This 10 Greatest International Releases of 2025
As the year draws to a close, we reflect on the worldwide sounds that pushed boundaries. Here is a countdown of ten notable albums that characterized the year in music.
10. Sarathy Korwar – There Is Beauty, There Already
A continuous, 40-minute suite of repetitive percussion could sound like it isn't the most accessible listening experience. But, south Asian drummer and composer Sarathy Korwar turns this driving beat into a hypnotically captivating album. Guiding an trio of three drummers, Korwar crafts a intricate percussive language across the record's ten sections. His composition channels Steve Reich's phasing motifs combined with traditional Indian musical phrasing, each grounded in the recurrence of a ongoing, thrumming refrain. Over its duration, this refrain begins to emulate the hypnotic repetition of ritual music, luring the listener further into Korwar's distinctive percussive realm.
9. Yasmine Hamdan – I Remember I Forget
Coming off an eight-year break, Lebanese singer-songwriter Yasmine Hamdan returns with a melancholy album of songs. It continues exploring the Arabic-sung, dub-influenced style that established her as a fixture in the region's indie music scene since the 1990s. Hamdan's vocal delivery is quiet and introspective, delivering delicate melodies over the string arrangements of a track like Hon and the rumbling trip-hop groove of Vows. For more upbeat numbers such as Shadia and Abyss, she uses a trembling, yearning vibrato over Maghrebi-inspired synth melodies and clattering electronic percussion. The musical backdrop is lean and restrained, yet this minimalism provides the ideal canvas for Hamdan's deeply felt lyricism to take center stage. The album proves to be well worth the long anticipation.
Number Eight: Debit – Desaceleradas
From Mexico producer Debit has a knack for uncanny reworkings of historical sounds. On her new album, Desaceleradas, she focuses on the 90s style of cumbia rebajada – a slowed, dub-inflected take of the rhythmic Latin American musical style. Debit slows this sound to a near-halt, running its signature synths and syncopated rhythm through veils of distortion and static to create a new, sinister groove. At turns ambient and discomfiting, Debit morphs the celebratory dancefloor sound of cumbia into a enduring, ethereal echo.
Number Seven: The São Paulo Producer DJ K – Liberator Radio!
Sensory overload is the operative word for the records of Brazilian producer Kaique Vieira, also known as DJ K. Pioneering his own genre of "bruxaria" (witchcraft), Vieira stacks a onslaught of sirens, explosive bass tones and shouted lyrics on top of the longstanding Brazilian genre of baile funk. This captures the energetic sound of urban celebrations. On his follow-up release, Radio Libertadora!, Vieira cranks up the ferocity, incorporating everything from techno kick drums to the sound of the Islamic call to prayer into his chaotic bruxaria mix. The result is a notably frenetic and overwhelmingly noisy forty-minute sonic journey. Give in to the cacophony and Vieira's unapologetic productions become oddly exhilarating.
6. The Singer Mohinder Kaur Bhamra – Punjabi Disco
Religious vocalist Mohinder Kaur Bhamra's 1982 album of disco beats and Punjabi folk melodies is a rediscovered gem. Produced by her son, music producer Kuljit Bhamra, Punjabi Disco's ten tracks offer an unusually compelling blend of the synthetic sound of electronic keyboards and drum machines with her fluid Indian classical singing style. Electronic percussion mimics the undulating tones of the traditional drums, while synthesiser melody parallels the classic sound of the reed organ 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 up-tempo walking disco bassline. It's a dancefloor fusion delivered over a decade before the Asian Underground explosion.
5. Enji – Sonor
From Mongolia singer Enji's soft new release, Sonor, builds upon her jazz-inflected sound to offer some of her most diverse music to date. Stepping outside her background in traditional Mongolian "long song" singing, the record's 11 tracks travel from the gentle jazz-pop melodies of slow-burning number Ulbar to the German-language narration lyrics and twanging 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 usual setup of guitar and bass, Sonor's sound manages to stay intimate, inviting the listener into the warm soundscape of her unique voice.
4. Derya Yıldırım & Grup Şimşek – Yarın Yoksa
Channeling the 60s heritage of Turkish psychedelia pioneered by groups such as Moğollar, Turkish-born, Germany-based singer Derya Yıldırım's third record with her band Grup Şimşek blends 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 commanding high register and shaped by producer Leon Michels' analogue tape sound. However, on Turkish standards such as the folk tune Hop Bico and 1960s song Ceylan, the group finds dynamic new territory. They develop sinuous, slow-burning grooves and lifting vocals that impart a new, unconventional interpretation to the Anatolian psychedelic style.
Number Three: The Colombian Artist Lido Pimienta – La Belleza
Sacred music, 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 explore a vast range including the liturgical vocals of opener Overturn (Obertura de la Luz Eterna) to the dramatic counterpoint melodies of Aún Te Quiero and the syncopated dembow rhythms of the brass and woodwind-led El Dembow del Tiempo. It is Pim
