This Ten Best Global Albums of This Past Year

The past twelve months have offered a rich tapestry of global sounds that defied expectations. Presenting a selection of ten notable albums that shaped the year in music.

10. Sarathy Korwar – There Is Beauty, There Already

A continuous, 40-minute suite of insistent percussion might not seem the most accessible listening experience. However, south Asian drummer and composer Sarathy Korwar converts this driving beat into a hypnotically captivating album. Leading an ensemble of three drummers, Korwar creates a complex percussive vocabulary across the record's ten parts. His composition references the phasing techniques of Steve Reich combined with traditional Indian musical phrasing, each grounded in the recurrence of a continual, thrumming figure. As the album progresses, this refrain starts to mirror the hypnotic repetition of ritual music, drawing the listener deeper into Korwar's unique percussive realm.

9. The Lebanese Artist Yasmine Hamdan – I Remember I Forget

Following an long absence, Arab singer-songwriter Yasmine Hamdan returns with a contemplative album of songs. The work builds upon the Arabic-language, dub-influenced style that made her a staple in the Arab alternative scene since the nineties. Hamdan's vocal delivery is gentle and introspective, delivering soft melodies atop the string arrangements of a track like Hon and the rumbling trip-hop beat of Vows. On livelier tracks such as Shadia and Abyss, she uses a wavering, yearning vibrato against north African synth lines and clattering electronic percussion. The album's sound is sparse and understated, yet this minimalism provides the ideal setting for Hamdan's expressive lyricism to resonate. It is well worth the long anticipation.

Number Eight: Debit – Desaceleradas

Mexican producer Debit specializes in uncanny reworkings of archival audio. On her most recent project, Desaceleradas, she turns her attention to the 90s style of cumbia rebajada – a slowed, dubby take of the shuffling Latin American dance music genre. Debit decelerates this sound even further, processing its characteristic synths and syncopated rhythm via veils of distortion and static to generate a new, menacing beat. Periodically ambient and unsettling, Debit transforms the celebratory dancefloor sound of cumbia into a enduring, ethereal afterimage.

Number Seven: The São Paulo Producer DJ K – Radio Libertadora!

Sensory overload is the operative word for the records of São Paulo producer Kaique Vieira, also known as DJ K. Pioneering 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 new record, Radio Libertadora!, Vieira escalates the intensity, adding everything from four-on-the-floor techno beats to the sound of the Islamic call to prayer into his frantic bruxaria mix. The result is a notably manic and overwhelmingly noisy forty-minute sonic journey. Give in to the cacophony and Vieira's unapologetic productions become oddly liberating.

6. The Singer Mohinder Kaur Bhamra – Disco Punjabi

Religious vocalist Mohinder Kaur Bhamra's record from 1982 of disco beats and Punjabi folk melodies is a newly appreciated treasure. Recorded by her son, music producer Kuljit Bhamra, Punjabi Disco's ten tracks deliver an remarkably captivating fusion of the sharp sound of 1980s synthesisers and drum machines with her fluid classical Indian vocal technique. Electronic percussion mirrors the undulating tones of the tabla, while synthesiser melody parallels the classic sound of the reed organ on tracks such as Pyar Mainu Kar. At other times, bossa nova rhythm comes to the fore on Soniya Mukh Tera, and Nainan Da Pyar De Gaya channels a driving funky bass rhythm. It's a dancefloor fusion delivered more than ten years before the Asian Underground explosion.

5. The Mongolian Artist Enji – Resonance

From Mongolia vocalist Enji's soft fourth album, Sonor, expands on her jazz-influenced sound to present some of her most diverse music so far. Moving away from her training in traditional Mongolian "long song" singing, the record's 11 tracks range from the gentle jazz-pop melodics of downtempo number Ulbar to the German spoken-word lyrics and trilling guitar lines of Unadag Dugui. The album also includes a sprightly, funk-inflected cover of the 1980s Mongolian classic Eejiinhee Hairaar. Utilizing a live band rather than her standard setup of guitar and bass, Sonor's sound manages to stay intimate, pulling the listener into the tender acoustics of her singular voice.

4. Derya Yıldırım & Grup Şimşek – Yarın Yoksa

Channeling the psychedelic tradition of Anatolian rock pioneered by groups such as Moğollar, German-Turkish singer Derya Yıldırım's latest work alongside her group fuses the distinctive buzz of the electrified saz with woozy Mellotron and classic soul melodies. It's a 1970s throwback sound grounded in Yıldırım's strong falsetto and shaped by producer Leon Michels' warm, tape-saturated sound. However, on Turkish standards such as the nursery rhyme Hop Bico and 1960s song Ceylan, the group ventures into lively new territory. They develop sinuous, downtempo grooves and soaring vocals that lend a fresh, off-kilter twist to the Anatolian psychedelic style.

3. The Colombian Artist Lido Pimienta – La Belleza

Catholic requiem mass music, Czech harpsichord folksong and symphonic arrangements merge on Colombian singer Lido Pimienta's remarkable latest work. Arranging music for the sixty-member Medellín Philharmonic Orchestra, Pimienta and producer Owen Pallett traverse a vast range including the Gregorian chants of opener Overturn (Obertura de la Luz Eterna) to the dramatic counterpoint melodies of Aún Te Quiero and the rhythmic dembow rhythms of the brass and woodwind-led El Dembow del Tiempo. Yet, it is Pim