The 10 Top International Records of This Past Year
The past twelve months have offered a rich tapestry of worldwide sounds that pushed boundaries. Here is a countdown of ten remarkable albums that shaped the year in music.
Number Ten: Sarathy Korwar – There Is Beauty, There Already
A continuous, 40-minute suite of cyclical drumming could sound like it isn't the most approachable listening experience. However, Indian drummer and composer Sarathy Korwar converts this persistent pulse into a strangely alluring work. Directing an ensemble of three drummers, Korwar creates a dense percussive language over the record's 10 movements. The album references Steve Reich's phasing motifs alongside traditional Indian musical phrasing, everything tethered in the repetition of a ongoing, pulsing refrain. The longer one listens, this refrain starts to mirror the hypnotic repetition of devotional music, drawing the listener deeper into Korwar's unique percussive universe.
Number Nine: Yasmine Hamdan – I Remember I Forget
After an eight-year break, Lebanese vocalist and composer Yasmine Hamdan makes a comeback with a melancholy album of songs. She expands on the Arabic-language, dub-tinged aesthetic that cemented her status in the region's indie music scene since the 1990s. Hamdan's vocal delivery is gentle and introspective, delivering soft melodies over the bowing strings of a track like Hon and the deep trip-hop beat of Vows. On livelier tracks such as Shadia and Abyss, she adopts a quivering, yearning vocal technique over north African synth lines and rattling electronic percussion. The production is sparse and understated, yet this simplicity creates the perfect environment for Hamdan's expressive songwriting to take center stage. This is a record well worth the long anticipation.
8. The Mexican Producer Debit – Desaceleradas
Mexican producer Debit has a knack for eerie reimaginings of traditional music. For her most recent project, Desaceleradas, she turns her attention to the 90s style of cumbia rebajada – a slowed, dub-inflected version of the rhythmic Latin American musical style. Debit drags this sound even further, filtering its signature synths and off-beat rhythm through veils of distortion and noise to create a new, sinister rhythm. Sometimes ambient and uneasy, Debit transforms the joyous dancefloor sound of cumbia into a enduring, spectral echo.
Number Seven: DJ K – Liberator Radio!
Sheer intensity is the operative word for the records of São Paulo producer Kaique Vieira, also known as DJ K. Pioneering his own genre of "bruxaria" (witchcraft), Vieira stacks a cacophony of sirens, explosive bass tones and shouted lyrics over the longstanding Brazilian dance style of baile funk. This emulates the propulsive sound of neighborhood block parties. On his second album, Radio Libertadora!, Vieira escalates the ferocity, incorporating everything from four-on-the-floor techno beats to the sound of the Islamic call to prayer into his unruly bruxaria mix. The result is a notably hyperactive and punishingly loud forty-minute listening experience. Surrender to the cacophony and Vieira's brash productions become oddly exhilarating.
Number Six: The Singer Mohinder Kaur Bhamra – Disco Punjabi
Sikh devotional singer Mohinder Kaur Bhamra's record from 1982 of disco beats and Punjabi folk melodies is a rediscovered masterpiece. Recorded by her son, music producer Kuljit Bhamra, Punjabi Disco's ten tracks present an strikingly captivating combination of the synthetic sound of 1980s synthesisers and programmed drums with her melismatic classical Indian singing style. Electronic percussion echoes the undulating tones of the traditional drums, while synthesiser melody doubles the traditional sound of the harmonium on tracks such as Pyar Mainu Kar. At other times, Latin-inflected grooves is prominent on Soniya Mukh Tera, and Nainan Da Pyar De Gaya channels a driving disco bass groove. It's a club-ready hybrid delivered more than ten years before the rise of Asian Underground music.
Number Five: Enji – Sonor
Mongolian singer Enji's soft latest record, Sonor, develops her jazz-inflected sound to offer some of her most wide-ranging music so far. Moving away from her background in traditional Mongolian "long song" singing, the record's selection of pieces veer from the gentle Norah Jones-esque melodics of downtempo number Ulbar to the German-language narration lyrics and trilling guitar lines of Unadag Dugui. The album also includes a lively, funk-tinged cover of the 1980s Mongolian classic Eejiinhee Hairaar. Showcasing a live band rather than her usual setup of guitar and bass, Sonor's sound remains intimate, pulling the listener into the warm acoustics of her singular voice.
Number Four: Derya Yıldırım and Her Band – Yarın Yoksa
Inspired by the 60s heritage of Anatolian rock established by groups such as Moğollar, German-Turkish singer Derya Yıldırım's new album with her band Grup Şimşek fuses the distinctive buzz of the amplified traditional lute with dreamy Mellotron and R&B-inflected lines. It's a retro-70s aesthetic anchored in Yıldırım's commanding high register and shaped by producer Leon Michels' warm, tape-saturated sound. But, on Turkish standards such as the nursery rhyme Hop Bico and 60s classic Ceylan, the group reaches vibrant new territory. They develop slinking, downtempo grooves and soaring vocals that lend a new, off-kilter spin to the Anatolian psychedelic style.
3. Lido Pimienta – The Beauty
Sacred music, Eastern European folk melodies and orchestral strings merge on Colombian-born singer Lido Pimienta's remarkable fourth album. Arranging music for the sixty-member Medellín Philharmonic Orchestra, Pimienta and producer Owen Pallett explore a vast range including the Gregorian chants of opener Overturn (Obertura de la Luz Eterna) to the dramatic interweaving lines of Aún Te Quiero and the rhythmic dembow rhythms of the brass and woodwind-led El Dembow del Tiempo. It is Pim
