Our Ten Best Worldwide Releases of This Past Year
The past twelve months have offered a rich tapestry of international music that pushed boundaries. We explore ten exceptional albums that characterized the year in music.
Number Ten: The Percussionist Sarathy Korwar – There Is Beauty, There Already
An album consisting of a single, extended movement of insistent drumming may not appear the easiest listening experience. But, south Asian percussionist and producer Sarathy Korwar converts this driving beat into a hypnotically captivating album. Directing an group of three drummers, Korwar creates a complex percussive dialect over the record's ten parts. The work references minimalist concepts from Steve Reich as well as Indian classical phrasing, each grounded in the reiteration of a ongoing, driving motif. The longer one listens, this refrain begins to emulate the hypnotic repetition of devotional music, drawing the listener deeper into Korwar's singular percussive realm.
9. The Lebanese Artist Yasmine Hamdan – I Remember I Forget
Following an long absence, Lebanese singer-songwriter Yasmine Hamdan returns with a contemplative collection of songs. The work builds upon the Arabic-language, dub-tinged style that cemented her status in the Middle Eastern independent music landscape since the nineties. Hamdan's vocal delivery is quiet and ruminative, delivering delicate melodies atop the string arrangements of a track like Hon and the rumbling trip-hop beat of Vows. During more energetic moments such as Shadia and Abyss, she adopts a trembling, longing vocal technique over electronic lines with North African flavors and clattering electronic percussion. The musical backdrop is lean and understated, yet this minimalism creates the ideal canvas for Hamdan's deeply felt compositions to resonate. The album proves to be truly deserving of the long anticipation.
8. Debit – Desaceleradas
Mexican producer Debit excels at uncanny reworkings of historical sounds. On her most recent project, Desaceleradas, she turns her attention to the 1990s variant of cumbia rebajada – a decelerated, dub-inflected interpretation of the shuffling Latin American dance genre. Debit slows this sound to a near-halt, processing its characteristic synths and off-beat rhythm via layers of murk and noise to produce a novel, foreboding beat. At turns ambient and discomfiting, Debit converts the celebratory dancefloor sound of cumbia into a lasting, ghostly memory.
Number Seven: DJ K – Liberator Radio!
Sheer intensity is the defining principle for the music of São Paulo producer Kaique Vieira, also known as DJ K. Inventing his own genre of "bruxaria" (witchcraft), Vieira stacks a cacophony of sirens, pummeling bass tones and screamed lyrics over the enduring Brazilian genre of baile funk. This captures the propulsive sound of favela street parties. On his new record, Radio Libertadora!, Vieira ramps up the energy, adding everything from four-on-the-floor techno beats to samples of the Islamic call to prayer into his chaotic bruxaria mix. The result is a notably hyperactive and overwhelmingly noisy 40-minute listening experience. Submit to the assault and Vieira's unapologetic productions become oddly freeing.
Number Six: The Singer Mohinder Kaur Bhamra – Disco Punjabi
Sikh devotional singer Mohinder Kaur Bhamra's early-80s release of disco music and traditional Punjabi tunes is a reissued gem. Recorded by her son, music producer Kuljit Bhamra, Punjabi Disco's ten tracks offer an strikingly compelling blend of the synthetic sound of 1980s synthesisers and programmed drums with her melismatic classical Indian singing style. Electronic percussion mimics the rolling tones of the tabla, while synth lines doubles 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 channels a driving disco bass groove. It's a club-ready hybrid delivered more than ten years before the global breakthrough of South Asian electronic music.
5. The Mongolian Artist Enji – Sonor
Mongolian singer Enji's delicate latest record, Sonor, expands on her jazz-inflected sound to deliver some of her most diverse music yet. Stepping outside her background in traditional Mongolian "long song" singing, the record's eleven songs range 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 energetic, funk-tinged cover of the 1980s Mongolian classic Eejiinhee Hairaar. Showcasing a ensemble rather than her typical setup of guitar and bass, Sonor's sound is still personal, inviting the listener into the warm soundscape of her singular voice.
Number Four: Derya Yıldırım and Her Band – Yarın Yoksa
Inspired by the 1960s legacy of Anatolian rock established by groups such as Moğollar, Turkish-born, Germany-based singer Derya Yıldırım's third record with her band Grup Şimşek blends the distinctive buzz of the electrified saz with drifting keyboard and classic soul melodies. It's a nostalgic vibe anchored in Yıldırım's strong falsetto and shaped by producer Leon Michels' warm, tape-saturated aesthetic. But, on Turkish standards such as the nursery rhyme Hop Bico and 1960s song Ceylan, the group finds dynamic new territory. They develop sinuous, slow-burning grooves and powerful vocals that give a novel, off-kilter interpretation to the Turkish psych sound.
Number Three: The Colombian Artist Lido Pimienta – La Belleza
Gregorian chants, Eastern European folk melodies and symphonic arrangements all come together on Colombian-born singer Lido Pimienta's remarkable fourth album. Orchestrating 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 theatrical interweaving lines of Aún Te Quiero and the rhythmic dembow rhythms of the brass and woodwind-led El Dembow del Tiempo. Ultimately, it is Pim
