The Ten Most Outstanding Worldwide Albums of This Past Year
As the year draws to a close, we reflect on the worldwide music that pushed boundaries. We explore ten notable albums that characterized the year in music.
10. Sarathy Korwar – There Already Is Beauty
An album consisting of a single, extended movement of cyclical percussion could sound like it isn't the most approachable musical proposition. However, Indian percussionist and producer Sarathy Korwar transforms this insistent rhythm into a unexpectedly magnetic album. Guiding an ensemble of three drummers, Korwar crafts a intricate percussive dialect throughout the record's ten sections. The album references the phasing techniques of Steve Reich as well as traditional Indian musical phrasing, everything tethered in the repetition of a continual, pulsing refrain. As the album progresses, this refrain evokes the hypnotic repetition of ritual music, drawing the listener further into Korwar's singular percussive realm.
Number Nine: The Lebanese Artist Yasmine Hamdan – I Forget, I Remember
Coming off an eight-year break, Lebanese singer-songwriter Yasmine Hamdan returns with a mournful collection of songs. It continues exploring the Arabic-sung, dub-influenced style that made her a staple in the Middle Eastern independent music landscape since the 1990s. Hamdan's voice is soft and thoughtful, singing soft melodies over the string arrangements of a track like Hon and the rumbling trip-hop beat of Vows. On livelier tracks such as Shadia and Abyss, she employs a quivering, yearning vibrato over electronic lines with North African flavors and clattering electronic percussion. The production is sparse and subtle, yet this minimalism provides the perfect setting for Hamdan's expressive lyricism to resonate. The album proves to be well worth the long anticipation.
8. Debit – Slowed Down
From Mexico electronic artist Debit specializes in eerie reimaginings of archival audio. For her new album, Desaceleradas, she zeroes in on the 1990s variant of cumbia rebajada – a decelerated, dubby interpretation of the shuffling Latin American musical style. Debit drags this sound even further, processing its signature synths and off-beat rhythm via sheets of murk and hiss to generate a novel, menacing rhythm. Periodically atmospheric and unsettling, Debit transforms the celebratory party music of cumbia into a lasting, spectral echo.
7. DJ K – Liberator Radio!
Sheer intensity is the defining principle for the output of Brazilian producer Kaique Vieira, also known as DJ K. Inventing his own genre of "bruxaria" (witchcraft), Vieira stacks a onslaught of alarms, pummeling bass tones and shouted lyrics over the longstanding Brazilian dance style of baile funk. This emulates the energetic sound of neighborhood block parties. On his second album, Radio Libertadora!, Vieira ramps up the energy, incorporating everything from techno kick drums to the sound of the Islamic call to prayer into his frantic bruxaria mix. The result is a notably manic and punishingly loud 40-minute sonic journey. Surrender to the cacophony and Vieira's unapologetic productions become strangely exhilarating.
6. The Singer Mohinder Kaur Bhamra – Punjabi Disco
Sikh devotional singer Mohinder Kaur Bhamra's 1982 album of disco music and traditional Punjabi tunes is a newly appreciated masterpiece. Produced by her son, music producer Kuljit Bhamra, Punjabi Disco's ten tracks offer an strikingly engaging blend of the synthetic sound of electronic keyboards and drum machines with her melismatic classical Indian vocal technique. Electronic percussion echoes the wavelike 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 features a fast-paced disco bass groove. It's a dancefloor fusion delivered more than ten years before the global breakthrough of South Asian electronic music.
5. Enji – Resonance
Mongolian singer Enji's soft fourth album, Sonor, develops her jazz-influenced sound to offer some of her most wide-ranging music to date. Moving away from her training in traditional Mongolian "long song" singing, the record's selection of pieces veer from the gentle jazz-pop melodics of downtempo number Ulbar to the German spoken-word lyrics and twanging guitar lines of Unadag Dugui. The album also includes a lively, funk-tinged cover of the 1980s Mongolian classic Eejiinhee Hairaar. Featuring a live band rather than her standard setup of guitar and bass, Sonor's sound manages to stay personal, pulling the listener into the gentle acoustics of her singular voice.
4. Derya Yıldırım & Grup Şimşek – If There Is No Tomorrow
Drawing on the 1960s legacy of Anatolian rock established by groups such as Moğollar, German-Turkish singer Derya Yıldırım's third record alongside her group fuses the metallic twang of the amplified traditional lute with drifting keyboard and soulful tunes. It's a retro-70s aesthetic rooted in Yıldırım's powerful falsetto and influenced by producer Leon Michels' analogue tape aesthetic. But, on classic Turkish songs such as the folk tune Hop Bico and 60s classic Ceylan, the group reaches lively new territory. They develop smooth, downtempo grooves and lifting vocals that impart a novel, off-kilter interpretation to the Anatolian psychedelic style.
3. Lido Pimienta – The Beauty
Sacred music, Czech harpsichord folksong and symphonic arrangements all come together on Colombian-born singer Lido Pimienta's remarkable latest work. Orchestrating music for the 60-piece 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 syncopated dembow rhythms of the woodwind-heavy El Dembow del Tiempo. It is Pim
