textura

Albums
A Gap Between
Animal Trainer
Robbie Basho
Olga Bell
Keith Berry
Bly de Blyant
Christoph Bruhn
Dewa Budjana
Celer
Children Of The Stones
Loren Connors
Croy and McCann
Douglas Detrick
Elektro Guzzi
EOMAC
fibreforms
Alejandro Franov
Grenier & Archie Pelago
Paul Hazendonk
Quentin Hiatus
KiNK
Peter Kutin
Elise Mélinand
Nicole Mitchell
Mobthrow
Tomotsugu Nakamura
Danny Norbury
Fatima Al Qadiri
Steve Roach
Shield Patterns
Skadedyr
Soft Machine Legacy
Sontag Shogun
sPacemoNkey
Spotlight Kid
Stein Urheim
Strata Florida
Strom Noir
subtractiveLAD
Vittoria Fleet
Antje Vowinckel
Lionel Weets

Compilations / Mixes
Maya Jane Coles

EPs / Cassettes / Mini-Albums / Singles
AGC Esquire
Mombi
Paris76
Alix Perez
Philogresz
You'll Never Get to Heaven

Fatima Al Qadiri: Asiatisch
Hyperdub

Asiatisch's opening song “Shanzhai” would seem to be an optimal candidate for a blindfold test, given that the unwitting listener might not recognize Fatima Al Qadiri's haunting song as a cover of Prince's “Nothing Compares to You” (the ballad made famous by Sinéad O'Connor, of course, five years after appearing on the self-titled album The Family issued on Prince's Paisley Park Records in 1985), especially when presented with nonsensical Mandarin lyrics in place of the original and with a suitably impassioned lead vocal offset by an ethereal background choir. If none of the nine songs that follow are at the same eyebrow-raising level as that brilliant opener, the Kuwait-based musician's thirty-eight-minute debut album still makes for a worthwhile listen.

On conceptual grounds, Asiatisch (the German word for Asian, incidentally) presents a simulated road trip through an imagined China, but it's more striking for the musical style to which it pays homage, namely sinogrime, a grime sub-genre that emphasizes Asian motifs and melodies. Once the almost entirely vocals-only “Shanzhai” is out of the way, Asiatisch shifts its focus to a musical hybrid that merges a synthetic treatment of traditional Chinese music with ominous rhythms vaguely redolent of grime and funk. Synthesizers are prominently featured, but so too are choral exhalations, flutes, and traditional percussion instruments (mallets, bells, gongs, steel drums). Representative of the style is “Hainan Island,” wherein a hypnotic, labyrinthine weave is generated by dark synth flourishes, flute and choral accents, and metronomic mallet patterns. Elsewhere, a diseased New Age-styled vibe is conjured during “Shenzhen” in its narcotized blend of wooden flutes, bell strikes, and skeletal groove; “Dragon Tattoo” underpins its English-speaking vocal (a rarity on the album) with a robotic funk groove; and “Shanghai Freeway” derives a strong forward momentum from an arrangement rooted in staccato steel drum and harpsichord-like patterns.

The sonic universe fashioned by Al Qadiri throughout Asiatisch is one that deftly straddles eras and hemispheres, and to her credit the parts, as disparate as they sometimes are, never come together awkwardly. It's an unusual but nevertheless captivating and consistently stimulating album that reflects well not only on Fatima Al Qadiri as an original artist but also on Hyperdub (and by association label-runner Steve Goodman) for being so adventurous, curatorially speaking.

May 2014