The Ten Best Global Albums of This Past Year
Looking back on the musical landscape of global releases that defied expectations. We explore ten exceptional albums that characterized the year in music.
10. Sarathy Korwar – There Already Is Beauty
A continuous, 40-minute suite of repetitive drumming could sound like it isn't the most accessible listening experience. But, Indian drummer and composer Sarathy Korwar converts this insistent rhythm into a strangely alluring album. Guiding an group of three drummers, Korwar creates a intricate percussive dialect across the record's 10 movements. The work channels the phasing techniques of Steve Reich alongside classical Indian rhythmic patterns, everything tethered in the repetition of a persistent, driving refrain. As the album progresses, this refrain evokes the ceremonial rhythm of ceremonial music, pulling the listener deeper into Korwar's unique percussive world.
9. The Lebanese Artist Yasmine Hamdan – I Remember I Forget
Following an hiatus of eight years, Arab vocalist and composer Yasmine Hamdan returns with a mournful album 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 quiet and thoughtful, singing soft melodies over the bowing strings of a track like Hon and the deep trip-hop groove of Vows. On livelier tracks such as Shadia and Abyss, she adopts a wavering, yearning vibrato against Maghrebi-inspired synth melodies and skittering electronic percussion. The production is lean and subtle, yet this simplicity offers the ideal environment for Hamdan's deeply felt songwriting to shine through. The album proves to be well worth the long anticipation.
Number Eight: Debit – Desaceleradas
Mexican producer Debit has a knack for uncanny reworkings of archival audio. On her latest release, Desaceleradas, she zeroes in on the 90s style of cumbia rebajada – a decelerated, dubby interpretation of the shuffling Latin American dance music genre. Debit slows this sound to a near-halt, running its signature synths and syncopated rhythm through veils of distortion and noise to produce a novel, menacing beat. Sometimes atmospheric and discomfiting, Debit transforms the exuberant party music of cumbia into a persistent, spectral memory.
7. The São Paulo Producer DJ K – Liberator Radio!
Sensory overload is the defining principle for the music of São Paulo producer Kaique Vieira, who performs as DJ K. Pioneering his own genre of "bruxaria" (witchcraft), Vieira piles a onslaught of alarms, explosive bass tones and screamed lyrics over the classic Brazilian genre of baile funk. This captures the propulsive sound of neighborhood block parties. On his second album, Radio Libertadora!, Vieira escalates the energy, incorporating everything from driving techno rhythms to samples of the Islamic call to prayer into his chaotic bruxaria mix. The result is a particularly hyperactive and overwhelmingly noisy 40-minute sonic journey. Submit to the assault and Vieira's unapologetic productions become oddly exhilarating.
Number Six: The Singer Mohinder Kaur Bhamra – Punjabi Disco
Religious vocalist Mohinder Kaur Bhamra's record from 1982 of disco music and Punjabi folk melodies is a reissued masterpiece. Recorded by her son, music producer Kuljit Bhamra, Punjabi Disco's ten tracks deliver an strikingly compelling blend of the metallic sound of electronic keyboards and drum machines with her fluid Indian classical singing style. Electronic percussion mirrors the wavelike tones of the traditional drums, while synth lines parallels the classic 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 channels a up-tempo disco bass groove. It's a dancefloor fusion pioneered over a decade before the Asian Underground explosion.
Number Five: The Mongolian Artist Enji – Resonance
Mongolian singer Enji's soft new release, Sonor, builds upon her jazz-influenced sound to present some of her most wide-ranging music to date. Stepping outside her background in traditional Mongolian "long song" singing, the record's eleven songs veer from the gentle Norah Jones-esque melodies of downtempo number Ulbar to the German spoken-word lyrics and trilling guitar lines of Unadag Dugui. The album also includes a energetic, funk-tinged cover of the 1980s Mongolian classic Eejiinhee Hairaar. Showcasing a ensemble rather than her standard setup of guitar and bass, Sonor's sound remains close, inviting the listener into the gentle acoustics of her distinctive voice.
Number Four: Derya Yıldırım & Grup Şimşek – If There Is No Tomorrow
Channeling the 1960s legacy of Turkish psychedelia pioneered by groups such as Moğollar, German-Turkish singer Derya Yıldırım's latest work with her band Grup Şimşek merges the metallic twang of the amplified traditional lute with dreamy keyboard and soulful tunes. It's a 1970s throwback sound grounded in Yıldırım's strong falsetto and influenced by producer Leon Michels' analogue tape aesthetic. However, on classic Turkish songs such as the folk tune Hop Bico and 1960s song Ceylan, the group finds vibrant new territory. They develop slinking, slow-burning grooves and soaring vocals that impart a novel, unconventional spin to the Anatolian psychedelic style.
Number Three: The Colombian Artist Lido Pimienta – La Belleza
Catholic requiem mass music, Eastern European folk melodies 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 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
