The Ten Most Outstanding Global Releases of This Past Year
The past twelve months have offered a rich tapestry of worldwide music that expanded horizons. Here is a countdown of ten exceptional albums that shaped the year in music.
10. Sarathy Korwar – There Is Beauty, There Already
An album consisting of a single, extended movement of insistent percussion could sound like it isn't the most accessible musical proposition. Yet, Indian drummer and composer Sarathy Korwar turns this driving beat into a hypnotically captivating work. Directing an group of three drummers, Korwar develops a dense percussive dialect across the record's ten parts. The work channels the phasing techniques of Steve Reich alongside classical Indian rhythmic patterns, each grounded in the recurrence of a continual, driving figure. The longer one listens, this refrain starts to mirror the hypnotic repetition of devotional music, luring the listener further into Korwar's unique percussive realm.
Number Nine: The Lebanese Artist Yasmine Hamdan – I Forget, I Remember
Coming off an long absence, Arab singer-songwriter Yasmine Hamdan makes a comeback with a contemplative album of songs. It continues exploring the Arabic-sung, dub-tinged sound that cemented her status in the region's indie music scene since the nineties. Hamdan's vocal delivery is soft and thoughtful, delivering soft melodies atop the string arrangements of a track like Hon and the rumbling trip-hop groove of Vows. For more upbeat numbers such as Shadia and Abyss, she adopts a quivering, longing vocal technique against electronic lines with North African flavors and clattering electronic percussion. The album's sound is lean and restrained, yet this austerity offers the perfect canvas for Hamdan's emotive compositions to resonate. It is well worth the long anticipation.
Number Eight: Debit – Desaceleradas
From Mexico producer Debit excels at uncanny reimaginings of traditional music. For her latest release, Desaceleradas, she zeroes in on the 1990s variant of cumbia rebajada – a slowed, dub-inflected take of the rhythmic Latin American dance genre. Debit decelerates this sound down to a crawl, running its signature synths and off-beat rhythm through sheets of murk and hiss to generate a new, menacing groove. Sometimes ambient and discomfiting, Debit morphs the exuberant dancefloor sound of cumbia into a enduring, ghostly memory.
Number Seven: DJ K – Radio Libertadora!
Sheer intensity is the key term for the records of Brazilian producer Kaique Vieira, AKA DJ K. Inventing his own genre of "bruxaria" (witchcraft), Vieira stacks a tumult of sirens, pummeling bass tones and screamed lyrics over the longstanding Brazilian genre of baile funk. This recreates the driving sound of neighborhood block parties. On his new record, Radio Libertadora!, Vieira escalates the intensity, adding everything from four-on-the-floor techno beats to samples of the Islamic call to prayer into his frantic bruxaria mix. The result is a particularly hyperactive and punishingly loud forty-minute listening experience. Give in to the cacophony and Vieira's bold productions become oddly liberating.
Number Six: Mohinder Kaur Bhamra – Disco Punjabi
Religious vocalist Mohinder Kaur Bhamra's record from 1982 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 remarkably engaging blend of the synthetic sound of early synthesizers and programmed drums with her melismatic Indian classical singing style. Drum machine patterns echoes the wavelike 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 comes to the fore on Soniya Mukh Tera, and Nainan Da Pyar De Gaya channels a fast-paced walking disco bassline. It's a dancefloor fusion pioneered over a decade before the global breakthrough of South Asian electronic music.
5. The Mongolian Artist Enji – Sonor
Mongolian singer Enji's soft latest record, Sonor, expands on her jazz-influenced sound to present some of her most diverse music to date. Moving away from her training in traditional Mongolian "long song" singing, the record's eleven songs travel from the gentle jazz-pop melodics of slow-burning number Ulbar to the German spoken-word lyrics and twanging guitar lines of Unadag Dugui. The album also includes a energetic, funk-tinged cover of the 80s Mongolian pop hit Eejiinhee Hairaar. Showcasing a live band rather than her typical setup of guitar and bass, Sonor's sound is still intimate, pulling the listener into the warm soundscape of her distinctive voice.
4. Derya Yıldırım & Grup Şimşek – Yarın Yoksa
Inspired by the psychedelic tradition of Turkish psychedelia pioneered 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 dreamy keyboard and R&B-inflected lines. It's a retro-70s aesthetic rooted in Yıldırım's strong falsetto and influenced by producer Leon Michels' analogue tape sound. Yet, on Turkish standards such as the nursery rhyme Hop Bico and 1960s song Ceylan, the group reaches vibrant new territory. They create smooth, slow-burning grooves and lifting vocals that give a new, off-kilter twist to the Turkish psych sound.
3. The Colombian Artist Lido Pimienta – The Beauty
Sacred music, Eastern European folk melodies and orchestral strings all come together on Colombian singer Lido Pimienta's remarkable latest work. Arranging music for the sixty-member Medellín Philharmonic Orchestra, Pimienta and producer Owen Pallett explore everything from the Gregorian chants of opener Overturn (Obertura de la Luz Eterna) to the theatrical interweaving lines of Aún Te Quiero and the rhythmic reggaeton-inspired beats of the brass and woodwind-led El Dembow del Tiempo. Yet, it is Pim
