Our 10 Best International Records of the Year 2025
Looking back on the musical landscape of global releases that expanded horizons. Presenting a selection of ten exceptional albums that characterized the year in music.
10. Sarathy Korwar – There Already Is Beauty
The concept of a 40-minute, uninterrupted piece built on insistent percussion may not appear the most approachable listening experience. But, Indian percussionist and producer Sarathy Korwar transforms this driving beat into a strangely alluring piece. Directing an group of three drummers, Korwar creates a dense percussive vocabulary over the record's ten sections. His composition draws from Steve Reich's phasing motifs as well as Indian classical phrasing, each grounded in the recurrence of a continual, driving motif. Over its duration, this refrain evokes the hypnotic repetition of ritual music, drawing the listener deeper into Korwar's unique percussive realm.
Number Nine: Yasmine Hamdan – I Remember I Forget
Coming off an eight-year break, Arab vocalist and composer Yasmine Hamdan returns with a melancholy collection of songs. It continues exploring the Arabic-sung, dub-tinged aesthetic that cemented her status in the Middle Eastern independent music landscape since the 1990s. Hamdan's vocal delivery is soft and introspective, singing tender melodies atop the bowing strings of a track like Hon and the deep trip-hop groove of Vows. During more energetic moments such as Shadia and Abyss, she uses a quivering, yearning vocal technique over north African synth lines and clattering electronic percussion. The production is sparse and subtle, yet this minimalism provides the ideal setting for Hamdan's emotive compositions to take center stage. This is a record well worth the wait.
Number Eight: The Mexican Producer Debit – Desaceleradas
Mexican producer Debit specializes in haunting reimaginings of archival audio. For her new album, Desaceleradas, she focuses on the 90s style of cumbia rebajada – a decelerated, dub-inflected take of the shuffling Latin American dance genre. Debit decelerates this sound to a near-halt, filtering its signature synths and syncopated rhythm through sheets of distortion and static to produce a novel, sinister beat. At turns atmospheric and discomfiting, Debit converts the celebratory party music of cumbia into a persistent, ghostly afterimage.
7. DJ K – Liberator Radio!
Sensory overload is the key term for the records of Brazilian producer Kaique Vieira, also known as DJ K. Coining his own genre of "bruxaria" (witchcraft), Vieira stacks a cacophony of alarms, pummeling bass tones and screamed lyrics over the classic Brazilian genre of baile funk. This emulates the propulsive sound of favela street parties. On his second album, Radio Libertadora!, Vieira cranks up the ferocity, throwing in everything from techno kick drums to the sound of the Islamic call to prayer into his chaotic bruxaria mix. The result is a notably manic and overwhelmingly noisy 40-minute sonic journey. Submit to the cacophony and Vieira's unapologetic productions become oddly liberating.
6. Mohinder Kaur Bhamra – Disco Punjabi
Sikh devotional singer Mohinder Kaur Bhamra's early-80s release of disco music and Punjabi folk melodies is a newly appreciated gem. Produced by her son, music producer Kuljit Bhamra, Punjabi Disco's ten tracks deliver an strikingly captivating fusion of the sharp sound of electronic keyboards and drum machines with her fluid Indian classical vocal technique. Electronic percussion mimics the wavelike tones of the tabla, while synth lines replicates the classic sound of the harmonium 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 fast-paced funky bass rhythm. It's a party blend pioneered more than ten years before the Asian Underground explosion.
Number Five: The Mongolian Artist Enji – Resonance
Mongolian vocalist Enji's gentle fourth album, Sonor, expands on her jazz-inflected sound to deliver some of her broadest music so far. Moving away from her background in traditional Mongolian "long song" singing, the record's 11 tracks veer from the gentle jazz-pop melodies of downtempo number Ulbar to the German-language narration lyrics and twanging guitar lines of Unadag Dugui. The album also includes a energetic, funk-inflected cover of the 80s Mongolian pop hit Eejiinhee Hairaar. Featuring a live band rather than her standard setup of guitar and bass, Sonor's sound remains personal, drawing the listener into the gentle soundscape of her unique voice.
Number Four: Derya Yıldırım & Grup Şimşek – Yarın Yoksa
Drawing on the psychedelic tradition of Anatolian rock established by groups such as Moğollar, German-Turkish singer Derya Yıldırım's third record with her band Grup Şimşek blends the distinctive buzz of the electrified saz with woozy keyboard and R&B-inflected lines. It's a 1970s throwback sound grounded in Yıldırım's strong falsetto and shaped by producer Leon Michels' analogue tape aesthetic. Yet, on Turkish standards such as the folk tune Hop Bico and 1960s song Ceylan, the group reaches dynamic new territory. They develop slinking, downtempo grooves and powerful vocals that give a new, off-kilter interpretation to the Turkish psych sound.
3. Lido Pimienta – La Belleza
Catholic requiem mass music, Eastern European folk melodies and orchestral strings merge on Colombian-born singer Lido Pimienta's stunning latest work. 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 theatrical interweaving lines of Aún Te Quiero and the syncopated dembow rhythms of the brass and woodwind-led El Dembow del Tiempo. Ultimately, it is Pim
