Our 10 Top International Records of 2025
As the year draws to a close, we reflect on the worldwide music that pushed boundaries. Here is a countdown of ten exceptional albums that shaped the year in music.
Number Ten: Sarathy Korwar – There Already Is Beauty
The concept of a 40-minute, uninterrupted piece built on cyclical drumming might not seem the most approachable musical proposition. However, Indian percussionist and producer Sarathy Korwar turns this driving beat into a hypnotically captivating album. Directing an group of three drummers, Korwar crafts a complex percussive dialect across the record's 10 movements. The work draws from Steve Reich's phasing motifs combined with traditional Indian musical phrasing, everything tethered in the recurrence of a continual, thrumming refrain. Over its duration, this refrain starts to mirror the hypnotic repetition of ritual music, drawing the listener deeper into Korwar's singular percussive realm.
Number Nine: The Lebanese Artist Yasmine Hamdan – I Forget, I Remember
Following an hiatus of eight years, Lebanese vocalist and composer Yasmine Hamdan re-emerges with a mournful album of songs. She expands on the Arabic-sung, dub-influenced aesthetic that made her a staple in the Arab alternative scene since the nineties. Hamdan's voice is quiet and thoughtful, delivering delicate melodies atop the string arrangements of a track like Hon and the deep trip-hop groove of Vows. For more upbeat numbers such as Shadia and Abyss, she uses a wavering, yearning vibrato over electronic lines with North African flavors and clattering electronic percussion. The musical backdrop is sparse and subtle, yet this simplicity creates the ideal setting for Hamdan's expressive songwriting to take center stage. This is a record that justifies the wait.
Number Eight: Debit – Slowed Down
From Mexico electronic artist Debit has a knack for uncanny reimaginings of archival audio. For her most recent project, Desaceleradas, she zeroes in on the 90s style of cumbia rebajada – a slowed, dubby take of the rhythmic Latin American dance genre. Debit slows this sound down to a crawl, running its characteristic synths and syncopated rhythm via sheets of distortion and static to produce a new, foreboding rhythm. Periodically ambient and uneasy, Debit transforms the celebratory party music of cumbia into a persistent, spectral echo.
7. The São Paulo Producer DJ K – Liberator Radio!
Sensory overload is the defining principle for the records of São Paulo producer Kaique Vieira, who performs as DJ K. Coining his own genre of "bruxaria" (witchcraft), Vieira piles a tumult of alarms, explosive bass tones and shouted lyrics on top of the longstanding Brazilian genre of baile funk. This captures the energetic sound of urban celebrations. On his follow-up release, Radio Libertadora!, Vieira escalates the ferocity, adding everything from four-on-the-floor techno beats to samples of the Islamic call to prayer into his unruly bruxaria mix. The result is a particularly manic and punishingly loud 40-minute listening experience. Submit to the cacophony and Vieira's unapologetic productions become unexpectedly liberating.
Number Six: Mohinder Kaur Bhamra – Disco Punjabi
Religious vocalist Mohinder Kaur Bhamra's early-80s release of disco beats and traditional Punjabi tunes is a rediscovered treasure. Produced by her son, music producer Kuljit Bhamra, Punjabi Disco's ten tracks present an remarkably captivating blend of the sharp sound of 1980s synthesisers and programmed drums with her fluid Indian classical vocal technique. Drum machine patterns mirrors the rolling tones of the traditional drums, while synthesiser melody parallels the classic sound of the harmonium on tracks such as Pyar Mainu Kar. At other times, Latin-inflected grooves comes to the fore on Soniya Mukh Tera, and Nainan Da Pyar De Gaya features a driving funky bass rhythm. It's a dancefloor fusion delivered more than ten years before the rise of Asian Underground music.
Number Five: Enji – Sonor
From Mongolia vocalist Enji's gentle latest record, Sonor, builds upon her jazz-influenced sound to present some of her most diverse music to date. Stepping outside her background in traditional Mongolian "long song" singing, the record's eleven songs 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 energetic, funk-tinged cover of the 1980s Mongolian classic Eejiinhee Hairaar. Utilizing a full backing band rather than her standard setup of guitar and bass, Sonor's sound is still close, inviting the listener into the tender acoustics of her distinctive voice.
4. Derya Yıldırım and Her Band – Yarın Yoksa
Channeling the 1960s legacy of Anatolian rock pioneered by groups such as Moğollar, German-Turkish singer Derya Yıldırım's new album with her band Grup Şimşek merges the metallic twang of the electrified saz with woozy keyboard and soulful tunes. It's a 1970s throwback sound grounded in Yıldırım's powerful falsetto and shaped by producer Leon Michels' warm, tape-saturated sound. Yet, on classic Turkish songs such as the folk tune Hop Bico and 60s classic Ceylan, the group finds dynamic new territory. They create sinuous, downtempo grooves and lifting vocals that impart a novel, quirky spin to the Anatolian psychedelic style.
Number Three: Lido Pimienta – La Belleza
Sacred music, Czech harpsichord folksong and orchestral strings converge on Colombian-born singer Lido Pimienta's extraordinary 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 dramatic counterpoint melodies of Aún Te Quiero and the syncopated dembow rhythms of the woodwind-heavy El Dembow del Tiempo. Ultimately, it is Pim
