This 10 Top Worldwide Records of This Past Year
The past twelve months have offered a rich tapestry of worldwide sounds that expanded horizons. We explore ten exceptional albums that shaped the year in music.
Number Ten: The Percussionist Sarathy Korwar – There Already Is Beauty
The concept of a 40-minute, uninterrupted piece built on cyclical percussion might not seem the most accessible listening experience. However, south Asian drummer and composer Sarathy Korwar transforms this driving beat into a unexpectedly magnetic piece. Leading an trio of three drummers, Korwar creates a intricate percussive vocabulary over the record's ten sections. The album channels Steve Reich's phasing motifs as well as traditional Indian musical phrasing, all anchored in the repetition of a continual, pulsing refrain. Over its duration, this refrain evokes the trance-inducing cycles of devotional music, luring the listener further into Korwar's singular percussive universe.
Number Nine: Yasmine Hamdan – I Forget, I Remember
Coming off an long absence, Lebanese singer-songwriter Yasmine Hamdan makes a comeback with a melancholy collection of songs. She expands on the Arabic-language, dub-tinged aesthetic that made her a staple in the Middle Eastern independent music landscape since the 1990s. Hamdan's voice is gentle and ruminative, singing delicate melodies over the string arrangements of a track like Hon and the rumbling trip-hop beat of Vows. For more upbeat numbers such as Shadia and Abyss, she employs a wavering, yearning vocal technique against electronic lines with North African flavors and rattling electronic percussion. The album's sound is sparse and understated, yet this austerity offers the perfect setting for Hamdan's deeply felt songwriting to resonate. It is truly deserving of the long anticipation.
Number Eight: The Mexican Producer Debit – Slowed Down
From Mexico electronic artist Debit specializes in haunting reinterpretations of historical sounds. On her most recent project, Desaceleradas, she turns her attention to the 1990s variant of cumbia rebajada – a slowed, dub-inflected take of the shuffling Latin American dance genre. Debit drags this sound even further, processing its signature synths and syncopated rhythm through sheets of distortion and static to create a new, sinister beat. Sometimes ambient and uneasy, Debit converts the joyous dancefloor sound of cumbia into a persistent, spectral echo.
7. DJ K – Liberator Radio!
Maximalism is the key term for the output of Brazilian producer Kaique Vieira, also known as DJ K. Coining his own genre of "bruxaria" (witchcraft), Vieira piles a onslaught of sirens, pummeling bass tones and screamed lyrics over the longstanding Brazilian genre of baile funk. This captures the propulsive sound of urban celebrations. On his follow-up release, Radio Libertadora!, Vieira cranks up the intensity, incorporating everything from techno kick drums to samples of the Islamic call to prayer into his unruly bruxaria mix. The result is a notably hyperactive and overwhelmingly noisy forty-minute listening experience. Submit to the cacophony and Vieira's brash productions become oddly liberating.
Number Six: The Singer Mohinder Kaur Bhamra – Punjabi Disco
Sikh devotional singer 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 unusually engaging fusion of the synthetic sound of electronic keyboards and programmed drums with her fluid classical Indian singing style. Drum machine patterns echoes the undulating tones of the traditional drums, while synthesiser melody replicates 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 up-tempo walking disco bassline. It's a party blend pioneered more than ten years before the Asian Underground explosion.
5. Enji – Sonor
Mongolian singer Enji's delicate latest record, Sonor, builds upon her jazz-inflected sound to present some of her most wide-ranging music to date. Departing from her training in traditional Mongolian "long song" singing, the record's eleven songs range from the gentle jazz-pop melodies of downtempo number Ulbar to the German spoken-word lyrics and twanging guitar lines of Unadag Dugui. The album also includes a sprightly, funk-inflected cover of the 80s Mongolian pop hit Eejiinhee Hairaar. Utilizing a full backing band rather than her standard setup of guitar and bass, Sonor's sound manages to stay close, inviting the listener into the tender soundscape of her unique voice.
4. Derya Yıldırım and Her Band – Yarın Yoksa
Drawing on the 1960s legacy of Anatolian rock established by groups such as Moğollar, German-Turkish singer Derya Yıldırım's new album alongside her group fuses the distinctive buzz of the electrified saz with dreamy keyboard and classic soul melodies. It's a retro-70s aesthetic rooted in Yıldırım's powerful high register and shaped by producer Leon Michels' analogue tape sound. However, on Turkish standards such as the nursery rhyme Hop Bico and 60s classic Ceylan, the group finds dynamic new territory. They develop smooth, slow-burning grooves and powerful vocals that give a fresh, quirky twist to the Anatolian psychedelic style.
Number Three: Lido Pimienta – La Belleza
Gregorian chants, Eastern European folk melodies and orchestral strings merge on Colombian 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 liturgical vocals of opener Overturn (Obertura de la Luz Eterna) to the theatrical counterpoint melodies of Aún Te Quiero and the rhythmic dembow rhythms of the woodwind-heavy El Dembow del Tiempo. It is Pim
