This 10 Greatest International Albums of the Year 2025
As the year draws to a close, we reflect on the global sounds that pushed boundaries. Here is a countdown of ten remarkable 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 could sound like it isn't the most accessible musical proposition. However, south Asian drummer and composer Sarathy Korwar transforms this insistent rhythm into a hypnotically captivating work. Guiding an group of three drummers, Korwar creates a intricate percussive language across the record's ten sections. His composition channels Steve Reich's phasing motifs alongside classical Indian rhythmic patterns, each grounded in the repetition of a ongoing, pulsing motif. The longer one listens, this refrain begins to emulate the trance-inducing cycles of ceremonial music, pulling the listener further into Korwar's distinctive percussive world.
Number Nine: Yasmine Hamdan – I Forget, I Remember
Coming off an eight-year break, Lebanese singer-songwriter Yasmine Hamdan re-emerges with a melancholy set of songs. She expands on the Arabic-language, dub-influenced sound that made her a staple in the Middle Eastern independent music landscape since the 1990s. Hamdan's vocal delivery is gentle and introspective, singing tender melodies atop the bowing strings of a track like Hon and the deep trip-hop beat of Vows. For more upbeat numbers such as Shadia and Abyss, she uses a trembling, yearning vocal technique against electronic lines with North African flavors and rattling electronic percussion. The musical backdrop is minimal and restrained, yet this minimalism offers the ideal environment for Hamdan's deeply felt songwriting to take center stage. This is a record that justifies the wait.
8. Debit – Desaceleradas
Mexican producer Debit has a knack for uncanny reinterpretations of historical sounds. On her latest release, Desaceleradas, she focuses on the 1990s variant of cumbia rebajada – a slowed, dub-inflected version of the rhythmic Latin American dance genre. Debit decelerates this sound even further, filtering its signature synths and syncopated rhythm through veils of murk and hiss to generate a fresh, sinister rhythm. Sometimes atmospheric and discomfiting, Debit morphs the celebratory dancefloor sound of cumbia into a lasting, ghostly memory.
Number Seven: The São Paulo Producer DJ K – Liberator Radio!
Sensory overload is the key term for the records of Brazilian producer Kaique Vieira, who performs as DJ K. Inventing his own genre of "bruxaria" (witchcraft), Vieira layers a tumult of sirens, pummeling bass tones and screamed lyrics on top of the classic Brazilian dance style of baile funk. This captures the energetic sound of urban celebrations. On his second album, Radio Libertadora!, Vieira ramps up the intensity, incorporating everything from techno kick drums to the sound of the Islamic call to prayer into his chaotic bruxaria mix. The result is a particularly manic and overwhelmingly noisy 40-minute listening experience. Give in to the assault and Vieira's bold productions become strangely liberating.
6. The Singer Mohinder Kaur Bhamra – Punjabi Disco
Sikh devotional singer Mohinder Kaur Bhamra's early-80s release of disco music and traditional Punjabi tunes is a newly appreciated masterpiece. Recorded by her son, music producer Kuljit Bhamra, Punjabi Disco's ten tracks deliver an unusually compelling fusion of the metallic sound of electronic keyboards and programmed drums with her fluid classical Indian vocal technique. Drum machine patterns echoes the rolling tones of the tabla, while synthesiser melody parallels the traditional sound of the reed organ on tracks such as Pyar Mainu Kar. At other times, bossa nova rhythm takes center stage on Soniya Mukh Tera, and Nainan Da Pyar De Gaya boasts a driving 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
From Mongolia singer Enji's delicate latest record, Sonor, expands on her jazz-influenced sound to present some of her broadest music to date. Stepping outside her background in traditional Mongolian "long song" singing, the record's eleven songs travel from the gentle jazz-pop melodics of downtempo number Ulbar to the German spoken-word 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. Utilizing 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 gentle soundscape of her distinctive voice.
4. Derya Yıldırım & Grup Şimşek – If There Is No Tomorrow
Channeling the 1960s legacy of Turkish psychedelia established by groups such as Moğollar, German-Turkish singer Derya Yıldırım's latest work alongside her group merges the electric jangle of the electrified saz with dreamy Mellotron and soulful tunes. It's a 1970s throwback sound grounded in Yıldırım's powerful high register and influenced by producer Leon Michels' warm, tape-saturated sound. Yet, on Turkish standards such as the nursery rhyme Hop Bico and 1960s song Ceylan, the group finds vibrant new territory. They create slinking, slow-burning grooves and lifting vocals that impart a new, quirky interpretation to the Turkish psych sound.
Number Three: Lido Pimienta – La Belleza
Catholic requiem mass music, Czech harpsichord folksong and orchestral strings all come together on Colombian-born singer Lido Pimienta's extraordinary fourth album. Orchestrating music for the sixty-member Medellín Philharmonic Orchestra, Pimienta and producer Owen Pallett explore everything from the liturgical vocals of opener Overturn (Obertura de la Luz Eterna) to the dramatic interweaving lines of Aún Te Quiero and the rhythmic reggaeton-inspired beats of the brass and woodwind-led El Dembow del Tiempo. It is Pim
