Our 10 Finest Worldwide Records of This Past Year
As the year draws to a close, we reflect on the international sounds that expanded horizons. Presenting a selection of ten remarkable albums that shaped the year in music.
10. The Percussionist Sarathy Korwar – There Already Is Beauty
An album consisting of a single, extended movement of insistent percussion might not seem the most approachable musical proposition. Yet, south Asian drummer and composer Sarathy Korwar turns this driving beat into a strangely alluring work. Leading an group of three drummers, Korwar crafts a complex percussive vocabulary across the record's 10 movements. The album references minimalist concepts from Steve Reich as well as classical Indian rhythmic patterns, everything tethered in the reiteration of a continual, pulsing figure. Over its duration, this refrain begins to emulate the hypnotic repetition of devotional music, pulling the listener further into Korwar's unique percussive realm.
9. The Lebanese Artist Yasmine Hamdan – I Remember I Forget
After an long absence, Lebanese vocalist and composer Yasmine Hamdan makes a comeback with a contemplative collection of songs. She expands on the Arabic-language, dub-influenced style that cemented her status in the Middle Eastern independent music landscape since the nineties. Hamdan's vocal delivery is quiet and introspective, singing soft melodies atop the string arrangements 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 over electronic lines with North African flavors and clattering electronic percussion. The production is sparse and subtle, yet this austerity provides the perfect environment for Hamdan's expressive lyricism to resonate. This is a record truly deserving of the long anticipation.
8. The Mexican Producer Debit – Slowed Down
Mexican electronic artist Debit excels at haunting reinterpretations of traditional music. For her latest release, Desaceleradas, she zeroes in on the 90s style of cumbia rebajada – a decelerated, dub-inflected take of the rhythmic Latin American musical style. Debit decelerates this sound down to a crawl, filtering its signature synths and syncopated rhythm via layers of murk and hiss to create a new, foreboding rhythm. Periodically ambient and unsettling, Debit morphs the joyous party music of cumbia into a persistent, spectral echo.
7. DJ K – Liberator Radio!
Maximalism is the operative word for the output of Brazilian producer Kaique Vieira, also known as DJ K. Coining his own genre of "bruxaria" (witchcraft), Vieira layers a tumult of alarms, pummeling bass tones and shouted lyrics over the longstanding Brazilian genre of baile funk. This captures the propulsive sound of urban celebrations. On his new record, Radio Libertadora!, Vieira escalates 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 especially hyperactive and punishingly loud forty-minute sonic journey. Submit to the assault and Vieira's unapologetic productions become strangely liberating.
6. The Singer Mohinder Kaur Bhamra – Disco Punjabi
Sikh devotional singer Mohinder Kaur Bhamra's 1982 album of disco music and Punjabi folk melodies is a reissued treasure. Produced by her son, music producer Kuljit Bhamra, Punjabi Disco's ten tracks offer an remarkably compelling blend of the synthetic sound of early synthesizers and drum machines with her fluid Indian classical vocal technique. Drum machine patterns echoes the undulating tones of the traditional drums, while synthesiser melody doubles the traditional sound of the harmonium 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 driving funky bass rhythm. It's a party blend delivered more than ten years before the global breakthrough of South Asian electronic music.
5. Enji – Resonance
Mongolian singer Enji's delicate latest record, Sonor, builds upon her jazz-inflected sound to deliver some of her most wide-ranging music to date. Stepping outside her background in traditional Mongolian "long song" singing, the record's eleven songs travel 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. Showcasing a live band rather than her usual setup of guitar and bass, Sonor's sound manages to stay close, inviting the listener into the tender acoustics of her unique voice.
Number Four: Derya Yıldırım and Her Band – If There Is No Tomorrow
Drawing on the 60s heritage of Anatolian rock pioneered by groups such as Moğollar, Turkish-born, Germany-based singer Derya Yıldırım's latest work with her band Grup Şimşek fuses the metallic twang of the electrified saz with drifting Mellotron and soulful tunes. It's a 1970s throwback sound grounded in Yıldırım's commanding falsetto and shaped by producer Leon Michels' warm, tape-saturated aesthetic. But, on Turkish standards such as the folk tune Hop Bico and 1960s song Ceylan, the group finds vibrant new territory. They craft sinuous, slow-burning grooves and lifting vocals that impart a new, unconventional spin to the Turkish psych sound.
3. 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 stunning latest work. Orchestrating music for the sixty-member Medellín Philharmonic Orchestra, Pimienta and producer Owen Pallett journey through a vast range including the Gregorian chants of opener Overturn (Obertura de la Luz Eterna) to the theatrical interweaving lines of Aún Te Quiero and the rhythmic dembow rhythms of the woodwind-heavy El Dembow del Tiempo. It is Pim
