This Ten Top International Releases of the Year 2025
The past twelve months have offered a rich tapestry of worldwide releases that expanded horizons. 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 percussion could sound like it isn't the easiest listening experience. However, south Asian percussionist and producer Sarathy Korwar turns this driving beat into a unexpectedly magnetic piece. Directing an trio of three drummers, Korwar develops a dense percussive dialect over the record's ten sections. The work draws from Steve Reich's phasing motifs as well as traditional Indian musical phrasing, all anchored in the repetition of a persistent, driving refrain. As the album progresses, this refrain starts to mirror the trance-inducing cycles of ceremonial music, drawing the listener further into Korwar's singular percussive world.
9. Yasmine Hamdan – I Remember I Forget
Following an long absence, Lebanese vocalist and composer Yasmine Hamdan re-emerges with a contemplative album of songs. She expands on the Arabic-sung, dub-influenced style that cemented her status in the Middle Eastern independent music landscape since the 1990s. Hamdan's voice is quiet and thoughtful, delivering delicate melodies over the string arrangements of a track like Hon and the deep trip-hop beat of Vows. During more energetic moments such as Shadia and Abyss, she employs a trembling, longing vibrato over Maghrebi-inspired synth melodies and clattering electronic percussion. The musical backdrop is lean and restrained, yet this simplicity offers the perfect canvas for Hamdan's deeply felt lyricism to resonate. This is a record well worth the wait.
Number Eight: Debit – Slowed Down
From Mexico producer Debit specializes in eerie reimaginings of historical sounds. For her new album, Desaceleradas, she turns her attention to the 1990s variant of cumbia rebajada – a slowed, dubby version of the shuffling Latin American dance music genre. Debit drags this sound even further, filtering its characteristic synths and off-beat rhythm via sheets of murk and noise to generate a new, sinister rhythm. Sometimes ambient and uneasy, Debit morphs the celebratory dancefloor sound of cumbia into a lasting, spectral echo.
7. DJ K – Liberator Radio!
Maximalism is the defining principle for the music of São Paulo producer Kaique Vieira, AKA DJ K. Coining his own genre of "bruxaria" (witchcraft), Vieira piles a onslaught of alarms, pummeling bass tones and screamed lyrics on top of the enduring Brazilian genre of baile funk. This emulates the propulsive sound of urban celebrations. On his follow-up release, Radio Libertadora!, Vieira cranks up the intensity, 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 notably frenetic and punishingly loud forty-minute listening experience. Surrender to the noise and Vieira's unapologetic productions become strangely exhilarating.
6. The Singer Mohinder Kaur Bhamra – Disco Punjabi
Religious vocalist Mohinder Kaur Bhamra's record from 1982 of disco music and Punjabi folk melodies is a rediscovered masterpiece. Produced by her son, music producer Kuljit Bhamra, Punjabi Disco's ten tracks deliver an strikingly engaging combination of the metallic sound of electronic keyboards and programmed drums with her ornate Indian classical vocal technique. Electronic percussion mimics the undulating tones of the traditional drums, while synthesiser melody replicates the traditional sound of the reed organ on tracks such as Pyar Mainu Kar. Elsewhere, Latin-inflected grooves is prominent on Soniya Mukh Tera, and Nainan Da Pyar De Gaya channels a fast-paced funky bass rhythm. It's a party blend pioneered more than ten years before the Asian Underground explosion.
5. The Mongolian Artist Enji – Resonance
Mongolian singer Enji's delicate new release, Sonor, builds upon her jazz-inflected sound to offer some of her most diverse music so far. Moving away from her background in traditional Mongolian "long song" singing, the record's eleven songs range from the gentle jazz-pop melodies of downtempo number Ulbar to the German-language narration lyrics and trilling guitar lines of Unadag Dugui. The album also includes a lively, funk-tinged cover of the 80s Mongolian pop hit Eejiinhee Hairaar. Utilizing a ensemble rather than her typical setup of guitar and bass, Sonor's sound manages to stay personal, drawing the listener into the gentle soundscape of her unique voice.
4. Derya Yıldırım and Her Band – If There Is No Tomorrow
Drawing on the 1960s legacy of Turkish psychedelia established by groups such as Moğollar, German-Turkish singer Derya Yıldırım's new album with her band Grup Şimşek fuses the metallic twang of the electrified saz with dreamy Mellotron and R&B-inflected lines. It's a nostalgic vibe grounded in Yıldırım's strong falsetto and influenced by producer Leon Michels' analogue tape aesthetic. However, on Turkish standards such as the nursery rhyme Hop Bico and 1960s song Ceylan, the group ventures into dynamic new territory. They develop sinuous, slow-burning grooves and soaring vocals that give a new, quirky interpretation to the Anatolian psychedelic style.
Number Three: Lido Pimienta – La Belleza
Gregorian chants, Eastern European folk melodies and orchestral strings all come together on Colombian-born singer Lido Pimienta's extraordinary latest work. Arranging 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 syncopated dembow rhythms of the brass and woodwind-led El Dembow del Tiempo. It is Pim
