This 10 Greatest Worldwide Albums of 2025
Looking back on the musical landscape of worldwide music that pushed boundaries. Here is a countdown of ten remarkable albums that defined the year in music.
Number Ten: Sarathy Korwar – There Already Is Beauty
A continuous, 40-minute suite of insistent percussion could sound like it isn't the most accessible musical proposition. However, Indian drummer and composer Sarathy Korwar converts this persistent pulse into a strangely alluring album. Leading an ensemble of three drummers, Korwar creates a intricate percussive vocabulary throughout the record's 10 movements. The album references Steve Reich's phasing motifs combined with traditional Indian musical phrasing, all anchored in the reiteration of a ongoing, driving figure. The longer one listens, this refrain starts to mirror the trance-inducing cycles of devotional music, pulling the listener deeper into Korwar's distinctive percussive world.
Number Nine: The Lebanese Artist Yasmine Hamdan – I Forget, I Remember
Following an long absence, Arab singer-songwriter Yasmine Hamdan re-emerges with a melancholy album of songs. It continues exploring the Arabic-language, dub-influenced aesthetic that made her a staple in the Middle Eastern independent music landscape since the 1990s. Hamdan's vocal delivery is quiet and introspective, delivering tender melodies atop the bowing strings of a track like Hon and the deep trip-hop beat of Vows. On livelier tracks such as Shadia and Abyss, she uses a trembling, yearning vocal technique against electronic lines with North African flavors and skittering electronic percussion. The album's sound is lean and restrained, yet this austerity provides the perfect canvas for Hamdan's emotive compositions to take center stage. This is a record well worth the wait.
8. Debit – Desaceleradas
Mexican producer Debit specializes in eerie reimaginings of historical sounds. For her most recent project, Desaceleradas, she focuses on the 1990s variant of cumbia rebajada – a slowed, dub-inflected take of the shuffling Latin American musical style. Debit decelerates this sound down to a crawl, processing its signature synths and off-beat rhythm via veils of sludge and hiss to create a new, sinister groove. Periodically ambient and uneasy, Debit morphs the celebratory party music of cumbia into a lasting, ghostly afterimage.
Number Seven: DJ K – Liberator Radio!
Sheer intensity is the key term for the output of São Paulo producer Kaique Vieira, also known as DJ K. Pioneering his own genre of "bruxaria" (witchcraft), Vieira stacks a tumult of sirens, pummeling bass tones and screamed lyrics over the enduring Brazilian dance style of baile funk. This captures the energetic sound of urban celebrations. On his new record, Radio Libertadora!, Vieira cranks up the energy, throwing in everything from techno kick drums to samples of the Islamic call to prayer into his chaotic bruxaria mix. The result is a particularly manic and punishingly loud 40-minute listening experience. Give in to the noise and Vieira's bold productions become oddly exhilarating.
6. Mohinder Kaur Bhamra – Punjabi Disco
Religious vocalist Mohinder Kaur Bhamra's 1982 album of disco music and traditional Punjabi tunes is a rediscovered masterpiece. Produced by her son, music producer Kuljit Bhamra, Punjabi Disco's ten tracks present an strikingly captivating blend of the metallic sound of electronic keyboards and programmed drums with her ornate classical Indian singing style. Drum machine patterns mirrors the wavelike tones of the traditional drums, while synthesiser melody parallels the classic sound of the harmonium on tracks such as Pyar Mainu Kar. Elsewhere, Latin-inflected grooves is prominent on Soniya Mukh Tera, and Nainan Da Pyar De Gaya boasts a up-tempo funky bass rhythm. It's a party blend delivered over a decade before the Asian Underground explosion.
Number Five: The Mongolian Artist Enji – Sonor
Mongolian singer Enji's gentle fourth album, Sonor, develops her jazz-influenced sound to offer some of her broadest music so far. Stepping outside her training in traditional Mongolian "long song" singing, the record's 11 tracks veer from the gentle Norah Jones-esque melodics of downtempo number Ulbar to the German-language narration lyrics and trilling guitar lines of Unadag Dugui. The album also includes a energetic, funk-inflected cover of the 1980s Mongolian classic Eejiinhee Hairaar. Showcasing a live band rather than her standard setup of guitar and bass, Sonor's sound remains intimate, pulling the listener into the warm soundscape of her distinctive voice.
Number Four: Derya Yıldırım and Her Band – If There Is No Tomorrow
Inspired by the 60s heritage of Anatolian rock pioneered by groups such as Moğollar, Turkish-born, Germany-based singer Derya Yıldırım's third record alongside her group fuses the electric jangle of the electrified saz with woozy keyboard and classic soul melodies. It's a retro-70s aesthetic grounded in Yıldırım's strong high register and influenced by producer Leon Michels' analogue tape aesthetic. But, on classic Turkish songs such as the nursery rhyme Hop Bico and 1960s song Ceylan, the group finds vibrant new territory. They create smooth, downtempo grooves and powerful vocals that impart a fresh, off-kilter twist 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 stunning fourth album. Arranging music for the sixty-member Medellín Philharmonic Orchestra, Pimienta and producer Owen Pallett explore a vast range including 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 woodwind-heavy El Dembow del Tiempo. Ultimately, it is Pim
