Our 10 Most Outstanding Global Releases of This Past Year
The past twelve months have offered a rich tapestry of international music that pushed boundaries. Presenting a selection of ten exceptional albums that defined the year in music.
Number Ten: Sarathy Korwar – There Is Beauty, There Already
An album consisting of a single, extended movement of insistent drumming might not seem the most accessible listening experience. However, south Asian percussionist and producer Sarathy Korwar converts this insistent rhythm into a unexpectedly magnetic album. Leading an ensemble of three drummers, Korwar crafts a intricate percussive dialect over the record's ten parts. The work channels Steve Reich's phasing motifs combined with Indian classical phrasing, all anchored in the repetition of a persistent, thrumming refrain. Over its duration, this refrain begins to emulate the trance-inducing cycles of devotional music, luring the listener deeper into Korwar's unique percussive realm.
9. Yasmine Hamdan – I Remember I Forget
Following an long absence, Arab singer-songwriter Yasmine Hamdan makes a comeback with a mournful album of songs. It continues exploring the Arabic-sung, dub-tinged sound that cemented her status in the region's indie music scene since the nineties. Hamdan's voice is soft and thoughtful, delivering soft melodies atop the string arrangements of a track like Hon and the rolling trip-hop beat of Vows. During more energetic moments such as Shadia and Abyss, she adopts a wavering, yearning vocal technique against electronic lines with North African flavors and clattering electronic percussion. The production is lean and understated, yet this austerity creates the ideal setting for Hamdan's emotive lyricism to resonate. It is that justifies the wait.
Number Eight: Debit – Desaceleradas
Mexican producer Debit has a knack for eerie reimaginings of historical sounds. On her latest release, Desaceleradas, she zeroes in on the 1990s variant of cumbia rebajada – a slowed, dub-inflected version of the shuffling Latin American dance music genre. Debit drags this sound down to a crawl, filtering its characteristic synths and off-beat rhythm via veils of distortion and hiss to produce a new, foreboding groove. Periodically ambient and discomfiting, Debit morphs the joyous party music of cumbia into a lasting, ethereal echo.
7. DJ K – Radio Libertadora!
Sheer intensity is the key term for the music of São Paulo 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 on top of the enduring Brazilian genre of baile funk. This recreates the energetic sound of favela street parties. On his follow-up release, Radio Libertadora!, Vieira cranks up the intensity, throwing in 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 particularly manic and punishingly loud forty-minute listening experience. Submit to the noise and Vieira's unapologetic productions become unexpectedly liberating.
6. The Singer Mohinder Kaur Bhamra – Punjabi Disco
Sikh devotional singer Mohinder Kaur Bhamra's early-80s release of disco beats and traditional Punjabi tunes is a reissued treasure. Produced by her son, music producer Kuljit Bhamra, Punjabi Disco's ten tracks offer an remarkably captivating combination of the sharp sound of early synthesizers and drum machines with her melismatic classical Indian vocal technique. Electronic percussion mimics the undulating tones of the tabla, while synthesiser melody doubles the traditional sound of the harmonium 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 features a fast-paced walking disco bassline. It's a club-ready hybrid pioneered over a decade before the rise of Asian Underground music.
Number Five: Enji – Sonor
From Mongolia singer Enji's gentle fourth album, Sonor, expands on her jazz-inflected 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 travel from the soft Norah Jones-esque 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. Featuring a live band rather than her standard setup of guitar and bass, Sonor's sound manages to stay personal, inviting the listener into the gentle soundscape of her singular voice.
Number Four: Derya Yıldırım and Her Band – If There Is No Tomorrow
Drawing on the 1960s legacy of Turkish psychedelia pioneered by groups such as Moğollar, German-Turkish singer Derya Yıldırım's latest work alongside her group merges the distinctive buzz of the amplified traditional lute with drifting Mellotron and soulful tunes. It's a retro-70s aesthetic anchored in Yıldırım's powerful high register and shaped by producer Leon Michels' warm, tape-saturated sound. But, on classic Turkish songs such as the nursery rhyme Hop Bico and 1960s song Ceylan, the group reaches dynamic new territory. They create smooth, downtempo grooves and lifting vocals that impart a new, unconventional interpretation to the Turkish psych sound.
3. Lido Pimienta – La Belleza
Gregorian chants, Czech harpsichord folksong and symphonic arrangements all come together on Colombian-born singer Lido Pimienta's remarkable fourth album. Orchestrating music for the sixty-member Medellín Philharmonic Orchestra, Pimienta and producer Owen Pallett explore everything from the Gregorian chants of opener Overturn (Obertura de la Luz Eterna) to the dramatic interweaving lines of Aún Te Quiero and the rhythmic dembow rhythms of the brass and woodwind-led El Dembow del Tiempo. It is Pim
