Our Ten Top Global Records of This Past Year

As the year draws to a close, we reflect on the global releases that defied expectations. We explore ten exceptional albums that shaped the year in music.

Number Ten: The Percussionist Sarathy Korwar – There Is Beauty, There Already

An album consisting of a single, extended movement of insistent drumming may not appear the easiest listening experience. But, Indian drummer and composer Sarathy Korwar turns this persistent pulse into a unexpectedly magnetic work. Leading an ensemble of three drummers, Korwar crafts a complex percussive dialect across the record's 10 movements. The album channels the phasing techniques of Steve Reich alongside traditional Indian musical phrasing, each grounded in the recurrence of a persistent, driving refrain. The longer one listens, this refrain evokes the hypnotic repetition of ritual music, drawing the listener further into Korwar's unique percussive realm.

Number Nine: The Lebanese Artist Yasmine Hamdan – I Forget, I Remember

Following an eight-year break, Arab vocalist and composer Yasmine Hamdan re-emerges with a contemplative album of songs. She expands on the Arabic-sung, dub-tinged aesthetic that established her as a fixture in the Middle Eastern independent music landscape since the 1990s. Hamdan's vocal delivery is quiet and thoughtful, delivering soft melodies atop 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 adopts a wavering, longing vibrato over electronic lines with North African flavors and clattering electronic percussion. The musical backdrop is minimal and understated, yet this austerity provides the perfect setting for Hamdan's emotive lyricism to resonate. This is a record truly deserving of the long anticipation.

Number Eight: The Mexican Producer Debit – Slowed Down

Mexican electronic artist Debit excels at uncanny reimaginings of traditional music. On her latest release, Desaceleradas, she zeroes in on the 90s style of cumbia rebajada – a decelerated, dub-inflected interpretation of the rhythmic Latin American dance genre. Debit drags this sound even further, processing its signature synths and syncopated rhythm via sheets of murk and static to generate a new, sinister groove. Sometimes ambient and discomfiting, Debit transforms the joyous party music of cumbia into a enduring, ethereal memory.

7. The São Paulo Producer DJ K – Liberator Radio!

Sheer intensity is the key term for the music of Brazilian producer Kaique Vieira, AKA DJ K. Coining his own genre of "bruxaria" (witchcraft), Vieira piles a cacophony of alarms, explosive bass tones and screamed lyrics on top of the longstanding Brazilian dance style of baile funk. This recreates the driving sound of urban celebrations. On his new record, Radio Libertadora!, Vieira ramps up the energy, incorporating everything from four-on-the-floor techno beats to the sound of the Islamic call to prayer into his unruly bruxaria mix. The result is a especially frenetic and deafeningly intense forty-minute listening experience. Give in to the cacophony and Vieira's brash productions become unexpectedly freeing.

6. Mohinder Kaur Bhamra – Punjabi Disco

Sikh devotional singer Mohinder Kaur Bhamra's early-80s release of disco music and Punjabi folk melodies is a newly appreciated treasure. Produced by her son, music producer Kuljit Bhamra, Punjabi Disco's ten tracks present an unusually compelling fusion of the sharp sound of early synthesizers and programmed drums with her fluid Indian classical singing style. Drum machine patterns mirrors the undulating tones of the traditional drums, while synthesiser melody doubles the classic sound of the reed organ on tracks such as Pyar Mainu Kar. Meanwhile, bossa nova rhythm is prominent on Soniya Mukh Tera, and Nainan Da Pyar De Gaya boasts a driving funky bass rhythm. It's a club-ready hybrid pioneered more than ten years before the global breakthrough of South Asian electronic music.

Number Five: The Mongolian Artist Enji – Resonance

Mongolian vocalist Enji's gentle new release, Sonor, develops her jazz-inflected sound to offer some of her most diverse music to date. Departing from her training in traditional Mongolian "long song" singing, the record's eleven songs travel from the soft Norah Jones-esque melodies of slow-burning number Ulbar to the German spoken-word lyrics and trilling guitar lines of Unadag Dugui. The album also includes a energetic, funk-inflected cover of the 80s Mongolian pop hit Eejiinhee Hairaar. Utilizing a live band rather than her typical setup of guitar and bass, Sonor's sound is still intimate, inviting the listener into the gentle soundscape of her singular voice.

4. Derya Yıldırım and Her Band – If There Is No Tomorrow

Drawing on the 60s heritage of Anatolian rock pioneered by groups such as Moğollar, German-Turkish singer Derya Yıldırım's new album alongside her group fuses the electric jangle of the amplified traditional lute with dreamy keyboard and soulful tunes. It's a nostalgic vibe grounded in Yıldırım's commanding falsetto and influenced by producer Leon Michels' analogue tape sound. Yet, on classic Turkish songs such as the nursery rhyme Hop Bico and 1960s song Ceylan, the group ventures into lively new territory. They create smooth, slow-burning grooves and powerful vocals that give a new, off-kilter interpretation to the Turkish psych sound.

Number Three: The Colombian Artist Lido Pimienta – The Beauty

Gregorian chants, Eastern European folk melodies and symphonic arrangements converge on Colombian singer Lido Pimienta's extraordinary latest work. Orchestrating music for the sixty-member Medellín Philharmonic Orchestra, Pimienta and producer Owen Pallett explore 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 reggaeton-inspired beats of the woodwind-heavy El Dembow del Tiempo. Ultimately, it is Pim