This 10 Finest International Releases of This Past Year

The past twelve months have offered a rich tapestry of worldwide releases that defied expectations. We explore ten notable albums that characterized the year in music.

Number Ten: Sarathy Korwar – There Is Beauty, There Already

The concept of a 40-minute, uninterrupted piece built on cyclical drumming may not appear the easiest listening experience. But, Indian drummer and composer Sarathy Korwar transforms this persistent pulse into a strangely alluring work. Guiding an ensemble of three drummers, Korwar creates a complex percussive language over the record's 10 movements. His composition draws from the phasing techniques of Steve Reich alongside traditional Indian musical phrasing, each grounded in the reiteration of a ongoing, driving figure. The longer one listens, this refrain evokes the hypnotic repetition of devotional music, pulling the listener further into Korwar's singular percussive realm.

Number Nine: The Lebanese Artist Yasmine Hamdan – I Forget, I Remember

After an eight-year break, Lebanese vocalist and composer Yasmine Hamdan re-emerges with a melancholy collection of songs. It continues exploring the Arabic-language, dub-influenced sound that established her as a fixture in the region's indie music scene since the 1990s. Hamdan's voice is soft and thoughtful, singing delicate melodies over the string arrangements of a track like Hon and the deep trip-hop groove of Vows. On livelier tracks such as Shadia and Abyss, she uses a wavering, longing vocal technique over electronic lines with North African flavors and rattling electronic percussion. The production is minimal and subtle, yet this simplicity provides the perfect canvas for Hamdan's emotive songwriting to shine through. The album proves to be truly deserving of the long anticipation.

Number Eight: Debit – Desaceleradas

From Mexico electronic artist Debit has a knack for uncanny reimaginings of archival audio. On her new album, Desaceleradas, she turns her attention to the 1990s variant of cumbia rebajada – a decelerated, dubby interpretation of the shuffling Latin American dance music genre. Debit decelerates this sound down to a crawl, filtering its characteristic synths and syncopated rhythm through veils of murk and noise to generate a novel, sinister beat. At turns ambient and uneasy, Debit transforms the exuberant dancefloor sound of cumbia into a persistent, ghostly afterimage.

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 cacophony of alarms, explosive bass tones and screamed lyrics on top of the longstanding Brazilian genre of baile funk. This emulates the driving sound of urban celebrations. On his second album, Radio Libertadora!, Vieira ramps up the intensity, adding everything from techno kick drums to the sound of the Islamic call to prayer into his unruly bruxaria mix. The result is a especially frenetic and overwhelmingly noisy 40-minute listening experience. Submit to the cacophony and Vieira's bold productions become strangely exhilarating.

Number Six: Mohinder Kaur Bhamra – Punjabi Disco

Sikh devotional singer Mohinder Kaur Bhamra's record from 1982 of disco music and traditional Punjabi tunes is a rediscovered treasure. Produced by her son, music producer Kuljit Bhamra, Punjabi Disco's ten tracks present an unusually engaging combination of the metallic sound of electronic keyboards and drum machines with her ornate Indian classical singing style. Drum machine patterns echoes the wavelike tones of the traditional drums, while synth lines replicates the traditional sound of the harmonium on tracks such as Pyar Mainu Kar. Elsewhere, Latin-inflected grooves is prominent on Soniya Mukh Tera, and Nainan Da Pyar De Gaya channels a fast-paced disco bass groove. It's a dancefloor fusion pioneered more than ten years before the Asian Underground explosion.

Number Five: The Mongolian Artist Enji – Sonor

Mongolian vocalist Enji's gentle latest record, Sonor, builds upon her jazz-influenced sound to present some of her broadest music to date. Departing from her training in traditional Mongolian "long song" singing, the record's 11 tracks veer from the soft jazz-pop melodies 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-inflected cover of the 80s Mongolian pop hit Eejiinhee Hairaar. Utilizing a ensemble rather than her typical setup of guitar and bass, Sonor's sound remains personal, inviting the listener into the warm soundscape of her singular voice.

Number Four: Derya Yıldırım and Her Band – Yarın Yoksa

Channeling the psychedelic tradition of Turkish psychedelia established by groups such as Moğollar, German-Turkish singer Derya Yıldırım's latest work alongside her group fuses the electric jangle of the amplified traditional lute with dreamy Mellotron and R&B-inflected lines. It's a retro-70s aesthetic rooted in Yıldırım's commanding falsetto and influenced by producer Leon Michels' warm, tape-saturated sound. However, on Turkish standards such as the nursery rhyme Hop Bico and 60s classic Ceylan, the group finds vibrant new territory. They create slinking, slow-burning grooves and powerful vocals that lend a novel, unconventional interpretation to the Turkish psych sound.

Number Three: The Colombian Artist Lido Pimienta – The Beauty

Catholic requiem mass music, Czech harpsichord folksong and symphonic arrangements all come together on Colombian-born singer Lido Pimienta's extraordinary fourth album. Arranging music for the sixty-member Medellín Philharmonic Orchestra, Pimienta and producer Owen Pallett journey through a vast range including the Gregorian chants of opener Overturn (Obertura de la Luz Eterna) to the dramatic interweaving lines of Aún Te Quiero and the syncopated reggaeton-inspired beats of the brass and woodwind-led El Dembow del Tiempo. It is Pim