Our 10 Top International Records of 2025
Looking back on the musical landscape of worldwide releases that pushed boundaries. Here is a countdown of ten remarkable albums that characterized the year in music.
Number Ten: The Percussionist Sarathy Korwar – There Already Is Beauty
A continuous, 40-minute suite of insistent percussion might not seem the easiest musical proposition. However, Indian percussionist and producer Sarathy Korwar transforms this insistent rhythm into a strangely alluring work. Directing an trio of three drummers, Korwar creates a dense percussive dialect across the record's ten parts. The work references Steve Reich's phasing motifs as well as Indian classical phrasing, all anchored in the reiteration of a continual, driving refrain. As the album progresses, this refrain begins to emulate the hypnotic repetition of devotional music, pulling the listener further into Korwar's distinctive percussive world.
Number Nine: Yasmine Hamdan – I Remember I Forget
After an long absence, Arab vocalist and composer Yasmine Hamdan returns with a mournful set of songs. It continues exploring the Arabic-language, 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 thoughtful, singing soft melodies over the string arrangements of a track like Hon and the deep trip-hop beat of Vows. On livelier tracks such as Shadia and Abyss, she adopts a quivering, yearning vibrato against north African synth lines and clattering electronic percussion. The musical backdrop is lean and subtle, yet this austerity offers the ideal environment for Hamdan's emotive songwriting to take center stage. This is a record well worth the long anticipation.
8. Debit – Desaceleradas
Mexican producer Debit has a knack for uncanny reinterpretations of historical sounds. On her new album, Desaceleradas, she focuses on the 1990s variant of cumbia rebajada – a decelerated, dubby version of the shuffling Latin American dance music genre. Debit decelerates this sound down to a crawl, running its characteristic synths and syncopated rhythm via sheets of distortion and static to generate a fresh, menacing rhythm. At turns atmospheric and discomfiting, Debit morphs the joyous party music of cumbia into a lasting, ghostly memory.
7. The São Paulo Producer DJ K – Liberator Radio!
Maximalism is the operative word for the music of São Paulo producer Kaique Vieira, AKA DJ K. Coining his own genre of "bruxaria" (witchcraft), Vieira stacks a tumult of alarms, pummeling bass tones and screamed lyrics over the longstanding Brazilian genre of baile funk. This captures the driving sound of favela street parties. On his follow-up release, Radio Libertadora!, Vieira cranks up the ferocity, throwing in everything from techno kick drums to the sound of the Islamic call to prayer into his unruly bruxaria mix. The result is a notably frenetic and punishingly loud 40-minute listening experience. Give in to the assault and Vieira's unapologetic productions become oddly exhilarating.
Number Six: Mohinder Kaur Bhamra – Disco Punjabi
Religious vocalist Mohinder Kaur Bhamra's record from 1982 of disco music and Punjabi folk melodies is a rediscovered gem. Produced by her son, music producer Kuljit Bhamra, Punjabi Disco's ten tracks deliver an strikingly engaging combination of the metallic sound of electronic keyboards and programmed drums with her melismatic classical Indian vocal technique. Electronic percussion echoes the rolling tones of the traditional drums, while synth lines replicates the traditional sound of the harmonium on tracks such as Pyar Mainu Kar. Elsewhere, bossa nova rhythm comes to the fore on Soniya Mukh Tera, and Nainan Da Pyar De Gaya boasts a fast-paced funky bass rhythm. It's a party blend pioneered over a decade before the Asian Underground explosion.
Number Five: Enji – Sonor
Mongolian singer Enji's soft fourth album, Sonor, develops her jazz-influenced sound to offer some of her most wide-ranging music so far. Moving away from her training in traditional Mongolian "long song" singing, the record's selection of pieces veer from the gentle jazz-pop melodics of slow-burning number Ulbar to the German-language narration lyrics and twanging guitar lines of Unadag Dugui. The album also includes a lively, funk-inflected cover of the 80s Mongolian pop hit Eejiinhee Hairaar. Showcasing a ensemble rather than her standard setup of guitar and bass, Sonor's sound remains intimate, inviting the listener into the gentle acoustics of her unique voice.
4. Derya Yıldırım and Her Band – Yarın Yoksa
Drawing on the 60s heritage of Turkish psychedelia established by groups such as Moğollar, German-Turkish singer Derya Yıldırım's new album with her band Grup Şimşek merges the electric jangle of the amplified traditional lute with woozy keyboard and soulful tunes. It's a 1970s throwback sound anchored in Yıldırım's commanding falsetto and shaped by producer Leon Michels' analogue tape aesthetic. Yet, on Turkish standards such as the nursery rhyme Hop Bico and 1960s song Ceylan, the group reaches vibrant new territory. They develop sinuous, slow-burning grooves and lifting vocals that lend a novel, unconventional twist to the Turkish psych sound.
3. Lido Pimienta – La Belleza
Catholic requiem mass music, Czech harpsichord folksong and orchestral strings all come together on Colombian-born singer Lido Pimienta's remarkable 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 interweaving lines of Aún Te Quiero and the rhythmic reggaeton-inspired beats of the brass and woodwind-led El Dembow del Tiempo. Ultimately, it is Pim
