The Ten Best Global Records of This Past Year
Looking back on the musical landscape of worldwide sounds that pushed boundaries. We explore ten remarkable albums that shaped the year in music.
10. The Percussionist Sarathy Korwar – There Is Beauty, There Already
A continuous, 40-minute suite of repetitive drumming may not appear the easiest listening experience. Yet, south Asian percussionist and producer Sarathy Korwar converts this insistent rhythm into a strangely alluring piece. Directing an trio of three drummers, Korwar creates a dense percussive language across the record's ten sections. The album channels the phasing techniques of Steve Reich combined with Indian classical phrasing, everything tethered in the recurrence of a ongoing, thrumming motif. As the album progresses, this refrain evokes the trance-inducing cycles of devotional music, pulling the listener deeper into Korwar's distinctive percussive universe.
Number Nine: The Lebanese Artist Yasmine Hamdan – I Forget, I Remember
After an hiatus of eight years, Lebanese vocalist and composer Yasmine Hamdan returns with a contemplative collection of songs. The work builds upon the Arabic-sung, dub-influenced sound that cemented her status in the region's indie music scene since the nineties. Hamdan's voice is quiet and ruminative, delivering delicate melodies over the bowing strings of a track like Hon and the deep trip-hop beat of Vows. For more upbeat numbers such as Shadia and Abyss, she employs a wavering, yearning vibrato over Maghrebi-inspired synth melodies and rattling electronic percussion. The production is sparse and restrained, yet this austerity offers the ideal environment for Hamdan's deeply felt compositions to take center stage. The album proves to be that justifies the wait.
8. The Mexican Producer Debit – Desaceleradas
From Mexico electronic artist Debit specializes in haunting reworkings of archival audio. On her latest release, Desaceleradas, she zeroes in on the 1990s variant of cumbia rebajada – a decelerated, dub-inflected version of the rhythmic Latin American musical style. Debit drags this sound down to a crawl, processing its signature synths and syncopated rhythm through veils of sludge and hiss to create a fresh, foreboding rhythm. Periodically ambient and discomfiting, Debit transforms the joyous party music of cumbia into a enduring, ghostly memory.
7. The São Paulo Producer DJ K – Radio Libertadora!
Maximalism is the defining principle for the music of São Paulo producer Kaique Vieira, also known as DJ K. Pioneering his own genre of "bruxaria" (witchcraft), Vieira stacks a onslaught of alarms, explosive bass tones and screamed lyrics over the classic Brazilian dance style of baile funk. This recreates the driving sound of neighborhood block parties. On his second album, Radio Libertadora!, Vieira escalates the intensity, adding everything from techno kick drums to samples of the Islamic call to prayer into his unruly bruxaria mix. The result is a especially hyperactive and deafeningly intense 40-minute sonic journey. Surrender to the cacophony and Vieira's brash productions become unexpectedly liberating.
Number Six: Mohinder Kaur Bhamra – Punjabi Disco
Religious vocalist Mohinder Kaur Bhamra's early-80s release of disco beats and traditional Punjabi tunes is a newly appreciated masterpiece. Produced by her son, music producer Kuljit Bhamra, Punjabi Disco's ten tracks offer an strikingly captivating fusion of the metallic sound of early synthesizers and programmed drums with her melismatic Indian classical vocal technique. Electronic percussion mirrors the wavelike tones of the traditional drums, while synth lines parallels the classic sound of the reed organ on tracks such as Pyar Mainu Kar. Elsewhere, Latin-inflected grooves comes to the fore on Soniya Mukh Tera, and Nainan Da Pyar De Gaya boasts a up-tempo disco bass groove. It's a club-ready hybrid pioneered more than ten years before the rise of Asian Underground music.
5. The Mongolian Artist Enji – Resonance
From Mongolia singer Enji's gentle new release, Sonor, expands on her jazz-influenced sound to deliver some of her broadest music to date. Departing from her background in traditional Mongolian "long song" singing, the record's eleven songs travel from the gentle Norah Jones-esque melodics of downtempo number Ulbar to the German-language narration lyrics and twanging guitar lines of Unadag Dugui. The album also includes a lively, funk-inflected cover of the 1980s Mongolian classic Eejiinhee Hairaar. Featuring a live band rather than her typical setup of guitar and bass, Sonor's sound remains close, drawing the listener into the warm soundscape of her singular voice.
Number Four: Derya Yıldırım and Her Band – If There Is No Tomorrow
Drawing on the 60s heritage of Anatolian rock established by groups such as Moğollar, Turkish-born, Germany-based singer Derya Yıldırım's third record alongside her group merges the distinctive buzz of the amplified traditional lute with drifting Mellotron and R&B-inflected lines. It's a retro-70s aesthetic grounded in Yıldırım's commanding falsetto and shaped by producer Leon Michels' analogue tape aesthetic. However, on classic Turkish songs such as the nursery rhyme Hop Bico and 1960s song Ceylan, the group reaches dynamic new territory. They develop sinuous, slow-burning grooves and soaring vocals that impart a new, off-kilter spin to the Turkish psych sound.
Number Three: The Colombian Artist Lido Pimienta – The Beauty
Catholic requiem mass music, Czech harpsichord folksong and orchestral strings all come together on Colombian singer Lido Pimienta's extraordinary fourth album. Orchestrating music for the 60-piece Medellín Philharmonic Orchestra, Pimienta and producer Owen Pallett traverse everything from the Gregorian chants of opener Overturn (Obertura de la Luz Eterna) to the theatrical counterpoint melodies of Aún Te Quiero and the rhythmic reggaeton-inspired beats of the woodwind-heavy El Dembow del Tiempo. Ultimately, it is Pim
