Our Ten Greatest Global Records of 2025

Looking back on the musical landscape of international sounds that expanded horizons. Presenting a selection of ten notable albums that shaped the year in music.

Number Ten: Sarathy Korwar – There Already Is Beauty

An album consisting of a single, extended movement of insistent percussion might not seem the most accessible listening experience. However, Indian percussionist and producer Sarathy Korwar turns this insistent rhythm into a unexpectedly magnetic work. Guiding an trio of three drummers, Korwar crafts a complex percussive vocabulary across the record's ten sections. The album references minimalist concepts from Steve Reich combined with traditional Indian musical phrasing, all anchored in the repetition of a ongoing, driving motif. Over its duration, this refrain evokes the hypnotic repetition of ritual music, luring the listener deeper into Korwar's distinctive percussive realm.

Number Nine: The Lebanese Artist Yasmine Hamdan – I Remember I Forget

Coming off an long absence, Lebanese singer-songwriter Yasmine Hamdan makes a comeback with a melancholy collection of songs. It continues exploring the Arabic-sung, dub-influenced aesthetic that established her as a fixture in the region's indie music scene since the 1990s. Hamdan's vocal delivery is soft and thoughtful, delivering soft melodies over 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 employs a wavering, yearning vibrato against electronic lines with North African flavors and rattling electronic percussion. The musical backdrop is sparse and understated, yet this minimalism provides the ideal environment for Hamdan's deeply felt lyricism to shine through. This is a record well worth the long anticipation.

Number Eight: Debit – Slowed Down

From Mexico electronic artist Debit has a knack for uncanny reimaginings of archival audio. On her most recent project, Desaceleradas, she turns her attention to the 90s style of cumbia rebajada – a slowed, dubby take of the shuffling Latin American dance genre. Debit decelerates this sound to a near-halt, filtering its signature synths and off-beat rhythm through layers of murk and static to generate a novel, menacing rhythm. Periodically atmospheric and discomfiting, Debit converts the celebratory party music of cumbia into a persistent, ghostly memory.

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

Sensory overload is the key term for the music of São Paulo producer Kaique Vieira, who performs as DJ K. Coining his own genre of "bruxaria" (witchcraft), Vieira stacks a cacophony of sirens, pummeling bass tones and screamed lyrics on top of the classic Brazilian dance style of baile funk. This captures the driving sound of urban celebrations. On his second album, Radio Libertadora!, Vieira escalates the energy, incorporating everything from techno kick drums to samples of the Islamic call to prayer into his frantic bruxaria mix. The result is a especially frenetic and deafeningly intense forty-minute sonic journey. Surrender to the cacophony and Vieira's unapologetic productions become oddly freeing.

Number Six: The Singer Mohinder Kaur Bhamra – Punjabi Disco

Religious vocalist Mohinder Kaur Bhamra's record from 1982 of disco beats and Punjabi folk melodies is a newly appreciated treasure. Produced by her son, music producer Kuljit Bhamra, Punjabi Disco's ten tracks present an unusually compelling fusion of the sharp sound of 1980s synthesisers and drum machines with her melismatic classical Indian vocal technique. Drum machine patterns mimics the undulating tones of the tabla, while synthesiser melody parallels the traditional sound of the reed organ on tracks such as Pyar Mainu Kar. Elsewhere, bossa nova rhythm is prominent on Soniya Mukh Tera, and Nainan Da Pyar De Gaya boasts a up-tempo walking disco bassline. It's a club-ready hybrid delivered over a decade before the rise of Asian Underground music.

Number Five: Enji – Resonance

From Mongolia singer Enji's gentle fourth album, Sonor, develops her jazz-inflected sound to deliver some of her most wide-ranging music so far. Stepping outside her background in traditional Mongolian "long song" singing, the record's selection of pieces travel from the gentle jazz-pop melodies of slow-burning number Ulbar to the German-language narration lyrics and trilling guitar lines of Unadag Dugui. The album also includes a sprightly, funk-inflected cover of the 80s Mongolian pop hit Eejiinhee Hairaar. Showcasing a live band rather than her usual setup of guitar and bass, Sonor's sound remains intimate, pulling the listener into the tender soundscape of her distinctive voice.

Number Four: Derya Yıldırım and Her Band – If There Is No Tomorrow

Inspired by the 1960s legacy 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 metallic twang of the electrified saz with dreamy keyboard and soulful tunes. It's a 1970s throwback sound grounded in Yıldırım's commanding high register and influenced by producer Leon Michels' warm, tape-saturated sound. But, on classic Turkish songs such as the folk tune Hop Bico and 1960s song Ceylan, the group reaches vibrant new territory. They develop smooth, slow-burning grooves and lifting vocals that lend a fresh, off-kilter spin to the Anatolian psychedelic style.

Number Three: The Colombian Artist Lido Pimienta – La Belleza

Sacred music, Eastern European folk melodies and orchestral strings converge on Colombian-born singer Lido Pimienta's stunning latest work. Orchestrating music for the sixty-member Medellín Philharmonic Orchestra, Pimienta and producer Owen Pallett journey through a vast range including the Gregorian chants of opener Overturn (Obertura de la Luz Eterna) to the theatrical counterpoint melodies of Aún Te Quiero and the rhythmic reggaeton-inspired beats of the woodwind-heavy El Dembow del Tiempo. It is Pim