This 10 Best Global Albums of This Past Year
Looking back on the musical landscape of international music that defied expectations. We explore ten remarkable albums that shaped the year in music.
10. The Percussionist Sarathy Korwar – There Is Beauty, There Already
An album consisting of a single, extended movement of cyclical percussion could sound like it isn't the most accessible musical proposition. Yet, south Asian drummer and composer Sarathy Korwar transforms this driving beat into a unexpectedly magnetic work. Guiding an group of three drummers, Korwar develops a complex percussive dialect over the record's ten parts. The work references Steve Reich's phasing motifs alongside traditional Indian musical phrasing, each grounded in the reiteration of a ongoing, driving motif. As the album progresses, this refrain evokes the trance-inducing cycles of devotional music, luring the listener deeper into Korwar's distinctive percussive world.
9. The Lebanese Artist Yasmine Hamdan – I Forget, I Remember
Coming off an eight-year break, Arab singer-songwriter Yasmine Hamdan re-emerges with a melancholy set of songs. The work builds upon the Arabic-language, dub-influenced style that cemented her status in the Arab alternative scene since the nineties. Hamdan's voice is soft and introspective, delivering tender melodies over the string arrangements of a track like Hon and the rumbling trip-hop beat of Vows. For more upbeat numbers such as Shadia and Abyss, she adopts a trembling, yearning vibrato over electronic lines with North African flavors and rattling electronic percussion. The production is minimal and understated, yet this minimalism creates the perfect canvas for Hamdan's deeply felt lyricism to resonate. This is a record that justifies the long anticipation.
Number Eight: The Mexican Producer Debit – Slowed Down
From Mexico producer Debit excels at uncanny reimaginings of archival audio. For her most recent project, Desaceleradas, she turns her attention to the 90s style of cumbia rebajada – a decelerated, dub-inflected interpretation of the shuffling Latin American dance music genre. Debit drags this sound down to a crawl, processing its characteristic synths and off-beat rhythm via sheets of murk and noise to create a novel, menacing groove. Periodically atmospheric and discomfiting, Debit transforms the joyous dancefloor sound of cumbia into a lasting, spectral memory.
7. DJ K – Radio Libertadora!
Maximalism is the defining principle for the output of Brazilian producer Kaique Vieira, AKA DJ K. Pioneering his own genre of "bruxaria" (witchcraft), Vieira stacks a onslaught of alarms, pummeling bass tones and screamed lyrics over the enduring Brazilian dance style of baile funk. This captures the energetic sound of urban celebrations. On his second album, Radio Libertadora!, Vieira escalates the intensity, throwing in everything from four-on-the-floor techno beats to samples of the Islamic call to prayer into his chaotic bruxaria mix. The result is a especially manic and deafeningly intense forty-minute listening experience. Surrender to the noise and Vieira's unapologetic productions become oddly liberating.
6. Mohinder Kaur Bhamra – Disco Punjabi
Sikh devotional singer Mohinder Kaur Bhamra's record from 1982 of disco beats and Punjabi folk melodies is a newly appreciated gem. Produced by her son, music producer Kuljit Bhamra, Punjabi Disco's ten tracks present an unusually compelling combination of the sharp sound of 1980s synthesisers and drum machines with her ornate classical Indian vocal technique. Electronic percussion mirrors the rolling tones of the traditional drums, while synthesiser melody parallels the classic sound of the reed organ on tracks such as Pyar Mainu Kar. Meanwhile, bossa nova rhythm takes center stage on Soniya Mukh Tera, and Nainan Da Pyar De Gaya channels a fast-paced walking disco bassline. It's a party blend pioneered more than ten years before the rise of Asian Underground music.
Number Five: The Mongolian Artist Enji – Resonance
Mongolian singer Enji's delicate fourth album, Sonor, expands on her jazz-influenced sound to present some of her most wide-ranging music yet. Moving away from her background in traditional Mongolian "long song" singing, the record's eleven songs travel 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 sprightly, funk-tinged cover of the 1980s Mongolian classic Eejiinhee Hairaar. Showcasing a ensemble rather than her standard setup of guitar and bass, Sonor's sound manages to stay close, drawing the listener into the gentle soundscape of her distinctive voice.
4. Derya Yıldırım and Her Band – Yarın Yoksa
Channeling the psychedelic tradition of Anatolian rock pioneered by groups such as Moğollar, Turkish-born, Germany-based singer Derya Yıldırım's third record with her band Grup Şimşek fuses the distinctive buzz of the amplified traditional lute with dreamy Mellotron and R&B-inflected lines. It's a nostalgic vibe grounded in Yıldırım's strong falsetto and shaped by producer Leon Michels' analogue tape aesthetic. However, on classic Turkish songs such as the nursery rhyme Hop Bico and 60s classic Ceylan, the group finds vibrant new territory. They craft smooth, downtempo grooves and soaring vocals that impart a novel, unconventional twist to the Anatolian psychedelic style.
3. Lido Pimienta – La Belleza
Catholic requiem mass music, Eastern European folk melodies and orchestral strings all come together on Colombian singer Lido Pimienta's extraordinary fourth album. 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 counterpoint melodies of Aún Te Quiero and the rhythmic dembow rhythms of the brass and woodwind-led El Dembow del Tiempo. Ultimately, it is Pim
