This 10 Finest Worldwide Releases of This Past Year

Looking back on the musical landscape of worldwide music that defied expectations. Presenting a selection of ten notable albums that characterized the year in music.

10. The Percussionist Sarathy Korwar – There Already Is Beauty

An album consisting of a single, extended movement of cyclical drumming could sound like it isn't the easiest musical proposition. However, south Asian percussionist and producer Sarathy Korwar turns this insistent rhythm into a strangely alluring work. Guiding an trio of three drummers, Korwar crafts a complex percussive dialect throughout the record's ten sections. The work channels minimalist concepts from Steve Reich alongside Indian classical phrasing, everything tethered in the recurrence of a continual, pulsing motif. The longer one listens, this refrain begins to emulate the trance-inducing cycles of devotional music, drawing the listener further into Korwar's singular percussive universe.

Number Nine: The Lebanese Artist Yasmine Hamdan – I Forget, I Remember

Coming off an eight-year break, Lebanese singer-songwriter Yasmine Hamdan re-emerges with a mournful set of songs. The work builds upon the Arabic-language, dub-influenced style that established her as a fixture in the region's indie music scene since the nineties. Hamdan's vocal delivery is soft and introspective, delivering tender melodies atop the string arrangements of a track like Hon and the deep trip-hop groove of Vows. For more upbeat numbers such as Shadia and Abyss, she adopts a wavering, longing vocal technique against Maghrebi-inspired synth melodies and skittering electronic percussion. The album's sound is minimal and restrained, yet this minimalism offers the perfect setting for Hamdan's emotive compositions to take center stage. This is a record that justifies the wait.

Number Eight: The Mexican Producer Debit – Desaceleradas

Mexican producer Debit has a knack for eerie reimaginings of archival audio. On her most recent project, Desaceleradas, she focuses on the 90s style of cumbia rebajada – a slowed, dub-inflected version of the shuffling Latin American dance music genre. Debit drags this sound down to a crawl, processing its signature synths and off-beat rhythm via sheets of distortion and static to create a fresh, foreboding rhythm. Sometimes ambient and uneasy, Debit converts the exuberant party music of cumbia into a persistent, ghostly afterimage.

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

Sheer intensity is the defining principle for the music of Brazilian producer Kaique Vieira, AKA DJ K. Pioneering his own genre of "bruxaria" (witchcraft), Vieira stacks a onslaught of sirens, pummeling bass tones and shouted lyrics over the enduring Brazilian dance style of baile funk. This emulates the propulsive sound of urban celebrations. On his new record, Radio Libertadora!, Vieira cranks up the intensity, incorporating everything from techno kick drums to samples of the Islamic call to prayer into his chaotic bruxaria mix. The result is a notably manic and deafeningly intense 40-minute sonic journey. Give in to the cacophony and Vieira's unapologetic productions become oddly exhilarating.

6. The Singer Mohinder Kaur Bhamra – Punjabi Disco

Sikh devotional singer Mohinder Kaur Bhamra's early-80s release of disco beats and Punjabi folk melodies is a rediscovered masterpiece. Produced by her son, music producer Kuljit Bhamra, Punjabi Disco's ten tracks offer an strikingly engaging blend of the metallic sound of electronic keyboards and drum machines with her melismatic Indian classical singing style. Drum machine patterns echoes the undulating tones of the tabla, while synth lines replicates the classic sound of the reed organ on tracks such as Pyar Mainu Kar. Meanwhile, bossa nova rhythm is prominent on Soniya Mukh Tera, and Nainan Da Pyar De Gaya channels a driving walking disco bassline. It's a party blend delivered over a decade before the global breakthrough of South Asian electronic music.

5. Enji – Resonance

From Mongolia singer Enji's soft fourth album, Sonor, builds upon her jazz-inflected sound to present some of her most wide-ranging music yet. Departing from her training in traditional Mongolian "long song" singing, the record's selection of pieces veer from the gentle Norah Jones-esque melodies of downtempo number Ulbar to the German-language narration lyrics and twanging guitar lines of Unadag Dugui. The album also includes a sprightly, funk-tinged cover of the 80s Mongolian pop hit Eejiinhee Hairaar. Featuring a ensemble rather than her typical setup of guitar and bass, Sonor's sound remains close, pulling the listener into the tender soundscape of her distinctive voice.

Number Four: Derya Yıldırım and Her Band – Yarın Yoksa

Drawing on the psychedelic tradition of Anatolian rock pioneered by groups such as Moğollar, German-Turkish singer Derya Yıldırım's latest work with her band Grup Şimşek fuses the electric jangle of the amplified traditional lute with drifting keyboard and classic soul melodies. It's a nostalgic vibe grounded in Yıldırım's commanding falsetto and influenced by producer Leon Michels' analogue tape sound. Yet, on classic Turkish songs such as the nursery rhyme Hop Bico and 1960s song Ceylan, the group ventures into dynamic new territory. They develop slinking, downtempo grooves and powerful vocals that give a novel, unconventional interpretation to the Anatolian psychedelic style.

Number Three: The Colombian Artist Lido Pimienta – La Belleza

Gregorian chants, Czech harpsichord folksong and orchestral strings merge on Colombian singer Lido Pimienta's stunning fourth album. Orchestrating music for the sixty-member Medellín Philharmonic Orchestra, Pimienta and producer Owen Pallett traverse a vast range including the liturgical vocals of opener Overturn (Obertura de la Luz Eterna) to the theatrical interweaving lines of Aún Te Quiero and the syncopated reggaeton-inspired beats of the brass and woodwind-led El Dembow del Tiempo. Ultimately, it is Pim