This 10 Best Global Records of 2025

As the year draws to a close, we reflect on the worldwide sounds that pushed boundaries. Presenting a selection of ten notable albums that shaped the year in music.

Number Ten: The Percussionist Sarathy Korwar – There Already Is Beauty

An album consisting of a single, extended movement of repetitive percussion could sound like it isn't the most accessible musical proposition. But, south Asian drummer and composer Sarathy Korwar converts this insistent rhythm into a hypnotically captivating album. Directing an trio of three drummers, Korwar develops a complex percussive language throughout the record's ten parts. His composition draws from Steve Reich's phasing motifs combined with Indian classical phrasing, everything tethered in the reiteration of a ongoing, driving motif. As the album progresses, this refrain evokes the hypnotic repetition of ceremonial music, drawing the listener deeper into Korwar's singular percussive universe.

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

Following an eight-year break, Lebanese singer-songwriter Yasmine Hamdan returns with a contemplative collection of songs. The work builds upon the Arabic-sung, dub-influenced aesthetic that cemented her status in the region's indie music scene since the nineties. Hamdan's voice is soft and introspective, delivering tender melodies atop the bowing strings of a track like Hon and the rumbling trip-hop beat of Vows. During more energetic moments such as Shadia and Abyss, she employs a quivering, longing vibrato against Maghrebi-inspired synth melodies and skittering electronic percussion. The album's sound is sparse and restrained, yet this austerity provides the ideal environment for Hamdan's expressive songwriting to resonate. The album proves to be truly deserving of the long anticipation.

8. The Mexican Producer Debit – Desaceleradas

From Mexico electronic artist Debit excels at uncanny reworkings of traditional music. For her latest release, Desaceleradas, she turns her attention to the 1990s variant of cumbia rebajada – a slowed, dub-inflected version of the shuffling Latin American musical style. Debit decelerates this sound even further, processing its characteristic synths and off-beat rhythm via sheets of murk and hiss to generate a novel, foreboding rhythm. At turns atmospheric and discomfiting, Debit converts the exuberant party music of cumbia into a persistent, ethereal memory.

Number Seven: DJ K – Radio Libertadora!

Sensory overload is the operative word for the output of São Paulo producer Kaique Vieira, AKA DJ K. Coining his own genre of "bruxaria" (witchcraft), Vieira layers a onslaught of sirens, explosive bass tones and screamed lyrics on top of the longstanding Brazilian genre of baile funk. This emulates the energetic sound of favela street parties. On his follow-up release, Radio Libertadora!, Vieira cranks 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 frenetic and deafeningly intense 40-minute sonic journey. Submit to the assault and Vieira's bold productions become unexpectedly freeing.

Number Six: Mohinder Kaur Bhamra – Punjabi Disco

Religious vocalist Mohinder Kaur Bhamra's early-80s release of disco music and Punjabi folk melodies is a rediscovered treasure. Produced by her son, music producer Kuljit Bhamra, Punjabi Disco's ten tracks offer an remarkably engaging combination of the synthetic sound of 1980s synthesisers and drum machines with her melismatic classical Indian singing style. Drum machine patterns mirrors the wavelike tones of the traditional drums, while synth lines doubles the traditional 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 driving funky bass rhythm. It's a dancefloor fusion pioneered over a decade before the rise of Asian Underground music.

Number Five: The Mongolian Artist Enji – Sonor

From Mongolia singer Enji's gentle fourth album, Sonor, builds upon her jazz-influenced sound to deliver some of her most diverse music yet. Stepping outside her training in traditional Mongolian "long song" singing, the record's selection of pieces travel from the gentle jazz-pop melodics of downtempo number Ulbar to the German-language narration 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 ensemble rather than her usual setup of guitar and bass, Sonor's sound is still personal, drawing the listener into the warm acoustics of her singular voice.

4. Derya Yıldırım and Her Band – Yarın Yoksa

Channeling the 1960s legacy of Turkish psychedelia pioneered by groups such as Moğollar, German-Turkish singer Derya Yıldırım's third record alongside her group blends the electric jangle of the electrified saz with drifting keyboard and R&B-inflected lines. It's a nostalgic vibe anchored in Yıldırım's commanding falsetto and influenced by producer Leon Michels' warm, tape-saturated sound. Yet, on classic Turkish songs such as the nursery rhyme Hop Bico and 60s classic Ceylan, the group ventures into dynamic new territory. They create slinking, slow-burning grooves and lifting vocals that give a fresh, off-kilter interpretation to the Anatolian psychedelic style.

3. The Colombian Artist Lido Pimienta – La Belleza

Sacred music, Czech harpsichord folksong and orchestral strings converge on Colombian singer Lido Pimienta's remarkable fourth album. Arranging music for the sixty-member Medellín Philharmonic Orchestra, Pimienta and producer Owen Pallett explore everything from the liturgical vocals of opener Overturn (Obertura de la Luz Eterna) to the dramatic counterpoint melodies of Aún Te Quiero and the rhythmic dembow rhythms of the brass and woodwind-led El Dembow del Tiempo. Ultimately, it is Pim