Asiatisch
Notions of place and displacement feature strongly in the works of Fatima Al Qadiri. The Brooklyn-based producer refers to her debut full-length as a “virtual road trip through ‘imagined China,’” refracting the skewed manner in which Asian motifs have sunk into Western pop culture.
A record of considerable ambition, this is both a coherent listen and a sensible comment on Western perceptions of Asia - except without being anywhere near as dry as that sounds.
Senegal-born, Kuwait-raised, New York-based producer Fatima Al Qadiri works in the opposite direction of most artists' discographies by making her third substantial release, following the Genre-Specific Xperience (UNO) and Desert Strike (Fade to Mind) EPs, her least personal one yet.
Kuwait-born Fatima Al Qadiri, first associated with the 'vaporwave' microgenre, reveals herself to be worthy of the hype on her Planet Mu debut. The dominant sound on Asiatisch is another microgenre, this time 'sinogrime'
Born in Senegal, raised in Kuwait and now living in Brooklyn, New York, Fatima Al Qadiri's debut album is a thought-provoking melange of cultural references and associations: the album's title is the German word for Asian; the album is conceptualized as a virtual tour through an imagined futuristic China as seen through Western eyes; and the opening track, "Shanzhai (For Shanzhai Biennial)," is a cover of "Nothing Compares 2 U" sung by Helen Feng of FakeMusicMedia, with (apparently) nonsensical Mandarin lyrics.
This dubstep exploration of orientalism reads like a music theorist's doctoral thesis – but there's good music here, writes <strong>Lanre Bakare</strong>