The 10 Best Worldwide Albums of 2025
Looking back on the musical landscape of global sounds that defied expectations. We explore ten remarkable albums that shaped the year in music.
Number Ten: The Percussionist Sarathy Korwar – There Already Is Beauty
An album consisting of a single, extended movement of repetitive percussion might not seem the easiest musical proposition. However, south Asian percussionist and producer Sarathy Korwar turns this insistent rhythm into a strangely alluring piece. Guiding an group of three drummers, Korwar develops a dense percussive dialect over the record's 10 movements. The album references the phasing techniques of Steve Reich as well as Indian classical phrasing, everything tethered in the repetition of a ongoing, thrumming figure. The longer one listens, this refrain evokes the trance-inducing cycles of devotional music, luring the listener deeper into Korwar's singular percussive world.
Number Nine: Yasmine Hamdan – I Forget, I Remember
Coming off an hiatus of eight years, Lebanese vocalist and composer Yasmine Hamdan returns with a mournful album of songs. She expands on the Arabic-language, dub-influenced style that cemented her status in the region's indie music scene since the 1990s. Hamdan's vocal delivery is gentle and introspective, singing tender melodies atop the string arrangements of a track like Hon and the rolling trip-hop groove of Vows. For more upbeat numbers such as Shadia and Abyss, she uses a quivering, yearning vocal technique against electronic lines with North African flavors and clattering electronic percussion. The musical backdrop is lean and restrained, yet this austerity creates the ideal canvas for Hamdan's expressive songwriting to shine through. The album proves to be that justifies the wait.
Number Eight: Debit – Slowed Down
Mexican electronic artist Debit has a knack for uncanny reinterpretations of historical sounds. On her new album, Desaceleradas, she focuses on the 90s style of cumbia rebajada – a slowed, dub-inflected interpretation of the rhythmic Latin American dance genre. Debit drags this sound even further, processing its signature synths and syncopated rhythm via sheets of murk and static to produce a fresh, menacing groove. Sometimes ambient and discomfiting, Debit morphs the joyous party music of cumbia into a lasting, spectral memory.
7. DJ K – Radio Libertadora!
Sheer intensity is the operative word for the music of Brazilian producer Kaique Vieira, who performs as DJ K. Inventing his own genre of "bruxaria" (witchcraft), Vieira stacks a cacophony of alarms, explosive bass tones and screamed lyrics on top of the longstanding Brazilian dance style of baile funk. This recreates the propulsive sound of favela street parties. On his follow-up release, Radio Libertadora!, Vieira cranks up the intensity, 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 deafeningly intense 40-minute sonic journey. Submit to the noise and Vieira's bold productions become oddly liberating.
Number Six: The Singer Mohinder Kaur Bhamra – Disco Punjabi
Religious vocalist Mohinder Kaur Bhamra's record from 1982 of disco music and traditional Punjabi tunes is a rediscovered gem. Recorded by her son, music producer Kuljit Bhamra, Punjabi Disco's ten tracks offer an strikingly engaging blend of the sharp sound of 1980s synthesisers and drum machines with her ornate Indian classical singing style. Electronic percussion mirrors the rolling tones of the traditional drums, while synthesiser melody parallels the traditional sound of the harmonium on tracks such as Pyar Mainu Kar. At other times, Latin-inflected grooves comes to the fore on Soniya Mukh Tera, and Nainan Da Pyar De Gaya boasts a up-tempo disco bass groove. It's a dancefloor fusion delivered more than ten years before the Asian Underground explosion.
5. The Mongolian Artist Enji – Sonor
Mongolian vocalist Enji's gentle latest record, Sonor, expands on her jazz-inflected sound to present some of her most wide-ranging music yet. Moving away from her training in traditional Mongolian "long song" singing, the record's selection of pieces travel from the soft Norah Jones-esque melodics of downtempo number Ulbar to the German spoken-word lyrics and twanging guitar lines of Unadag Dugui. The album also includes a lively, funk-tinged cover of the 80s Mongolian pop hit Eejiinhee Hairaar. Featuring a live band rather than her standard setup of guitar and bass, Sonor's sound manages to stay intimate, drawing the listener into the warm soundscape of her distinctive voice.
4. Derya Yıldırım & Grup Şimşek – If There Is No Tomorrow
Inspired by the psychedelic tradition of Turkish psychedelia established by groups such as Moğollar, Turkish-born, Germany-based singer Derya Yıldırım's latest work with her band Grup Şimşek fuses the electric jangle of the amplified traditional lute with drifting keyboard and R&B-inflected lines. It's a 1970s throwback sound grounded in Yıldırım's commanding falsetto and influenced by producer Leon Michels' warm, tape-saturated sound. But, on Turkish standards such as the folk tune Hop Bico and 60s classic Ceylan, the group reaches dynamic new territory. They develop slinking, downtempo grooves and powerful vocals that give a fresh, off-kilter spin to the Turkish psych sound.
3. Lido Pimienta – The Beauty
Gregorian chants, Czech harpsichord folksong and orchestral strings all come together on Colombian singer Lido Pimienta's extraordinary fourth album. Orchestrating music for the 60-piece 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 dembow rhythms of the woodwind-heavy El Dembow del Tiempo. Yet, it is Pim
