This Ten Top International Albums of the Year 2025
The past twelve months have offered a rich tapestry of global releases that defied expectations. Here is a countdown of ten remarkable albums that characterized the year in music.
Number Ten: Sarathy Korwar – There Already Is Beauty
An album consisting of a single, extended movement of repetitive percussion might not seem the most approachable listening experience. Yet, south Asian drummer and composer Sarathy Korwar transforms this persistent pulse into a unexpectedly magnetic piece. Directing an ensemble of three drummers, Korwar crafts a complex percussive vocabulary over the record's ten sections. The work references the phasing techniques of Steve Reich alongside traditional Indian musical phrasing, all anchored in the repetition of a ongoing, thrumming refrain. Over its duration, this refrain begins to emulate the ceremonial rhythm of ceremonial music, drawing the listener deeper into Korwar's singular percussive world.
Number Nine: Yasmine Hamdan – I Forget, I Remember
Coming off an long absence, Lebanese singer-songwriter Yasmine Hamdan returns with a melancholy album of songs. It continues exploring the Arabic-language, dub-influenced sound that cemented her status in the Middle Eastern independent music landscape since the 1990s. Hamdan's voice is soft and ruminative, delivering soft melodies over the bowing strings of a track like Hon and the rolling trip-hop beat of Vows. During more energetic moments such as Shadia and Abyss, she employs a trembling, longing vibrato against north African synth lines and skittering electronic percussion. The production is lean and subtle, yet this austerity provides the perfect canvas for Hamdan's deeply felt lyricism to resonate. This is a record that justifies the long anticipation.
Number Eight: The Mexican Producer Debit – Desaceleradas
Mexican electronic artist Debit specializes in eerie reworkings of archival audio. On her latest release, Desaceleradas, she turns her attention to the 1990s variant of cumbia rebajada – a slowed, dubby interpretation of the shuffling Latin American musical style. Debit drags this sound even further, filtering its characteristic synths and syncopated rhythm through veils of sludge and static to generate a new, foreboding beat. Sometimes ambient and unsettling, Debit morphs the celebratory party music of cumbia into a enduring, spectral afterimage.
7. The São Paulo Producer DJ K – Liberator Radio!
Sheer intensity is the operative word for the output of Brazilian producer Kaique Vieira, who performs as DJ K. Pioneering his own genre of "bruxaria" (witchcraft), Vieira piles a tumult of alarms, pummeling bass tones and screamed lyrics over the enduring Brazilian genre of baile funk. This recreates the driving sound of neighborhood block parties. On his new record, Radio Libertadora!, Vieira cranks up the energy, incorporating everything from driving techno rhythms to the sound of the Islamic call to prayer into his frantic bruxaria mix. The result is a particularly frenetic and deafeningly intense forty-minute sonic journey. Submit to the noise and Vieira's bold productions become unexpectedly freeing.
Number Six: Mohinder Kaur Bhamra – Punjabi Disco
Religious vocalist Mohinder Kaur Bhamra's 1982 album of disco beats and Punjabi folk melodies is a rediscovered treasure. Recorded by her son, music producer Kuljit Bhamra, Punjabi Disco's ten tracks present an strikingly compelling fusion of the synthetic sound of electronic keyboards and programmed drums with her melismatic Indian classical vocal technique. Electronic percussion mirrors the undulating tones of the tabla, while synth lines replicates the classic 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 disco bass groove. It's a dancefloor fusion pioneered over a decade before the Asian Underground explosion.
5. The Mongolian Artist Enji – Sonor
Mongolian vocalist Enji's soft new release, Sonor, develops her jazz-influenced sound to deliver some of her most diverse music to date. Stepping outside her training 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-language narration lyrics and trilling guitar lines of Unadag Dugui. The album also includes a energetic, funk-tinged cover of the 1980s Mongolian classic Eejiinhee Hairaar. Utilizing a ensemble rather than her usual setup of guitar and bass, Sonor's sound is still close, drawing the listener into the gentle acoustics of her distinctive voice.
Number Four: Derya Yıldırım and Her Band – If There Is No Tomorrow
Inspired by the 60s heritage of Anatolian rock pioneered by groups such as Moğollar, Turkish-born, Germany-based singer Derya Yıldırım's new album alongside her group merges the electric jangle of the amplified traditional lute with woozy keyboard and classic soul melodies. It's a retro-70s aesthetic grounded in Yıldırım's powerful falsetto and influenced by producer Leon Michels' warm, tape-saturated aesthetic. But, on Turkish standards such as the nursery rhyme Hop Bico and 60s classic Ceylan, the group ventures into vibrant new territory. They develop smooth, slow-burning grooves and lifting vocals that lend a novel, off-kilter twist to the Anatolian psychedelic style.
Number Three: The Colombian Artist Lido Pimienta – The Beauty
Sacred music, Czech harpsichord folksong and orchestral strings all come together on Colombian singer Lido Pimienta's remarkable fourth album. Orchestrating music for the 60-piece Medellín Philharmonic Orchestra, Pimienta and producer Owen Pallett traverse a vast range including the Gregorian chants of opener Overturn (Obertura de la Luz Eterna) to the dramatic counterpoint melodies of Aún Te Quiero and the rhythmic dembow rhythms of the woodwind-heavy El Dembow del Tiempo. It is Pim
