This 10 Top Global Albums of This Past Year

Looking back on the musical landscape of international music that expanded horizons. We explore ten remarkable albums that shaped the year in music.

10. The Percussionist Sarathy Korwar – There Already Is Beauty

An album consisting of a single, extended movement of cyclical drumming might not seem the easiest listening experience. Yet, south Asian percussionist and producer Sarathy Korwar turns this persistent pulse into a unexpectedly magnetic album. Directing an group of three drummers, Korwar develops a complex percussive dialect across the record's 10 movements. The album references the phasing techniques of Steve Reich as well as classical Indian rhythmic patterns, each grounded in the repetition of a ongoing, pulsing refrain. The longer one listens, this refrain begins to emulate the trance-inducing cycles of ceremonial music, luring the listener further into Korwar's singular percussive world.

9. The Lebanese Artist Yasmine Hamdan – I Remember I Forget

Coming off an hiatus of eight years, Lebanese vocalist and composer Yasmine Hamdan re-emerges with a mournful album of songs. It continues exploring the Arabic-language, dub-influenced sound that made her a staple in the Middle Eastern independent music landscape since the nineties. Hamdan's voice is quiet and ruminative, singing delicate melodies over the bowing strings of a track like Hon and the rumbling trip-hop groove of Vows. For more upbeat numbers such as Shadia and Abyss, she employs a quivering, longing vibrato over north African synth lines and skittering electronic percussion. The production is minimal and subtle, yet this austerity offers the perfect setting for Hamdan's deeply felt songwriting to take center stage. It is well worth the long anticipation.

Number Eight: Debit – Desaceleradas

Mexican electronic artist Debit has a knack for haunting reimaginings of archival audio. On her most recent project, Desaceleradas, she turns her attention to the 90s style of cumbia rebajada – a decelerated, dubby interpretation of the shuffling Latin American dance genre. Debit decelerates this sound even further, running its characteristic synths and off-beat rhythm via sheets of distortion and noise to create a fresh, foreboding beat. At turns ambient and unsettling, Debit morphs the joyous party music of cumbia into a lasting, ghostly echo.

7. The São Paulo Producer DJ K – Liberator Radio!

Maximalism is the key term for the output of São Paulo producer Kaique Vieira, AKA DJ K. Inventing his own genre of "bruxaria" (witchcraft), Vieira layers a cacophony of sirens, pummeling bass tones and screamed lyrics over the classic Brazilian dance style of baile funk. This captures the propulsive sound of favela street parties. On his follow-up release, Radio Libertadora!, Vieira ramps up the intensity, throwing in everything from driving techno rhythms to the sound of the Islamic call to prayer into his frantic bruxaria mix. The result is a especially hyperactive and punishingly loud forty-minute sonic journey. Give in to the cacophony and Vieira's unapologetic productions become strangely exhilarating.

6. Mohinder Kaur Bhamra – Punjabi Disco

Sikh devotional singer Mohinder Kaur Bhamra's 1982 album of disco music and Punjabi folk melodies is a newly appreciated treasure. Produced by her son, music producer Kuljit Bhamra, Punjabi Disco's ten tracks offer an unusually captivating fusion of the metallic sound of electronic keyboards and programmed drums with her melismatic classical Indian singing style. Electronic percussion mimics the wavelike tones of the traditional drums, while synth lines replicates 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 driving funky bass rhythm. It's a dancefloor fusion pioneered more than ten years before the global breakthrough of South Asian electronic music.

Number Five: Enji – Sonor

From Mongolia singer Enji's delicate latest record, Sonor, expands on her jazz-influenced sound to present some of her most wide-ranging music yet. Departing from her training in traditional Mongolian "long song" singing, the record's selection of pieces range from the soft Norah Jones-esque melodies of downtempo number Ulbar to the German-language narration lyrics and twanging guitar lines of Unadag Dugui. The album also includes a energetic, funk-tinged cover of the 1980s Mongolian classic Eejiinhee Hairaar. Showcasing 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 unique voice.

Number Four: Derya Yıldırım and Her Band – Yarın Yoksa

Drawing on the 1960s legacy of Turkish psychedelia established by groups such as Moğollar, German-Turkish singer Derya Yıldırım's latest work with her band Grup Şimşek merges the electric jangle of the electrified saz with woozy Mellotron and R&B-inflected lines. It's a nostalgic vibe grounded in Yıldırım's strong high register and influenced by producer Leon Michels' warm, tape-saturated sound. However, on Turkish standards such as the nursery rhyme Hop Bico and 1960s song Ceylan, the group finds vibrant new territory. They craft smooth, downtempo grooves and powerful vocals that lend a novel, unconventional spin to the Turkish psych sound.

Number Three: Lido Pimienta – The Beauty

Catholic requiem mass music, Eastern European folk melodies and orchestral strings all come together on Colombian-born singer Lido Pimienta's extraordinary fourth album. Arranging music for the 60-piece Medellín Philharmonic Orchestra, Pimienta and producer Owen Pallett journey through everything from the Gregorian chants of opener Overturn (Obertura de la Luz Eterna) to the theatrical counterpoint melodies of Aún Te Quiero and the syncopated dembow rhythms of the brass and woodwind-led El Dembow del Tiempo. Yet, it is Pim