Our 10 Top Worldwide Records of This Past Year
As the year draws to a close, we reflect on the international releases that defied expectations. We explore ten remarkable albums that defined the year in music.
Number Ten: Sarathy Korwar – There Already Is Beauty
An album consisting of a single, extended movement of repetitive drumming could sound like it isn't the most accessible listening experience. But, Indian percussionist and producer Sarathy Korwar converts this persistent pulse into a unexpectedly magnetic piece. Guiding an trio of three drummers, Korwar develops a complex percussive language throughout the record's 10 movements. The album channels Steve Reich's phasing motifs alongside classical Indian rhythmic patterns, everything tethered in the repetition of a continual, thrumming refrain. Over its duration, this refrain evokes the hypnotic repetition of ritual music, drawing the listener deeper into Korwar's singular percussive world.
9. Yasmine Hamdan – I Remember I Forget
Coming off an eight-year break, Arab vocalist and composer Yasmine Hamdan re-emerges with a contemplative set of songs. She expands on the Arabic-sung, dub-tinged aesthetic that established her as a fixture in the Middle Eastern independent music landscape since the nineties. Hamdan's vocal delivery is soft and thoughtful, singing delicate melodies atop 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 quivering, yearning vocal technique against north African synth lines and skittering electronic percussion. The album's sound is minimal and understated, yet this austerity offers the ideal setting for Hamdan's emotive compositions to take center stage. The album proves to be truly deserving of the wait.
8. Debit – Desaceleradas
Mexican electronic artist Debit specializes in eerie reimaginings of archival audio. On her latest release, Desaceleradas, she turns her attention to the 1990s variant of cumbia rebajada – a decelerated, dub-inflected version of the shuffling Latin American musical style. Debit slows this sound to a near-halt, processing its signature synths and off-beat rhythm via veils of murk and noise to produce a new, sinister groove. At turns atmospheric and uneasy, Debit transforms the exuberant dancefloor sound of cumbia into a enduring, ghostly echo.
7. The São Paulo Producer DJ K – Liberator Radio!
Sheer intensity is the defining principle for the music of Brazilian producer Kaique Vieira, also known as DJ K. Pioneering his own genre of "bruxaria" (witchcraft), Vieira piles a cacophony of sirens, pummeling bass tones and screamed lyrics on top of the enduring Brazilian genre of baile funk. This captures the energetic sound of favela street parties. On his follow-up release, Radio Libertadora!, Vieira ramps up the intensity, incorporating everything from techno kick drums to samples of the Islamic call to prayer into his unruly bruxaria mix. The result is a especially hyperactive and deafeningly intense 40-minute sonic journey. Submit to the noise and Vieira's bold productions become oddly exhilarating.
Number Six: The Singer Mohinder Kaur Bhamra – Disco Punjabi
Religious vocalist Mohinder Kaur Bhamra's record from 1982 of disco music and traditional Punjabi tunes is a reissued masterpiece. Produced by her son, music producer Kuljit Bhamra, Punjabi Disco's ten tracks deliver an remarkably compelling blend of the metallic sound of early synthesizers and drum machines with her fluid Indian classical vocal technique. Drum machine patterns mimics the rolling tones of the tabla, while synth lines parallels the traditional sound of the reed organ on tracks such as Pyar Mainu Kar. Elsewhere, bossa nova rhythm takes center stage on Soniya Mukh Tera, and Nainan Da Pyar De Gaya boasts a up-tempo funky bass rhythm. It's a dancefloor fusion created over a decade before the Asian Underground explosion.
5. The Mongolian Artist Enji – Resonance
Mongolian singer Enji's soft latest record, Sonor, expands on her jazz-influenced sound to deliver some of her most wide-ranging music yet. Stepping outside her background in traditional Mongolian "long song" singing, the record's 11 tracks travel from the soft jazz-pop melodics of downtempo 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. Utilizing a live band rather than her typical setup of guitar and bass, Sonor's sound manages to stay intimate, inviting the listener into the gentle acoustics of her distinctive voice.
Number Four: Derya Yıldırım and Her Band – Yarın Yoksa
Channeling the psychedelic tradition of Anatolian rock pioneered by groups such as Moğollar, German-Turkish singer Derya Yıldırım's latest work with her band Grup Şimşek merges the distinctive buzz of the amplified traditional lute with drifting keyboard and classic soul melodies. It's a nostalgic vibe anchored in Yıldırım's powerful falsetto and shaped by producer Leon Michels' analogue tape aesthetic. Yet, on Turkish standards such as the nursery rhyme Hop Bico and 60s classic Ceylan, the group finds vibrant new territory. They develop slinking, downtempo grooves and lifting vocals that lend a novel, off-kilter spin to the Turkish psych sound.
Number Three: Lido Pimienta – La Belleza
Gregorian chants, Eastern European folk melodies and symphonic arrangements merge on Colombian-born singer Lido Pimienta's stunning fourth album. Arranging music for the sixty-member Medellín Philharmonic Orchestra, Pimienta and producer Owen Pallett explore a vast range including the liturgical vocals of opener Overturn (Obertura de la Luz Eterna) to the dramatic interweaving lines of Aún Te Quiero and the syncopated reggaeton-inspired beats of the woodwind-heavy El Dembow del Tiempo. Yet, it is Pim
