The Ten Finest Global Records of the Year 2025

As the year draws to a close, we reflect on the worldwide music that expanded horizons. Presenting a selection of ten remarkable albums that defined the year in music.

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

A continuous, 40-minute suite of cyclical drumming may not appear the most accessible musical proposition. Yet, Indian percussionist and producer Sarathy Korwar transforms this insistent rhythm into a hypnotically captivating piece. Directing an ensemble of three drummers, Korwar creates a dense percussive dialect throughout the record's ten parts. The work draws from Steve Reich's phasing motifs as well as traditional Indian musical phrasing, all anchored in the reiteration of a ongoing, thrumming motif. Over its duration, this refrain starts to mirror the hypnotic repetition of ceremonial music, drawing the listener further into Korwar's distinctive percussive world.

Number Nine: Yasmine Hamdan – I Remember I Forget

After an eight-year break, Lebanese singer-songwriter Yasmine Hamdan re-emerges with a melancholy album of songs. The work builds upon the Arabic-sung, dub-influenced sound that established her as a fixture in the region's indie music scene since the nineties. Hamdan's vocal delivery is soft and thoughtful, delivering tender melodies atop the string arrangements of a track like Hon and the rumbling trip-hop beat of Vows. During more energetic moments such as Shadia and Abyss, she employs a trembling, yearning vocal technique against Maghrebi-inspired synth melodies and skittering electronic percussion. The album's sound is minimal and restrained, yet this minimalism creates the perfect canvas for Hamdan's deeply felt songwriting to shine through. It is that justifies the wait.

Number Eight: The Mexican Producer Debit – Desaceleradas

Mexican producer Debit excels at uncanny reimaginings of traditional music. On her new album, Desaceleradas, she turns her attention to the 90s style of cumbia rebajada – a slowed, dub-inflected take of the shuffling Latin American musical style. Debit slows this sound even further, processing its characteristic synths and off-beat rhythm through layers of distortion and noise to generate a new, menacing groove. At turns atmospheric and unsettling, Debit morphs the exuberant party music of cumbia into a enduring, spectral afterimage.

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

Maximalism is the defining principle for the output of Brazilian producer Kaique Vieira, AKA DJ K. Inventing his own genre of "bruxaria" (witchcraft), Vieira stacks a onslaught of sirens, explosive bass tones and shouted lyrics over the longstanding Brazilian genre of baile funk. This emulates the propulsive sound of urban celebrations. On his new record, Radio Libertadora!, Vieira cranks up the ferocity, adding everything from driving techno rhythms to samples of the Islamic call to prayer into his unruly bruxaria mix. The result is a particularly manic and deafeningly intense forty-minute listening experience. Submit to the cacophony and Vieira's brash productions become oddly exhilarating.

Number Six: The Singer Mohinder Kaur Bhamra – Disco Punjabi

Sikh devotional singer Mohinder Kaur Bhamra's record from 1982 of disco music and traditional Punjabi tunes is a newly appreciated masterpiece. Recorded by her son, music producer Kuljit Bhamra, Punjabi Disco's ten tracks offer an remarkably captivating combination of the sharp sound of electronic keyboards and programmed drums with her melismatic Indian classical singing style. Electronic percussion mirrors the undulating tones of the traditional drums, while synthesiser melody parallels the traditional sound of the reed organ on tracks such as Pyar Mainu Kar. Elsewhere, Latin-inflected grooves takes center stage on Soniya Mukh Tera, and Nainan Da Pyar De Gaya channels a fast-paced funky bass rhythm. It's a dancefloor fusion delivered over a decade before the Asian Underground explosion.

5. The Mongolian Artist Enji – Sonor

Mongolian vocalist Enji's soft new release, Sonor, expands on her jazz-inflected sound to offer some of her most wide-ranging music yet. Moving away from her training in traditional Mongolian "long song" singing, the record's selection of pieces veer from the soft jazz-pop melodies of downtempo number Ulbar to the German spoken-word lyrics and trilling guitar lines of Unadag Dugui. The album also includes a lively, funk-inflected cover of the 1980s Mongolian classic Eejiinhee Hairaar. Showcasing a ensemble rather than her standard setup of guitar and bass, Sonor's sound is still intimate, pulling the listener into the warm acoustics of her distinctive voice.

4. Derya Yıldırım and Her Band – Yarın Yoksa

Drawing on the psychedelic tradition of Turkish psychedelia established by groups such as Moğollar, German-Turkish singer Derya Yıldırım's third record alongside her group fuses the electric jangle of the amplified traditional lute with dreamy Mellotron and classic soul melodies. It's a nostalgic vibe grounded in Yıldırım's commanding falsetto and shaped by producer Leon Michels' warm, tape-saturated aesthetic. Yet, on Turkish standards such as the folk tune Hop Bico and 60s classic Ceylan, the group reaches vibrant new territory. They craft sinuous, downtempo grooves and lifting vocals that impart a new, quirky twist to the Turkish psych sound.

3. Lido Pimienta – La Belleza

Catholic requiem mass music, Eastern European folk melodies and symphonic arrangements merge on Colombian singer Lido Pimienta's extraordinary fourth album. Orchestrating music for the 60-piece Medellín Philharmonic Orchestra, Pimienta and producer Owen Pallett explore everything from the liturgical vocals of opener Overturn (Obertura de la Luz Eterna) to the theatrical interweaving lines of Aún Te Quiero and the rhythmic reggaeton-inspired beats of the brass and woodwind-led El Dembow del Tiempo. Ultimately, it is Pim