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 notable albums that defined the year in music.
10. The Percussionist Sarathy Korwar – There Is Beauty, There Already
A continuous, 40-minute suite of repetitive percussion may not appear the most accessible musical proposition. Yet, Indian percussionist and producer Sarathy Korwar converts this driving beat into a unexpectedly magnetic work. Guiding an trio of three drummers, Korwar crafts a intricate percussive language over the record's ten parts. His composition references Steve Reich's phasing motifs alongside traditional Indian musical phrasing, everything tethered in the reiteration of a persistent, driving refrain. The longer one listens, this refrain evokes the ceremonial rhythm of devotional music, luring the listener further into Korwar's singular percussive world.
Number Nine: The Lebanese Artist Yasmine Hamdan – I Forget, I Remember
After an long absence, Lebanese singer-songwriter Yasmine Hamdan makes a comeback with a mournful album of songs. She expands on the Arabic-language, dub-influenced aesthetic that made her a staple in the Arab alternative scene since the 1990s. Hamdan's vocal delivery is quiet and introspective, singing soft melodies atop the string arrangements of a track like Hon and the rolling trip-hop beat of Vows. On livelier tracks such as Shadia and Abyss, she uses a wavering, yearning vocal technique against electronic lines with North African flavors and skittering electronic percussion. The production is minimal and understated, yet this simplicity offers the ideal environment for Hamdan's emotive lyricism to shine through. This is a record truly deserving of the long anticipation.
Number Eight: Debit – Slowed Down
From Mexico electronic artist Debit specializes in uncanny reimaginings of archival audio. On her new album, Desaceleradas, she turns her attention to the 90s style of cumbia rebajada – a slowed, dubby take of the shuffling Latin American dance music genre. Debit slows this sound even further, processing its signature synths and syncopated rhythm through sheets of sludge and noise to generate a fresh, sinister beat. Periodically ambient and discomfiting, Debit morphs the joyous dancefloor sound of cumbia into a enduring, ghostly afterimage.
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 layers a onslaught of sirens, explosive bass tones and screamed lyrics over the enduring Brazilian genre of baile funk. This captures the driving sound of favela street parties. On his new record, 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 frantic bruxaria mix. The result is a particularly hyperactive and overwhelmingly noisy forty-minute listening experience. Surrender to the noise and Vieira's unapologetic productions become oddly liberating.
6. Mohinder Kaur Bhamra – Punjabi Disco
Religious vocalist Mohinder Kaur Bhamra's early-80s release 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 deliver an remarkably captivating combination of the sharp sound of early synthesizers and drum machines with her ornate Indian classical singing style. Electronic percussion echoes the wavelike tones of the traditional drums, while synth lines parallels the traditional 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 up-tempo funky bass rhythm. It's a club-ready hybrid delivered more than ten years before the rise of Asian Underground music.
5. The Mongolian Artist Enji – Resonance
Mongolian singer Enji's delicate latest record, Sonor, expands on her jazz-inflected sound to deliver some of her most diverse music to date. Stepping outside her background in traditional Mongolian "long song" singing, the record's eleven songs range from the gentle jazz-pop melodics of slow-burning 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 80s Mongolian pop hit Eejiinhee Hairaar. Featuring a full backing band rather than her usual setup of guitar and bass, Sonor's sound is still intimate, drawing the listener into the warm acoustics of her distinctive voice.
Number Four: Derya Yıldırım & Grup Şimşek – Yarın Yoksa
Channeling the 60s heritage of Anatolian rock established by groups such as Moğollar, German-Turkish singer Derya Yıldırım's third record alongside her group merges the electric jangle of the electrified saz with dreamy keyboard and classic soul melodies. It's a 1970s throwback sound grounded in Yıldırım's powerful falsetto and shaped by producer Leon Michels' analogue tape aesthetic. But, on Turkish standards such as the nursery rhyme Hop Bico and 60s classic Ceylan, the group finds vibrant new territory. They develop smooth, downtempo grooves and powerful vocals that give a novel, quirky spin to the Anatolian psychedelic style.
3. The Colombian Artist Lido Pimienta – The Beauty
Gregorian chants, Eastern European folk melodies and orchestral strings all come together on Colombian singer Lido Pimienta's extraordinary fourth album. Orchestrating 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 counterpoint melodies of Aún Te Quiero and the rhythmic dembow rhythms of the woodwind-heavy El Dembow del Tiempo. It is Pim
