The 10 Finest Worldwide Releases of This Past Year
The past twelve months have offered a rich tapestry of worldwide releases that pushed boundaries. We explore ten remarkable albums that characterized the year in music.
10. Sarathy Korwar – There Is Beauty, There Already
A continuous, 40-minute suite of cyclical percussion might not seem the most accessible musical proposition. However, south Asian percussionist and producer Sarathy Korwar converts this persistent pulse into a hypnotically captivating album. Guiding an ensemble of three drummers, Korwar develops a dense percussive dialect across the record's 10 movements. His composition draws from Steve Reich's phasing motifs alongside traditional Indian musical phrasing, each grounded in the repetition of a persistent, pulsing motif. The longer one listens, this refrain evokes the ceremonial rhythm of ceremonial music, drawing the listener further into Korwar's distinctive percussive realm.
Number Nine: Yasmine Hamdan – I Forget, I Remember
Coming off an hiatus of eight years, Lebanese vocalist and composer Yasmine Hamdan makes a comeback with a mournful album of songs. She expands on the Arabic-language, dub-influenced sound that established her as a fixture in the region's indie music scene since the 1990s. Hamdan's voice is quiet and introspective, delivering tender melodies over the string arrangements of a track like Hon and the deep trip-hop groove of Vows. During more energetic moments such as Shadia and Abyss, she uses a trembling, longing vocal technique against Maghrebi-inspired synth melodies and skittering electronic percussion. The musical backdrop is minimal and subtle, yet this simplicity offers the ideal environment for Hamdan's deeply felt lyricism to shine through. This is a record that justifies the wait.
8. The Mexican Producer Debit – Desaceleradas
Mexican electronic artist Debit specializes in eerie reworkings of historical sounds. For her most recent project, Desaceleradas, she focuses on the 1990s variant of cumbia rebajada – a decelerated, dubby interpretation of the shuffling Latin American musical style. Debit slows this sound even further, processing its signature synths and syncopated rhythm through veils of murk and static to generate a new, menacing rhythm. At turns atmospheric and uneasy, Debit morphs the joyous party music of cumbia into a lasting, spectral afterimage.
Number Seven: DJ K – Liberator Radio!
Sensory overload is the operative word for the music of São Paulo producer Kaique Vieira, who performs as DJ K. Pioneering his own genre of "bruxaria" (witchcraft), Vieira stacks a cacophony of sirens, pummeling bass tones and shouted lyrics on top of the longstanding Brazilian genre of baile funk. This recreates the driving sound of urban celebrations. On his new record, Radio Libertadora!, Vieira ramps up the ferocity, throwing in everything from four-on-the-floor techno beats to samples of the Islamic call to prayer into his chaotic bruxaria mix. The result is a particularly hyperactive and deafeningly intense forty-minute listening experience. Surrender to the cacophony and Vieira's unapologetic productions become strangely freeing.
Number Six: The Singer Mohinder Kaur Bhamra – Disco Punjabi
Sikh devotional singer Mohinder Kaur Bhamra's early-80s release of disco beats and traditional Punjabi tunes is a reissued treasure. Recorded by her son, music producer Kuljit Bhamra, Punjabi Disco's ten tracks deliver an remarkably captivating combination of the synthetic sound of 1980s synthesisers and programmed drums with her melismatic Indian classical singing style. Drum machine patterns echoes the undulating tones of the tabla, while synth lines 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 features a driving disco bass groove. It's a club-ready hybrid created over a decade before the global breakthrough of South Asian electronic music.
5. Enji – Resonance
Mongolian vocalist Enji's gentle fourth album, Sonor, builds upon her jazz-inflected sound to deliver some of her most diverse music yet. Moving away from her training in traditional Mongolian "long song" singing, the record's eleven songs veer from the gentle Norah Jones-esque melodies of slow-burning number Ulbar to the German-language narration lyrics and trilling guitar lines of Unadag Dugui. The album also includes a lively, funk-tinged cover of the 80s Mongolian pop hit Eejiinhee Hairaar. Showcasing a ensemble rather than her standard setup of guitar and bass, Sonor's sound is still personal, pulling the listener into the tender acoustics of her singular voice.
4. Derya Yıldırım & Grup Şimşek – Yarın Yoksa
Drawing on the psychedelic tradition of Anatolian rock pioneered by groups such as Moğollar, Turkish-born, Germany-based singer Derya Yıldırım's third record alongside her group merges the electric jangle of the amplified traditional lute with dreamy Mellotron and R&B-inflected lines. It's a retro-70s aesthetic rooted in Yıldırım's powerful falsetto and shaped by producer Leon Michels' analogue tape sound. Yet, on classic Turkish songs such as the folk tune Hop Bico and 60s classic Ceylan, the group ventures into lively new territory. They craft sinuous, slow-burning grooves and powerful vocals that give a novel, unconventional interpretation to the Turkish psych sound.
Number Three: Lido Pimienta – La Belleza
Gregorian chants, Eastern European folk melodies and orchestral strings all come together on Colombian-born singer Lido Pimienta's remarkable latest work. Orchestrating music for the sixty-member Medellín Philharmonic Orchestra, Pimienta and producer Owen Pallett journey through everything from the Gregorian chants of opener Overturn (Obertura de la Luz Eterna) to the dramatic interweaving lines of Aún Te Quiero and the syncopated reggaeton-inspired beats of the brass and woodwind-led El Dembow del Tiempo. Yet, it is Pim
