Our 10 Most Outstanding Worldwide Records of the Year 2025
The past twelve months have offered a rich tapestry of global releases that defied expectations. We explore ten remarkable albums that shaped the year in music.
10. Sarathy Korwar – There Already Is Beauty
A continuous, 40-minute suite of insistent percussion could sound like it isn't the easiest musical proposition. However, south Asian drummer and composer Sarathy Korwar transforms this driving beat into a unexpectedly magnetic work. Leading an group of three drummers, Korwar creates a dense percussive dialect across the record's ten parts. His composition draws from the phasing techniques of Steve Reich alongside traditional Indian musical phrasing, everything tethered in the repetition of a persistent, driving figure. Over its duration, this refrain starts to mirror the trance-inducing cycles of ceremonial music, luring the listener further into Korwar's singular percussive world.
Number Nine: The Lebanese Artist Yasmine Hamdan – I Forget, I Remember
Coming off an eight-year break, Lebanese singer-songwriter Yasmine Hamdan re-emerges with a melancholy set of songs. She expands on the Arabic-language, dub-tinged aesthetic that made her a staple in the region's indie music scene since the 1990s. Hamdan's voice is soft and ruminative, singing delicate melodies atop the string arrangements of a track like Hon and the deep trip-hop beat of Vows. On livelier tracks such as Shadia and Abyss, she employs a wavering, yearning vibrato against electronic lines with North African flavors 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. The album proves to be truly deserving of the wait.
Number Eight: Debit – Slowed Down
Mexican electronic artist Debit excels at eerie reimaginings of historical sounds. On her latest release, Desaceleradas, she focuses on the 90s style of cumbia rebajada – a decelerated, dubby interpretation of the shuffling Latin American musical style. Debit drags this sound to a near-halt, running its signature synths and syncopated rhythm through veils of murk and hiss to create a fresh, sinister beat. Sometimes ambient and unsettling, Debit converts the celebratory party music of cumbia into a persistent, ghostly echo.
7. The São Paulo Producer DJ K – Radio Libertadora!
Sensory overload is the key term for the records of Brazilian producer Kaique Vieira, who performs as DJ K. Coining his own genre of "bruxaria" (witchcraft), Vieira layers a cacophony of alarms, pummeling bass tones and screamed lyrics over the enduring Brazilian genre of baile funk. This captures the driving sound of favela street parties. On his follow-up release, Radio Libertadora!, Vieira ramps up the ferocity, adding everything from driving techno rhythms to samples of the Islamic call to prayer into his frantic bruxaria mix. The result is a especially hyperactive and overwhelmingly noisy 40-minute sonic journey. Surrender to the cacophony and Vieira's brash productions become strangely freeing.
Number Six: The Singer Mohinder Kaur Bhamra – Disco Punjabi
Sikh devotional singer Mohinder Kaur Bhamra's 1982 album of disco beats and traditional Punjabi tunes is a newly appreciated gem. Produced by her son, music producer Kuljit Bhamra, Punjabi Disco's ten tracks deliver an unusually captivating blend of the synthetic sound of 1980s synthesisers and drum machines with her melismatic Indian classical vocal technique. Drum machine patterns echoes the wavelike tones of the traditional drums, while synth lines replicates the classic sound of the harmonium on tracks such as Pyar Mainu Kar. Elsewhere, Latin-inflected grooves is prominent on Soniya Mukh Tera, and Nainan Da Pyar De Gaya boasts a up-tempo walking disco bassline. It's a dancefloor fusion pioneered over a decade before the rise of Asian Underground music.
Number Five: The Mongolian Artist Enji – Sonor
From Mongolia singer Enji's soft new release, Sonor, expands on her jazz-inflected sound to offer some of her broadest music to date. Departing from her background in traditional Mongolian "long song" singing, the record's 11 tracks range from the soft jazz-pop melodies of slow-burning number Ulbar to the German-language narration lyrics and trilling guitar lines of Unadag Dugui. The album also includes a sprightly, funk-tinged cover of the 1980s Mongolian classic Eejiinhee Hairaar. Featuring a ensemble rather than her usual setup of guitar and bass, Sonor's sound manages to stay personal, drawing the listener into the warm acoustics of her singular voice.
Number Four: Derya Yıldırım and Her Band – If There Is No Tomorrow
Channeling the 1960s legacy of Anatolian rock established by groups such as Moğollar, Turkish-born, Germany-based singer Derya Yıldırım's latest work with her band Grup Şimşek blends the electric jangle of the electrified saz with woozy Mellotron and R&B-inflected lines. It's a retro-70s aesthetic anchored in Yıldırım's strong falsetto and influenced by producer Leon Michels' analogue tape sound. But, on classic Turkish songs such as the nursery rhyme Hop Bico and 1960s song Ceylan, the group finds dynamic new territory. They craft sinuous, slow-burning grooves and powerful vocals that impart a novel, unconventional interpretation to the Turkish psych sound.
3. Lido Pimienta – The Beauty
Catholic requiem mass music, Eastern European folk melodies and symphonic arrangements all come together 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 theatrical interweaving lines of Aún Te Quiero and the syncopated dembow rhythms of the woodwind-heavy El Dembow del Tiempo. Yet, it is Pim
