The 10 Top Global Releases of This Past Year
The past twelve months have offered a rich tapestry of worldwide releases that pushed boundaries. Presenting a selection of ten exceptional albums that characterized the year in music.
10. The Percussionist Sarathy Korwar – There Already Is Beauty
An album consisting of a single, extended movement of insistent percussion may not appear the most approachable musical proposition. However, south Asian percussionist and producer Sarathy Korwar transforms this driving beat into a hypnotically captivating piece. Guiding an group of three drummers, Korwar creates a complex percussive dialect across the record's ten parts. The album references Steve Reich's phasing motifs combined with Indian classical phrasing, each grounded in the reiteration of a persistent, driving motif. Over its duration, this refrain starts to mirror the hypnotic repetition of ceremonial music, drawing the listener deeper into Korwar's singular percussive realm.
9. The Lebanese Artist Yasmine Hamdan – I Forget, I Remember
After an long absence, Arab singer-songwriter Yasmine Hamdan makes a comeback with a mournful collection of songs. She expands on the Arabic-sung, dub-tinged style that cemented her status in the region's indie music scene since the nineties. Hamdan's vocal delivery is gentle and introspective, singing soft melodies atop the string arrangements of a track like Hon and the rumbling trip-hop groove of Vows. During more energetic moments such as Shadia and Abyss, she uses a quivering, yearning vocal technique against electronic lines with North African flavors and rattling electronic percussion. The production is minimal and subtle, yet this simplicity offers the perfect setting for Hamdan's deeply felt lyricism to shine through. It is truly deserving of the wait.
Number Eight: Debit – Desaceleradas
Mexican electronic artist Debit excels at eerie reimaginings of historical sounds. On her new album, Desaceleradas, she turns her attention to the 1990s variant of cumbia rebajada – a decelerated, dubby version of the shuffling Latin American musical style. Debit decelerates this sound even further, processing its signature synths and syncopated rhythm via sheets of murk and noise to produce a novel, menacing rhythm. At turns atmospheric and uneasy, Debit converts the exuberant party music of cumbia into a persistent, ghostly afterimage.
Number Seven: DJ K – Radio Libertadora!
Sheer intensity is the defining principle for the records of São Paulo producer Kaique Vieira, AKA DJ K. Inventing his own genre of "bruxaria" (witchcraft), Vieira stacks a tumult of sirens, pummeling bass tones and shouted lyrics on top of the enduring Brazilian genre of baile funk. This captures the propulsive sound of urban celebrations. On his follow-up release, Radio Libertadora!, Vieira ramps up the intensity, throwing in everything from techno kick drums to the sound of the Islamic call to prayer into his unruly bruxaria mix. The result is a especially manic and overwhelmingly noisy 40-minute listening experience. Submit to the assault and Vieira's brash productions become unexpectedly freeing.
Number Six: Mohinder Kaur Bhamra – Disco Punjabi
Sikh devotional singer Mohinder Kaur Bhamra's record from 1982 of disco beats and traditional Punjabi tunes is a rediscovered treasure. Produced by her son, music producer Kuljit Bhamra, Punjabi Disco's ten tracks present an unusually captivating fusion of the synthetic sound of electronic keyboards and drum machines with her melismatic classical Indian vocal technique. Drum machine patterns mimics the rolling tones of the tabla, while synthesiser melody doubles the traditional sound of the reed organ on tracks such as Pyar Mainu Kar. Meanwhile, bossa nova rhythm is prominent on Soniya Mukh Tera, and Nainan Da Pyar De Gaya boasts a driving walking disco bassline. It's a dancefloor fusion delivered more than ten years before the rise of Asian Underground music.
Number Five: The Mongolian Artist Enji – Resonance
From Mongolia vocalist Enji's delicate new release, Sonor, develops her jazz-inflected sound to deliver some of her most diverse music so far. Moving away from her training in traditional Mongolian "long song" singing, the record's selection of pieces travel from the soft jazz-pop melodies of slow-burning number Ulbar to the German-language narration lyrics and trilling guitar lines of Unadag Dugui. The album also includes a lively, funk-inflected cover of the 1980s Mongolian classic Eejiinhee Hairaar. Showcasing a live band rather than her standard setup of guitar and bass, Sonor's sound remains personal, pulling the listener into the gentle acoustics of her distinctive voice.
4. Derya Yıldırım & Grup Şimşek – Yarın Yoksa
Drawing on the psychedelic tradition of Anatolian rock pioneered by groups such as Moğollar, Turkish-born, Germany-based singer Derya Yıldırım's third record with her band Grup Şimşek fuses the electric jangle of the electrified saz with dreamy Mellotron and soulful tunes. It's a 1970s throwback sound grounded in Yıldırım's strong high register and influenced by producer Leon Michels' warm, tape-saturated sound. Yet, on Turkish standards such as the folk tune Hop Bico and 60s classic Ceylan, the group finds dynamic new territory. They develop sinuous, downtempo grooves and soaring vocals that lend a new, unconventional twist to the Anatolian psychedelic style.
3. Lido Pimienta – The Beauty
Sacred music, Czech harpsichord folksong and orchestral strings all come together on Colombian singer Lido Pimienta's stunning fourth album. Orchestrating 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 interweaving lines of Aún Te Quiero and the syncopated reggaeton-inspired beats of the brass and woodwind-led El Dembow del Tiempo. It is Pim
