Our 10 Most Outstanding Global Records of This Past Year
As the year draws to a close, we reflect on the global music that defied expectations. Here is a countdown of ten exceptional albums that shaped the year in music.
10. Sarathy Korwar – There Is Beauty, There Already
A continuous, 40-minute suite of insistent percussion might not seem the easiest listening experience. However, Indian drummer and composer Sarathy Korwar transforms this insistent rhythm into a strangely alluring album. Leading an ensemble 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 traditional Indian musical phrasing, all anchored in the reiteration of a persistent, driving refrain. Over its duration, this refrain evokes the ceremonial rhythm of devotional music, luring the listener further into Korwar's distinctive percussive universe.
9. The Lebanese Artist Yasmine Hamdan – I Forget, I Remember
After an eight-year break, Arab vocalist and composer Yasmine Hamdan re-emerges with a contemplative album of songs. It continues exploring the Arabic-language, dub-tinged aesthetic that established her as a fixture in the region's indie music scene since the 1990s. Hamdan's voice is quiet and introspective, singing tender melodies over the string arrangements of a track like Hon and the rumbling trip-hop beat of Vows. During more energetic moments such as Shadia and Abyss, she employs a quivering, yearning vocal technique against north African synth lines and rattling electronic percussion. The production is sparse and understated, yet this simplicity provides the ideal environment for Hamdan's deeply felt songwriting to take center stage. It is truly deserving of the long anticipation.
Number Eight: The Mexican Producer Debit – Desaceleradas
From Mexico electronic artist Debit specializes in haunting reimaginings of historical sounds. On her most recent project, Desaceleradas, she turns her attention to the 90s style of cumbia rebajada – a slowed, dubby version of the rhythmic Latin American dance genre. Debit drags this sound even further, running its signature synths and off-beat rhythm through veils of murk and hiss to generate a fresh, foreboding rhythm. At turns ambient and unsettling, Debit morphs the joyous party music of cumbia into a lasting, spectral memory.
Number Seven: The São Paulo Producer DJ K – Radio Libertadora!
Sensory overload is the defining principle for the music of São Paulo producer Kaique Vieira, also known as DJ K. Inventing his own genre of "bruxaria" (witchcraft), Vieira stacks a cacophony of sirens, pummeling bass tones and shouted lyrics on top of the classic Brazilian dance style of baile funk. This captures the propulsive sound of neighborhood block parties. On his follow-up release, Radio Libertadora!, Vieira ramps up the intensity, adding 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 frenetic and punishingly loud forty-minute sonic journey. Submit to the assault and Vieira's bold productions become strangely freeing.
Number Six: Mohinder Kaur Bhamra – Disco Punjabi
Sikh devotional singer Mohinder Kaur Bhamra's early-80s release of disco music and traditional Punjabi tunes is a rediscovered masterpiece. Produced by her son, music producer Kuljit Bhamra, Punjabi Disco's ten tracks offer an strikingly compelling combination of the metallic sound of early synthesizers and programmed drums with her fluid classical Indian singing style. Drum machine patterns echoes the wavelike tones of the traditional drums, while synthesiser melody replicates the traditional sound of the harmonium on tracks such as Pyar Mainu Kar. Elsewhere, Latin-inflected grooves takes center stage on Soniya Mukh Tera, and Nainan Da Pyar De Gaya features a driving disco bass groove. It's a club-ready hybrid pioneered more than ten years before the rise of Asian Underground music.
Number Five: Enji – Resonance
Mongolian vocalist Enji's soft new release, Sonor, expands on her jazz-inflected sound to offer some of her most diverse music so far. Departing from her background in traditional Mongolian "long song" singing, the record's 11 tracks veer from the gentle jazz-pop melodics of slow-burning 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. Featuring a ensemble rather than her standard setup of guitar and bass, Sonor's sound manages to stay personal, drawing the listener into the tender acoustics of her distinctive voice.
4. Derya Yıldırım and Her Band – Yarın Yoksa
Inspired by the psychedelic tradition of Turkish psychedelia established by groups such as Moğollar, German-Turkish singer Derya Yıldırım's third record alongside her group fuses the electric jangle of the electrified saz with woozy Mellotron and soulful tunes. It's a 1970s throwback sound anchored in Yıldırım's powerful falsetto and influenced by producer Leon Michels' warm, tape-saturated sound. But, on Turkish standards such as the nursery rhyme Hop Bico and 60s classic Ceylan, the group ventures into vibrant new territory. They develop sinuous, slow-burning grooves and soaring vocals that give a new, unconventional interpretation to the Anatolian psychedelic style.
Number Three: The Colombian Artist Lido Pimienta – The Beauty
Catholic requiem mass music, Czech harpsichord folksong and symphonic arrangements merge on Colombian-born singer Lido Pimienta's extraordinary fourth album. Arranging music for the 60-piece Medellín Philharmonic Orchestra, Pimienta and producer Owen Pallett journey through a vast range including the liturgical vocals of opener Overturn (Obertura de la Luz Eterna) to the theatrical interweaving lines of Aún Te Quiero and the rhythmic reggaeton-inspired beats of the brass and woodwind-led El Dembow del Tiempo. Yet, it is Pim