The 10 Top International Releases of 2025
Looking back on the musical landscape of international music that defied expectations. We explore ten remarkable albums that shaped the year in music.
Number Ten: The Percussionist Sarathy Korwar – There Is Beauty, There Already
The concept of a 40-minute, uninterrupted piece built on cyclical percussion might not seem the easiest musical proposition. Yet, Indian percussionist and producer Sarathy Korwar converts this persistent pulse into a hypnotically captivating piece. Leading an trio of three drummers, Korwar crafts a dense percussive language across the record's 10 movements. The album channels the phasing techniques of Steve Reich alongside Indian classical phrasing, each grounded in the recurrence of a continual, pulsing motif. The longer one listens, this refrain starts to mirror the hypnotic repetition of ceremonial music, pulling the listener deeper into Korwar's distinctive percussive world.
9. The Lebanese Artist Yasmine Hamdan – I Remember I Forget
Following an eight-year break, Lebanese singer-songwriter Yasmine Hamdan returns with a melancholy set of songs. It continues exploring the Arabic-sung, dub-tinged style that established her as a fixture in the region's indie music scene since the 1990s. Hamdan's voice is soft and thoughtful, delivering soft melodies atop the string arrangements of a track like Hon and the deep trip-hop groove of Vows. For more upbeat numbers such as Shadia and Abyss, she employs a wavering, yearning vibrato against north African synth lines and rattling electronic percussion. The musical backdrop is lean and subtle, yet this minimalism creates the perfect canvas for Hamdan's emotive lyricism to shine through. The album proves to be that justifies the long anticipation.
8. The Mexican Producer Debit – Slowed Down
From Mexico electronic artist Debit has a knack for uncanny reworkings of archival audio. On her latest release, Desaceleradas, she turns her attention to the 90s style of cumbia rebajada – a decelerated, dub-inflected version of the shuffling Latin American musical style. Debit drags this sound down to a crawl, processing its signature synths and syncopated rhythm via sheets of distortion and hiss to create a fresh, sinister beat. Sometimes ambient and unsettling, Debit transforms the exuberant party music of cumbia into a lasting, spectral memory.
7. DJ K – Liberator Radio!
Maximalism is the operative word for the output of Brazilian producer Kaique Vieira, also known as DJ K. Coining his own genre of "bruxaria" (witchcraft), Vieira stacks a onslaught of sirens, explosive bass tones and shouted lyrics on top of the enduring Brazilian dance style of baile funk. This recreates the energetic sound of urban celebrations. On his follow-up release, Radio Libertadora!, Vieira ramps up the ferocity, throwing in everything from driving techno rhythms to the sound of the Islamic call to prayer into his chaotic bruxaria mix. The result is a particularly frenetic and overwhelmingly noisy forty-minute listening experience. Submit to the cacophony and Vieira's unapologetic productions become strangely exhilarating.
Number Six: Mohinder Kaur Bhamra – Disco Punjabi
Religious vocalist Mohinder Kaur Bhamra's early-80s release of disco music and Punjabi folk melodies is a reissued treasure. Recorded by her son, music producer Kuljit Bhamra, Punjabi Disco's ten tracks deliver an strikingly engaging blend of the metallic sound of early synthesizers and drum machines with her ornate Indian classical vocal technique. Electronic percussion echoes the wavelike tones of the tabla, while synth lines doubles the traditional sound of the reed organ on tracks such as Pyar Mainu Kar. At other times, bossa nova rhythm comes to the fore on Soniya Mukh Tera, and Nainan Da Pyar De Gaya boasts a up-tempo funky bass rhythm. It's a party blend pioneered more than ten years before the global breakthrough of South Asian electronic music.
Number Five: Enji – Sonor
From Mongolia singer Enji's delicate latest record, Sonor, expands on her jazz-inflected sound to deliver some of her most diverse music yet. Moving away from her background in traditional Mongolian "long song" singing, the record's selection of pieces travel from the gentle jazz-pop melodics of downtempo number Ulbar to the German spoken-word lyrics and trilling guitar lines of Unadag Dugui. The album also includes a sprightly, funk-tinged cover of the 80s Mongolian pop hit Eejiinhee Hairaar. Featuring a live band rather than her usual setup of guitar and bass, Sonor's sound remains personal, inviting the listener into the warm soundscape of her distinctive voice.
4. Derya Yıldırım and Her Band – If There Is No Tomorrow
Inspired by the 1960s legacy of Anatolian rock pioneered by groups such as Moğollar, German-Turkish singer Derya Yıldırım's latest work alongside her group fuses the distinctive buzz of the amplified traditional lute with woozy Mellotron and R&B-inflected lines. It's a retro-70s aesthetic rooted in Yıldırım's powerful high register and shaped by producer Leon Michels' warm, tape-saturated sound. Yet, on classic Turkish songs such as the folk tune Hop Bico and 1960s song Ceylan, the group finds dynamic new territory. They develop smooth, downtempo grooves and soaring vocals that impart a fresh, off-kilter spin to the Anatolian psychedelic style.
Number Three: Lido Pimienta – The Beauty
Gregorian chants, Eastern European folk melodies and orchestral strings merge on Colombian-born singer Lido Pimienta's extraordinary latest work. Orchestrating music for the 60-piece Medellín Philharmonic Orchestra, Pimienta and producer Owen Pallett journey through everything from 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
