far. Departing from her background in traditional Mongolian "long song" singing, the record's 11 tracks range from the gentle jazz-pop melodics of slow-burning number Ulbar to the German-language narration lyrics and trilling guitar lines of Unadag Dugui. The album also includes a lively, funk-inflected cover of the 80s Mongolian pop hit Eejiinhee Hairaar. Utilizing a ensemble rather than her standard setup of guitar and bass, Sonor's sound is still close, drawing the listener into the gentle acoustics of her unique voice.
4. Derya Yıldırım and Her Band – Yarın Yoksa
Channeling the 1960s legacy of Turkish psychedelia pioneered by groups such as Moğollar, German-Turkish singer Derya Yıldırım's latest work alongside her group fuses the metallic twang of the amplified traditional lute with woozy Mellotron and R&B-inflected lines. It's a nostalgic vibe rooted in Yıldırım's powerful falsetto and influenced by producer Leon Michels' analogue tape sound. Yet, on classic Turkish songs such as the folk tune Hop Bico and 60s classic Ceylan, the group ventures into vibrant new territory. They create sinuous, downtempo grooves and powerful vocals that lend a new, quirky interpretation to the Turkish psych sound.
3. The Colombian Artist Lido Pimienta – The Beauty
Gregorian chants, Czech harpsichord folksong and orchestral strings converge on Colombian-born singer Lido Pimienta's stunning latest work. Arranging 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 theatrical interweaving lines of Aún Te Quiero and the rhythmic reggaeton-inspired beats of the brass and woodwind-led El Dembow del Tiempo. Ultimately, it is Pim
