The 10 Greatest Global Albums of the Year 2025
As the year draws to a close, we reflect on the international sounds that defied expectations. We explore ten exceptional albums that characterized the year in music.
Number Ten: Sarathy Korwar – There Already Is Beauty
The concept of a 40-minute, uninterrupted piece built on insistent drumming could sound like it isn't the most accessible listening experience. But, Indian percussionist and producer Sarathy Korwar turns this insistent rhythm into a strangely alluring piece. Directing an ensemble of three drummers, Korwar creates a dense percussive dialect throughout the record's ten sections. His composition channels the phasing techniques of Steve Reich alongside Indian classical phrasing, each grounded in the recurrence of a persistent, driving motif. The longer one listens, this refrain starts to mirror the trance-inducing cycles of ritual music, drawing the listener further into Korwar's unique percussive realm.
9. Yasmine Hamdan – I Forget, I Remember
After an eight-year break, Lebanese vocalist and composer Yasmine Hamdan returns with a contemplative album of songs. It continues exploring the Arabic-language, dub-influenced aesthetic that made her a staple in the region's indie music scene since the nineties. Hamdan's voice is quiet and ruminative, delivering soft melodies over the string arrangements of a track like Hon and the deep trip-hop groove of Vows. For more upbeat numbers such as Shadia and Abyss, she employs a quivering, yearning vibrato over north African synth lines and rattling electronic percussion. The album's sound is sparse and understated, yet this minimalism creates the ideal environment for Hamdan's expressive compositions to resonate. This is a record truly deserving of the wait.
Number Eight: Debit – Desaceleradas
Mexican electronic artist Debit has a knack for haunting reimaginings of archival audio. On her new album, Desaceleradas, she focuses on the 90s style of cumbia rebajada – a decelerated, dubby take of the shuffling Latin American dance genre. Debit slows this sound even further, running its signature synths and off-beat rhythm through veils of murk and hiss to produce a new, foreboding rhythm. At turns atmospheric and discomfiting, Debit converts the exuberant party music of cumbia into a enduring, ghostly afterimage.
Number Seven: The São Paulo Producer DJ K – Liberator Radio!
Maximalism is the defining principle for the output of São Paulo producer Kaique Vieira, also known as DJ K. Inventing his own genre of "bruxaria" (witchcraft), Vieira piles a cacophony of alarms, explosive bass tones and shouted lyrics on top of the classic Brazilian dance style of baile funk. This recreates the driving sound of urban celebrations. On his follow-up release, Radio Libertadora!, Vieira ramps up the ferocity, throwing in everything from four-on-the-floor techno beats to samples of the Islamic call to prayer into his frantic bruxaria mix. The result is a particularly hyperactive and punishingly loud 40-minute listening experience. Submit to the cacophony and Vieira's brash productions become oddly freeing.
Number Six: Mohinder Kaur Bhamra – Disco Punjabi
Sikh devotional singer Mohinder Kaur Bhamra's record from 1982 of disco beats and Punjabi folk melodies is a newly appreciated masterpiece. Recorded by her son, music producer Kuljit Bhamra, Punjabi Disco's ten tracks deliver an unusually compelling fusion of the sharp sound of early synthesizers and programmed drums with her fluid Indian classical vocal technique. Electronic percussion mirrors the undulating tones of the traditional drums, while synth lines replicates the traditional sound of the harmonium on tracks such as Pyar Mainu Kar. Meanwhile, Latin-inflected grooves takes center stage on Soniya Mukh Tera, and Nainan Da Pyar De Gaya channels a up-tempo funky bass rhythm. It's a club-ready hybrid delivered over a decade before the Asian Underground explosion.
5. The Mongolian Artist Enji – Resonance
From Mongolia singer Enji's gentle fourth album, Sonor, develops her jazz-inflected sound to present some of her most wide-ranging music yet. Moving away from her background in traditional Mongolian "long song" singing, the record's eleven songs veer from the gentle 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 1980s Mongolian classic Eejiinhee Hairaar. Showcasing a live band rather than her typical setup of guitar and bass, Sonor's sound remains intimate, drawing the listener into the tender soundscape of her singular voice.
4. Derya Yıldırım and Her Band – Yarın Yoksa
Drawing on the 60s heritage of Turkish psychedelia established 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 woozy Mellotron and R&B-inflected lines. It's a retro-70s aesthetic anchored in Yıldırım's strong high register and influenced by producer Leon Michels' analogue tape aesthetic. But, on classic Turkish songs such as the folk tune Hop Bico and 1960s song Ceylan, the group ventures into lively new territory. They develop smooth, slow-burning grooves and soaring vocals that give a new, quirky twist to the Turkish psych sound.
Number Three: Lido Pimienta – The Beauty
Catholic requiem mass music, Eastern European folk melodies and orchestral strings merge on Colombian singer Lido Pimienta's remarkable fourth album. Orchestrating music for the sixty-member Medellín Philharmonic Orchestra, Pimienta and producer Owen Pallett traverse a vast range including the liturgical vocals of opener Overturn (Obertura de la Luz Eterna) to the theatrical counterpoint melodies of Aún Te Quiero and the rhythmic reggaeton-inspired beats of the brass and woodwind-led El Dembow del Tiempo. Yet, it is Pim
