The 10 Top Global Releases of This Past Year

The past twelve months have offered a rich tapestry of global music that defied expectations. Presenting a selection of ten notable albums that shaped the year in music.

Number Ten: The Percussionist Sarathy Korwar – There Is Beauty, There Already

A continuous, 40-minute suite of repetitive percussion might not seem the most approachable musical proposition. However, Indian drummer and composer Sarathy Korwar converts this persistent pulse into a unexpectedly magnetic piece. Leading an group of three drummers, Korwar develops a dense percussive dialect across the record's 10 movements. The work references the phasing techniques of Steve Reich as well as traditional Indian musical phrasing, each grounded in the repetition of a continual, thrumming motif. As the album progresses, this refrain starts to mirror the trance-inducing cycles of ritual music, drawing the listener deeper into Korwar's singular percussive realm.

9. The Lebanese Artist Yasmine Hamdan – I Forget, I Remember

After an long absence, Arab vocalist and composer Yasmine Hamdan re-emerges with a contemplative set of songs. It continues exploring the Arabic-sung, dub-influenced sound that established her as a fixture in the Middle Eastern independent music landscape since the 1990s. Hamdan's vocal delivery is gentle and ruminative, singing tender melodies atop the bowing strings of a track like Hon and the rumbling trip-hop beat of Vows. On livelier tracks such as Shadia and Abyss, she adopts a trembling, yearning vocal technique over electronic lines with North African flavors and rattling electronic percussion. The album's sound is minimal and restrained, yet this minimalism provides the perfect setting for Hamdan's emotive compositions to take center stage. This is a record well worth the long anticipation.

Number Eight: Debit – Desaceleradas

Mexican producer Debit excels at uncanny reinterpretations of traditional music. For her most recent project, Desaceleradas, she turns her attention to the 1990s variant of cumbia rebajada – a decelerated, dubby take of the rhythmic Latin American musical style. Debit decelerates this sound to a near-halt, filtering its signature synths and off-beat rhythm via sheets of sludge and noise to produce a fresh, sinister beat. Periodically atmospheric and discomfiting, Debit transforms the exuberant party music of cumbia into a persistent, ethereal memory.

Number Seven: DJ K – Liberator Radio!

Sensory overload is the operative word for the output of Brazilian producer Kaique Vieira, also known as DJ K. Pioneering his own genre of "bruxaria" (witchcraft), Vieira stacks a tumult of sirens, pummeling bass tones and shouted lyrics on top of the enduring Brazilian dance style of baile funk. This emulates the propulsive sound of neighborhood block parties. On his follow-up release, Radio Libertadora!, Vieira escalates the ferocity, incorporating 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 frenetic and overwhelmingly noisy forty-minute listening experience. Surrender to the cacophony and Vieira's unapologetic productions become oddly liberating.

6. The Singer Mohinder Kaur Bhamra – Disco Punjabi

Sikh devotional singer Mohinder Kaur Bhamra's record from 1982 of disco beats and traditional Punjabi tunes is a rediscovered gem. Produced by her son, music producer Kuljit Bhamra, Punjabi Disco's ten tracks deliver an unusually engaging combination of the metallic sound of 1980s synthesisers and drum machines with her melismatic Indian classical singing style. Electronic percussion mimics the undulating tones of the traditional drums, while synthesiser melody replicates the classic sound of the reed organ on tracks such as Pyar Mainu Kar. Meanwhile, Latin-inflected grooves takes center stage on Soniya Mukh Tera, and Nainan Da Pyar De Gaya boasts a up-tempo disco bass groove. It's a club-ready hybrid created more than ten years before the global breakthrough of South Asian electronic music.

Number Five: Enji – Resonance

Mongolian singer Enji's delicate latest record, Sonor, expands on her jazz-inflected sound to offer some of her most diverse music to date. Departing from her background in traditional Mongolian "long song" singing, the record's selection of pieces veer from the gentle jazz-pop melodies of slow-burning number Ulbar to the German-language narration lyrics and twanging guitar lines of Unadag Dugui. The album also includes a sprightly, funk-inflected cover of the 1980s Mongolian classic Eejiinhee Hairaar. Featuring a full backing band rather than her typical setup of guitar and bass, Sonor's sound manages to stay intimate, pulling the listener into the warm acoustics of her unique voice.

4. Derya Yıldırım & Grup Şimşek – If There Is No Tomorrow

Inspired by 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 blends the distinctive buzz of the amplified traditional lute with dreamy keyboard and classic soul melodies. It's a retro-70s aesthetic anchored in Yıldırım's strong falsetto and influenced by producer Leon Michels' analogue tape sound. 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 powerful vocals that give a fresh, unconventional twist to the Turkish psych sound.

3. The Colombian Artist Lido Pimienta – La Belleza

Gregorian chants, Czech harpsichord folksong and symphonic arrangements all come together on Colombian-born singer Lido Pimienta's extraordinary fourth album. Arranging 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 counterpoint melodies of Aún Te Quiero and the rhythmic dembow rhythms of the woodwind-heavy El Dembow del Tiempo. It is Pim