The 10 Most Outstanding Global Releases of This Past Year
Looking back on the musical landscape of worldwide releases that defied expectations. We explore ten remarkable albums that shaped the year in music.
Number Ten: Sarathy Korwar – There Already Is Beauty
The concept of a 40-minute, uninterrupted piece built on repetitive drumming might not seem the most accessible listening experience. However, south Asian drummer and composer Sarathy Korwar transforms this driving beat into a hypnotically captivating piece. Guiding an group of three drummers, Korwar creates a complex percussive dialect over the record's ten sections. The album channels the phasing techniques of Steve Reich alongside classical Indian rhythmic patterns, each grounded in the repetition of a persistent, pulsing figure. Over its duration, this refrain evokes the trance-inducing cycles of devotional music, luring the listener further into Korwar's unique percussive world.
Number Nine: The Lebanese Artist Yasmine Hamdan – I Remember I Forget
After an hiatus of eight years, Lebanese vocalist and composer Yasmine Hamdan returns with a melancholy album of songs. She expands on the Arabic-sung, dub-influenced style that established her as a fixture in the Middle Eastern independent music landscape since the 1990s. Hamdan's vocal delivery is soft and introspective, delivering tender melodies over the bowing strings of a track like Hon and the rolling trip-hop groove of Vows. During more energetic moments such as Shadia and Abyss, she uses a trembling, yearning vocal technique against Maghrebi-inspired synth melodies and clattering electronic percussion. The musical backdrop is lean and understated, yet this simplicity offers the perfect environment for Hamdan's deeply felt compositions to resonate. This is a record that justifies the long anticipation.
8. Debit – Desaceleradas
Mexican producer Debit excels at uncanny reworkings of traditional music. For her most recent project, Desaceleradas, she turns her attention to the 1990s variant of cumbia rebajada – a slowed, dubby version of the rhythmic Latin American dance music genre. Debit drags this sound to a near-halt, processing its characteristic synths and off-beat rhythm through layers of murk and static to generate a fresh, foreboding rhythm. Periodically ambient and discomfiting, Debit transforms the exuberant party music of cumbia into a enduring, ethereal afterimage.
7. DJ K – Radio Libertadora!
Maximalism is the key term for the music of São Paulo producer Kaique Vieira, who performs as DJ K. Inventing his own genre of "bruxaria" (witchcraft), Vieira layers a tumult of alarms, explosive bass tones and shouted lyrics on top of the classic Brazilian dance style of baile funk. This captures the propulsive sound of favela street parties. On his new record, Radio Libertadora!, Vieira ramps up the energy, adding everything from four-on-the-floor techno beats to samples of the Islamic call to prayer into his frantic bruxaria mix. The result is a particularly frenetic and deafeningly intense 40-minute listening experience. Surrender to the cacophony and Vieira's bold productions become unexpectedly liberating.
6. The Singer Mohinder Kaur Bhamra – Disco Punjabi
Sikh devotional singer Mohinder Kaur Bhamra's 1982 album of disco beats and Punjabi folk melodies is a newly appreciated gem. Recorded by her son, music producer Kuljit Bhamra, Punjabi Disco's ten tracks deliver an unusually engaging blend of the synthetic sound of 1980s synthesisers and drum machines with her melismatic classical Indian vocal technique. Drum machine patterns mirrors the rolling tones of the traditional drums, while synth lines replicates the traditional sound of the reed organ on tracks such as Pyar Mainu Kar. Meanwhile, bossa nova rhythm takes center stage on Soniya Mukh Tera, and Nainan Da Pyar De Gaya boasts a up-tempo walking disco bassline. It's a club-ready hybrid created more than ten years before the rise of Asian Underground music.
Number Five: The Mongolian Artist Enji – Sonor
From Mongolia vocalist Enji's delicate new release, Sonor, develops her jazz-influenced sound to offer some of her most diverse music so far. Moving away from her training in traditional Mongolian "long song" singing, the record's eleven songs travel from the soft 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-inflected cover of the 80s Mongolian pop hit Eejiinhee Hairaar. Featuring a full backing band rather than her typical setup of guitar and bass, Sonor's sound manages to stay intimate, pulling the listener into the gentle acoustics of her singular voice.
4. Derya Yıldırım & Grup Şimşek – If There Is No Tomorrow
Inspired by the psychedelic tradition of Anatolian rock established by groups such as Moğollar, German-Turkish singer Derya Yıldırım's new album with her band Grup Şimşek merges the distinctive buzz of the electrified saz with drifting Mellotron and soulful tunes. It's a 1970s throwback sound anchored in Yıldırım's strong high register and shaped by producer Leon Michels' warm, tape-saturated aesthetic. But, on classic Turkish songs such as the nursery rhyme Hop Bico and 1960s song Ceylan, the group reaches lively new territory. They develop smooth, slow-burning grooves and lifting vocals that give a novel, unconventional twist to the Turkish psych sound.
Number Three: The Colombian Artist Lido Pimienta – The Beauty
Gregorian chants, Eastern European folk melodies and symphonic arrangements merge on Colombian singer Lido Pimienta's extraordinary latest work. Orchestrating music for the 60-piece Medellín Philharmonic Orchestra, Pimienta and producer Owen Pallett traverse everything from the liturgical vocals of opener Overturn (Obertura de la Luz Eterna) to the dramatic interweaving lines of Aún Te Quiero and the syncopated dembow rhythms of the brass and woodwind-led El Dembow del Tiempo. Yet, it is Pim
