This 10 Greatest Global Records of 2025

Looking back on the musical landscape of global music that defied expectations. Presenting a selection of ten remarkable albums that shaped the year in music.

10. The Percussionist Sarathy Korwar – There Already Is Beauty

The concept of a 40-minute, uninterrupted piece built on insistent drumming could sound like it isn't the most accessible musical proposition. However, Indian drummer and composer Sarathy Korwar turns this insistent rhythm into a unexpectedly magnetic piece. Directing an group of three drummers, Korwar creates a dense percussive vocabulary across the record's ten parts. The album channels Steve Reich's phasing motifs combined with Indian classical phrasing, everything tethered in the repetition of a persistent, driving refrain. As the album progresses, this refrain starts to mirror the hypnotic repetition of ritual music, drawing the listener further into Korwar's distinctive percussive world.

9. Yasmine Hamdan – I Forget, I Remember

Coming off an hiatus of eight years, Lebanese singer-songwriter Yasmine Hamdan makes a comeback with a contemplative album of songs. It continues exploring the Arabic-language, dub-influenced style that made her a staple in the Middle Eastern independent music landscape since the nineties. Hamdan's voice is soft and introspective, singing tender melodies over the bowing strings of a track like Hon and the rolling trip-hop groove of Vows. On livelier tracks such as Shadia and Abyss, she adopts a quivering, longing vibrato over electronic lines with North African flavors and rattling electronic percussion. The album's sound is lean and understated, yet this simplicity offers the ideal environment for Hamdan's expressive lyricism to take center stage. It is truly deserving of the long anticipation.

Number Eight: Debit – Desaceleradas

From Mexico producer Debit specializes in uncanny reinterpretations of historical sounds. For her new album, Desaceleradas, she focuses on the 1990s variant of cumbia rebajada – a slowed, dubby take of the rhythmic Latin American dance music genre. Debit decelerates this sound even further, processing its characteristic synths and off-beat rhythm via sheets of sludge and static to produce a novel, foreboding rhythm. Sometimes ambient and uneasy, Debit converts the celebratory party music of cumbia into a enduring, ethereal echo.

7. The São Paulo Producer DJ K – Liberator Radio!

Sensory overload is the operative word for the records of São Paulo producer Kaique Vieira, AKA DJ K. Coining his own genre of "bruxaria" (witchcraft), Vieira stacks a onslaught of alarms, explosive bass tones and shouted lyrics over the classic Brazilian dance style of baile funk. This captures the propulsive sound of favela street parties. On his second album, Radio Libertadora!, Vieira cranks up the energy, incorporating 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 overwhelmingly noisy forty-minute sonic journey. Give in to the cacophony and Vieira's bold productions become unexpectedly exhilarating.

Number Six: The Singer Mohinder Kaur Bhamra – Punjabi Disco

Sikh devotional singer Mohinder Kaur Bhamra's early-80s release of disco music and Punjabi folk melodies is a newly appreciated masterpiece. Recorded by her son, music producer Kuljit Bhamra, Punjabi Disco's ten tracks offer an unusually engaging combination of the sharp sound of 1980s synthesisers and programmed drums with her ornate classical Indian singing style. Drum machine patterns echoes the undulating tones of the traditional drums, while synthesiser melody doubles the traditional sound of the reed organ on tracks such as Pyar Mainu Kar. Elsewhere, Latin-inflected grooves comes to the fore on Soniya Mukh Tera, and Nainan Da Pyar De Gaya channels a fast-paced walking disco bassline. It's a club-ready hybrid delivered over a decade before the Asian Underground explosion.

Number Five: Enji – Resonance

From Mongolia vocalist Enji's gentle latest record, Sonor, develops her jazz-inflected sound to offer some of her broadest music yet. Departing from her training in traditional Mongolian "long song" singing, the record's selection of pieces travel from the gentle jazz-pop melodies of slow-burning number Ulbar to the German spoken-word lyrics and trilling guitar lines of Unadag Dugui. The album also includes a sprightly, funk-tinged cover of the 1980s Mongolian classic Eejiinhee Hairaar. Utilizing a full backing band rather than her typical setup of guitar and bass, Sonor's sound manages to stay close, inviting the listener into the warm soundscape of her singular voice.

Number Four: Derya Yıldırım & Grup Şimşek – Yarın Yoksa

Drawing on the 1960s legacy of Anatolian rock pioneered by groups such as Moğollar, Turkish-born, Germany-based singer Derya Yıldırım's third record alongside her group merges the electric jangle of the amplified traditional lute with drifting 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 aesthetic. However, on Turkish standards such as the nursery rhyme Hop Bico and 1960s song Ceylan, the group finds lively new territory. They create slinking, downtempo grooves and soaring vocals that lend a novel, off-kilter interpretation to the Turkish psych sound.

3. The Colombian Artist Lido Pimienta – La Belleza

Gregorian chants, Eastern European folk melodies and symphonic arrangements all come together on Colombian singer Lido Pimienta's stunning 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 theatrical counterpoint melodies of Aún Te Quiero and the rhythmic reggaeton-inspired beats of the woodwind-heavy El Dembow del Tiempo. It is Pim