This Ten Finest International Records of 2025
As the year draws to a close, we reflect on the worldwide releases that defied expectations. Presenting a selection of ten remarkable albums that characterized the year in music.
10. Sarathy Korwar – There Already Is Beauty
An album consisting of a single, extended movement of cyclical percussion could sound like it isn't the most approachable musical proposition. Yet, Indian percussionist and producer Sarathy Korwar turns this persistent pulse into a unexpectedly magnetic piece. Guiding an trio of three drummers, Korwar develops a dense percussive vocabulary over the record's ten parts. The album references the phasing techniques of Steve Reich alongside Indian classical phrasing, everything tethered in the recurrence of a ongoing, pulsing figure. The longer one listens, this refrain evokes the ceremonial rhythm of ritual music, drawing the listener further into Korwar's singular percussive world.
Number Nine: The Lebanese Artist Yasmine Hamdan – I Remember I Forget
Coming off an eight-year break, Arab vocalist and composer Yasmine Hamdan makes a comeback with a mournful collection of songs. It continues exploring the Arabic-sung, dub-tinged aesthetic that established her as a fixture in the region's indie music scene since the nineties. Hamdan's vocal delivery is quiet and introspective, delivering soft melodies atop the string arrangements of a track like Hon and the rolling trip-hop beat of Vows. On livelier tracks such as Shadia and Abyss, she adopts a quivering, longing vibrato over north African synth lines and rattling electronic percussion. The musical backdrop is lean and understated, yet this austerity offers the ideal setting for Hamdan's expressive lyricism to shine through. It is truly deserving of the wait.
Number Eight: Debit – Slowed Down
From Mexico producer Debit has a knack for eerie reimaginings of archival audio. For her new album, Desaceleradas, she focuses on the 90s style of cumbia rebajada – a decelerated, dubby version of the rhythmic Latin American dance music genre. Debit slows this sound even further, running its signature synths and syncopated rhythm via veils of sludge and noise to create a new, foreboding rhythm. Sometimes ambient and discomfiting, Debit morphs the exuberant party music of cumbia into a lasting, ghostly echo.
7. The São Paulo Producer DJ K – Radio Libertadora!
Maximalism is the operative word for the records of Brazilian producer Kaique Vieira, also known as DJ K. Coining his own genre of "bruxaria" (witchcraft), Vieira stacks a cacophony of sirens, explosive bass tones and shouted lyrics over the classic Brazilian genre of baile funk. This emulates the propulsive sound of neighborhood block parties. On his second album, Radio Libertadora!, Vieira cranks up the energy, throwing in 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. Submit to the assault and Vieira's bold productions become strangely liberating.
6. The Singer Mohinder Kaur Bhamra – Punjabi Disco
Sikh devotional singer Mohinder Kaur Bhamra's 1982 album of disco beats and Punjabi folk melodies is a rediscovered masterpiece. Recorded by her son, music producer Kuljit Bhamra, Punjabi Disco's ten tracks deliver an remarkably compelling combination of the synthetic sound of 1980s synthesisers and drum machines with her fluid Indian classical vocal technique. Drum machine patterns mirrors the undulating tones of the traditional drums, while synth lines doubles the traditional sound of the reed organ on tracks such as Pyar Mainu Kar. Meanwhile, bossa nova rhythm takes center stage on Soniya Mukh Tera, and Nainan Da Pyar De Gaya channels a up-tempo walking disco bassline. It's a dancefloor fusion pioneered over a decade before the Asian Underground explosion.
5. The Mongolian Artist Enji – Sonor
Mongolian vocalist Enji's delicate new release, Sonor, builds upon her jazz-inflected sound to present some of her broadest music yet. Moving away from her background in traditional Mongolian "long song" singing, the record's 11 tracks veer from the gentle jazz-pop melodics of slow-burning number Ulbar to the German-language narration lyrics and twanging guitar lines of Unadag Dugui. The album also includes a sprightly, funk-inflected cover of the 80s Mongolian pop hit Eejiinhee Hairaar. Featuring a live band rather than her typical setup of guitar and bass, Sonor's sound remains close, inviting the listener into the warm acoustics of her singular voice.
Number Four: Derya Yıldırım & Grup Şimşek – If There Is No Tomorrow
Inspired by the 1960s legacy of Anatolian rock established by groups such as Moğollar, German-Turkish singer Derya Yıldırım's latest work alongside her group merges the metallic twang of the amplified traditional lute with dreamy keyboard and R&B-inflected lines. It's a retro-70s aesthetic grounded in Yıldırım's strong high register and influenced by producer Leon Michels' warm, tape-saturated sound. However, on Turkish standards such as the nursery rhyme Hop Bico and 1960s song Ceylan, the group finds lively new territory. They develop smooth, downtempo grooves and lifting vocals that lend a novel, off-kilter interpretation to the Turkish psych sound.
3. Lido Pimienta – The Beauty
Sacred music, Czech harpsichord folksong and symphonic arrangements merge on Colombian singer Lido Pimienta's stunning latest work. Orchestrating music for the 60-piece Medellín Philharmonic Orchestra, Pimienta and producer Owen Pallett traverse everything from the Gregorian chants of opener Overturn (Obertura de la Luz Eterna) to the theatrical interweaving lines of Aún Te Quiero and the syncopated dembow rhythms of the brass and woodwind-led El Dembow del Tiempo. Yet, it is Pim
