Our Ten Greatest Global Records of This Past Year
The past twelve months have offered a rich tapestry of global releases that defied expectations. Presenting a selection of ten notable albums that characterized the year in music.
Number Ten: The Percussionist Sarathy Korwar – There Already Is Beauty
An album consisting of a single, extended movement of repetitive drumming could sound like it isn't the most accessible listening experience. Yet, Indian percussionist and producer Sarathy Korwar converts this insistent rhythm into a unexpectedly magnetic album. Leading an group of three drummers, Korwar crafts a intricate percussive language throughout the record's ten parts. His composition references minimalist concepts from Steve Reich combined with Indian classical phrasing, each grounded in the recurrence of a persistent, thrumming figure. The longer one listens, this refrain starts to mirror the trance-inducing cycles of devotional music, pulling the listener deeper into Korwar's singular percussive universe.
9. Yasmine Hamdan – I Remember I Forget
Following an eight-year break, Arab vocalist and composer Yasmine Hamdan makes a comeback with a melancholy set of songs. The work builds upon the Arabic-language, dub-tinged style that made her a staple in the Middle Eastern independent music landscape since the nineties. Hamdan's vocal delivery is quiet and introspective, delivering delicate melodies over the bowing strings of a track like Hon and the deep trip-hop groove of Vows. For more upbeat numbers such as Shadia and Abyss, she uses a quivering, longing vibrato against electronic lines with North African flavors and skittering electronic percussion. The album's sound is lean and understated, yet this austerity provides the perfect setting for Hamdan's deeply felt lyricism to shine through. It is that justifies the wait.
Number Eight: The Mexican Producer Debit – Desaceleradas
Mexican electronic artist Debit has a knack for haunting reworkings of historical sounds. For her most recent project, Desaceleradas, she turns her attention to the 90s style of cumbia rebajada – a slowed, dub-inflected take of the shuffling Latin American musical style. Debit decelerates this sound even further, processing its characteristic synths and off-beat rhythm through sheets of murk and noise to produce a new, foreboding rhythm. Sometimes atmospheric and unsettling, Debit converts the joyous dancefloor sound of cumbia into a lasting, spectral afterimage.
7. DJ K – Radio Libertadora!
Sensory overload is the key term for the music of São Paulo producer Kaique Vieira, AKA DJ K. Pioneering his own genre of "bruxaria" (witchcraft), Vieira layers a onslaught of sirens, pummeling bass tones and shouted lyrics over the classic Brazilian dance style of baile funk. This captures the propulsive sound of favela street parties. On his new record, Radio Libertadora!, Vieira escalates the intensity, incorporating everything from driving techno rhythms to the sound of the Islamic call to prayer into his chaotic bruxaria mix. The result is a notably frenetic and deafeningly intense forty-minute listening experience. Give in to the assault and Vieira's brash productions become oddly exhilarating.
6. Mohinder Kaur Bhamra – Disco Punjabi
Religious vocalist Mohinder Kaur Bhamra's 1982 album of disco music and Punjabi folk melodies is a reissued treasure. Recorded by her son, music producer Kuljit Bhamra, Punjabi Disco's ten tracks present an strikingly compelling fusion of the synthetic sound of 1980s synthesisers and programmed drums with her melismatic classical Indian vocal technique. Electronic percussion mirrors the wavelike tones of the tabla, while synth lines doubles the traditional sound of the reed organ on tracks such as Pyar Mainu Kar. Elsewhere, bossa nova rhythm takes center stage on Soniya Mukh Tera, and Nainan Da Pyar De Gaya features a driving walking disco bassline. It's a party blend created more than ten years before the global breakthrough of South Asian electronic music.
Number Five: Enji – Sonor
From Mongolia vocalist Enji's soft latest record, Sonor, expands on her jazz-inflected sound to deliver some of her most diverse music to date. Stepping outside her background in traditional Mongolian "long song" singing, the record's 11 tracks veer from the gentle jazz-pop melodics of downtempo number Ulbar to the German spoken-word lyrics and twanging guitar lines of Unadag Dugui. The album also includes a sprightly, funk-tinged cover of the 80s Mongolian pop hit Eejiinhee Hairaar. Utilizing a ensemble rather than her usual setup of guitar and bass, Sonor's sound manages to stay personal, drawing the listener into the gentle acoustics of her singular voice.
Number Four: Derya Yıldırım & Grup Şimşek – If There Is No Tomorrow
Drawing on the 1960s legacy of Anatolian rock pioneered by groups such as Moğollar, Turkish-born, Germany-based singer Derya Yıldırım's latest work with her band Grup Şimşek fuses the distinctive buzz of the electrified saz with dreamy Mellotron and soulful tunes. It's a retro-70s aesthetic grounded in Yıldırım's powerful high register and shaped by producer Leon Michels' analogue tape sound. But, on Turkish standards such as the nursery rhyme Hop Bico and 1960s song Ceylan, the group ventures into dynamic new territory. They craft slinking, slow-burning grooves and powerful vocals that impart a novel, off-kilter spin to the Turkish psych sound.
3. The Colombian Artist Lido Pimienta – La Belleza
Sacred music, Eastern European folk melodies and symphonic arrangements all come together on Colombian-born singer Lido Pimienta's stunning latest work. Arranging 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 counterpoint melodies of Aún Te Quiero and the rhythmic reggaeton-inspired beats of the brass and woodwind-led El Dembow del Tiempo. It is Pim
