Our Ten Most Outstanding Global Records of This Past Year

The past twelve months have offered a rich tapestry of international releases that defied expectations. Presenting a selection of ten notable albums that shaped the year in music.

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

A continuous, 40-minute suite of repetitive percussion might not seem the most approachable listening experience. Yet, Indian percussionist and producer Sarathy Korwar converts this insistent rhythm into a strangely alluring piece. Leading an ensemble of three drummers, Korwar creates a complex percussive dialect throughout the record's ten sections. The album channels Steve Reich's phasing motifs combined with traditional Indian musical phrasing, each grounded in the repetition of a persistent, pulsing motif. Over its duration, this refrain evokes the hypnotic repetition of devotional music, luring the listener deeper into Korwar's distinctive percussive realm.

Number Nine: Yasmine Hamdan – I Remember I Forget

After an eight-year break, Arab vocalist and composer Yasmine Hamdan returns with a mournful collection of songs. She expands on the Arabic-sung, dub-influenced sound that cemented her status in the region's indie music scene since the 1990s. Hamdan's vocal delivery is quiet and ruminative, singing delicate melodies atop the bowing strings of a track like Hon and the deep trip-hop beat of Vows. For more upbeat numbers such as Shadia and Abyss, she employs a quivering, longing vibrato over north African synth lines and rattling electronic percussion. The album's sound is lean and restrained, yet this minimalism offers the perfect environment for Hamdan's emotive lyricism to resonate. This is a record well worth the wait.

Number Eight: Debit – Desaceleradas

Mexican electronic artist Debit has a knack for haunting reworkings of historical sounds. For her most recent project, 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 down to a crawl, running its characteristic synths and off-beat rhythm via veils of sludge and static to produce a new, sinister beat. Periodically ambient and unsettling, Debit converts the celebratory party music of cumbia into a enduring, ghostly echo.

Number Seven: DJ K – Radio Libertadora!

Maximalism is the key term for the records of Brazilian producer Kaique Vieira, also known as DJ K. Pioneering his own genre of "bruxaria" (witchcraft), Vieira layers a tumult of alarms, explosive bass tones and shouted lyrics over the classic Brazilian dance style of baile funk. This recreates the propulsive sound of urban celebrations. On his new record, Radio Libertadora!, Vieira escalates the ferocity, incorporating everything from techno kick drums to samples of the Islamic call to prayer into his frantic bruxaria mix. The result is a notably hyperactive and deafeningly intense forty-minute sonic journey. Submit to the assault and Vieira's brash productions become oddly liberating.

Number Six: Mohinder Kaur Bhamra – Disco Punjabi

Sikh devotional singer Mohinder Kaur Bhamra's 1982 album of disco music and Punjabi folk melodies is a reissued gem. Recorded by her son, music producer Kuljit Bhamra, Punjabi Disco's ten tracks present an strikingly compelling combination of the sharp sound of 1980s synthesisers and drum machines with her melismatic classical Indian singing style. Drum machine patterns mirrors the wavelike tones of the traditional drums, while synthesiser melody doubles the classic sound of the harmonium on tracks such as Pyar Mainu Kar. At other times, bossa nova rhythm comes to the fore on Soniya Mukh Tera, and Nainan Da Pyar De Gaya features a up-tempo walking disco bassline. It's a club-ready hybrid created more than ten years before the rise of Asian Underground music.

Number Five: Enji – Resonance

From Mongolia singer Enji's delicate latest record, Sonor, expands on her jazz-influenced sound to offer some of her most wide-ranging music to date. Departing from her training in traditional Mongolian "long song" singing, the record's eleven songs travel from the gentle jazz-pop melodics of slow-burning number Ulbar to the German-language narration lyrics and trilling guitar lines of Unadag Dugui. The album also includes a lively, funk-inflected cover of the 80s Mongolian pop hit Eejiinhee Hairaar. Utilizing a full backing band rather than her typical setup of guitar and bass, Sonor's sound manages to stay intimate, drawing the listener into the warm soundscape of her distinctive voice.

Number Four: Derya Yıldırım & Grup Şimşek – Yarın Yoksa

Drawing on the psychedelic tradition of Anatolian rock established by groups such as Moğollar, Turkish-born, Germany-based singer Derya Yıldırım's third record with her band Grup Şimşek merges the electric jangle of the amplified traditional lute with dreamy keyboard and classic soul melodies. It's a retro-70s aesthetic grounded in Yıldırım's powerful high register and shaped by producer Leon Michels' warm, tape-saturated sound. But, on Turkish standards such as the folk tune Hop Bico and 60s classic Ceylan, the group ventures into dynamic new territory. They develop smooth, downtempo grooves and lifting vocals that lend a fresh, unconventional spin to the Turkish psych sound.

3. The Colombian Artist Lido Pimienta – The Beauty

Catholic requiem mass music, Eastern European folk melodies and orchestral strings merge on Colombian-born singer Lido Pimienta's extraordinary fourth album. Orchestrating music for the sixty-member Medellín Philharmonic Orchestra, Pimienta and producer Owen Pallett explore 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 reggaeton-inspired beats of the woodwind-heavy El Dembow del Tiempo. It is Pim