The 10 Best Worldwide Releases of This Past Year
Looking back on the musical landscape of global music that defied expectations. We explore ten exceptional albums that characterized the year in music.
Number Ten: Sarathy Korwar – There Already Is Beauty
An album consisting of a single, extended movement of insistent percussion may not appear the easiest musical proposition. Yet, Indian drummer and composer Sarathy Korwar transforms this driving beat into a unexpectedly magnetic album. Directing an ensemble of three drummers, Korwar crafts a dense percussive vocabulary across the record's ten sections. His composition references minimalist concepts from Steve Reich as well as classical Indian rhythmic patterns, everything tethered in the reiteration of a persistent, driving figure. Over its duration, this refrain evokes the trance-inducing cycles of ritual music, luring the listener deeper into Korwar's unique percussive world.
Number Nine: Yasmine Hamdan – I Forget, I Remember
Coming off an eight-year break, Lebanese singer-songwriter Yasmine Hamdan re-emerges with a contemplative album of songs. She expands on the Arabic-sung, dub-tinged aesthetic that made her a staple in the region's indie music scene since the nineties. Hamdan's voice is quiet and thoughtful, delivering soft melodies atop the bowing strings of a track like Hon and the rolling trip-hop groove of Vows. For more upbeat numbers such as Shadia and Abyss, she uses a wavering, longing vocal technique against electronic lines with North African flavors and skittering electronic percussion. The production is lean and subtle, yet this austerity creates the ideal environment for Hamdan's deeply felt compositions to resonate. The album proves to be truly deserving of the long anticipation.
Number Eight: Debit – Desaceleradas
From Mexico electronic artist Debit specializes in eerie reworkings of traditional music. On her latest release, Desaceleradas, she turns her attention to the 90s style of cumbia rebajada – a slowed, dub-inflected take of the shuffling Latin American dance music genre. Debit slows this sound to a near-halt, processing its signature synths and syncopated rhythm through layers of murk and hiss to create a novel, foreboding rhythm. Periodically ambient and unsettling, Debit converts the exuberant party music of cumbia into a lasting, ethereal echo.
Number Seven: DJ K – Radio Libertadora!
Maximalism is the key term for the records of São Paulo producer Kaique Vieira, AKA DJ K. Coining his own genre of "bruxaria" (witchcraft), Vieira stacks a onslaught of alarms, explosive bass tones and screamed lyrics on top of the longstanding Brazilian genre of baile funk. This recreates the energetic sound of neighborhood block parties. On his second album, Radio Libertadora!, Vieira escalates the intensity, incorporating everything from techno kick drums to samples of the Islamic call to prayer into his unruly bruxaria mix. The result is a notably frenetic and punishingly loud forty-minute sonic journey. Submit to the assault and Vieira's unapologetic productions become unexpectedly liberating.
6. The Singer Mohinder Kaur Bhamra – Punjabi Disco
Religious vocalist Mohinder Kaur Bhamra's record from 1982 of disco beats and traditional Punjabi tunes is a reissued treasure. Produced by her son, music producer Kuljit Bhamra, Punjabi Disco's ten tracks deliver an remarkably captivating fusion of the synthetic sound of electronic keyboards and drum machines with her fluid classical Indian singing style. Electronic percussion mimics the rolling tones of the tabla, while synthesiser melody replicates the classic sound of the reed organ on tracks such as Pyar Mainu Kar. Elsewhere, bossa nova rhythm comes to the fore on Soniya Mukh Tera, and Nainan Da Pyar De Gaya features a fast-paced disco bass groove. It's a club-ready hybrid delivered over a decade before the Asian Underground explosion.
5. Enji – Sonor
From Mongolia vocalist Enji's delicate latest record, Sonor, develops her jazz-inflected sound to deliver some of her broadest music to date. Departing from her training in traditional Mongolian "long song" singing, the record's selection of pieces veer from the gentle Norah Jones-esque melodies of slow-burning number Ulbar to the German-language narration lyrics and twanging guitar lines of Unadag Dugui. The album also includes a lively, funk-tinged cover of the 1980s Mongolian classic Eejiinhee Hairaar. Featuring a live band rather than her usual setup of guitar and bass, Sonor's sound is still close, inviting the listener into the tender acoustics of her distinctive voice.
4. Derya Yıldırım and Her Band – Yarın Yoksa
Inspired by the 1960s legacy of Anatolian rock pioneered by groups such as Moğollar, German-Turkish singer Derya Yıldırım's latest work alongside her group merges the distinctive buzz of the electrified saz with woozy keyboard and R&B-inflected lines. It's a retro-70s aesthetic grounded in Yıldırım's strong falsetto and influenced by producer Leon Michels' analogue tape sound. But, on Turkish standards such as the nursery rhyme Hop Bico and 60s classic Ceylan, the group reaches lively new territory. They craft sinuous, slow-burning grooves and powerful vocals that lend a fresh, unconventional interpretation to the Turkish psych sound.
3. Lido Pimienta – La Belleza
Catholic requiem mass music, Czech harpsichord folksong and orchestral strings all come together on Colombian singer Lido Pimienta's remarkable latest work. Orchestrating music for the sixty-member Medellín Philharmonic Orchestra, Pimienta and producer Owen Pallett traverse a vast range including the liturgical vocals of opener Overturn (Obertura de la Luz Eterna) to the dramatic interweaving lines of Aún Te Quiero and the rhythmic dembow rhythms of the woodwind-heavy El Dembow del Tiempo. Ultimately, it is Pim
