Arrow Fat Left Icon Arrow Fat Right Icon Arrow Right Icon Cart Icon Close Circle Icon Expand Arrows Icon Facebook Icon Instagram Icon Twitter Icon Hamburger Icon Information Icon Down Arrow Icon Mail Icon Mini Cart Icon Person Icon Ruler Icon Search Icon Shirt Icon Triangle Icon Bag Icon Play Video

Hyperdub

  • Fatima Al Qadiri 'Shaneera EP' Vinyl 12

    Hyperdub

    Fatima Al Qadiri 'Shaneera EP' Vinyl 12"

    £7.99

    Shaneera is the English mispronunciation of the Arabic word shanee'a, literally meaning "outrageous, nefarious, hideous, major and foul.' In one iteration of the word, as queer slang used in Kuwait and some Arab countries, a positive and desirable light is shed on these attributes. Shaneera refers to a gender-defying persona, of being an evil queen. You know a Shaneera when you behold one.

    Over five energetic club tracks, Al Qadiri explores this dark-sided character with friends Bobo Secret (the leading vocalist on the record), Lama3an, Chaltham, and Naygow, in their debut recorded appearance.

    The lyrics are suggestive, imploring, shady and loving, some original and some re-recorded material from Grindr chats, online drag and femme comedy skits. The language is a mixture of Kuwaiti and Egyptian Arabic, and one Iraqi proverb, Sonically, the record combines Khaleeji (Arab Gulf), Western drum kits and Arabesque melodies.

    On the cover, Al Qadiri appears as Shaneera, her evil extreme femme alter ego, the design inspired by stale pop diva record cover imagery from the Arab world. Conceptually, the EP follows Al Qadiri's long term exploration of gender identity and performance in the Gulf.
    Her natural look, at odds with the conventional presentation and performance of femininity in the region, is transformed on the cover into a maximum femme look inspired by a mid 2000s Kuwaiti trend of extreme makeup.

    What would pass at a cursory glance as femme drag was actually the norm at a specific time in Kuwaiti women's fashion. Shaneera'the record lands somewhere in an undisclosed setting and is a love letter to evil and benevolent queens around the world.

    Tracklisting:
    Side A:
    1. Shaneera
    2. Is2aleeha
    3. Alkahaf

    Side B:
    1. Spiral
    2. Galby

    Release Date: 13/10/2017
    Visit product page
  • Fatima Al Qadiri 'Asiatisch' - Cargo Records UK

    Hyperdub

    Fatima Al Qadiri 'Asiatisch'

    £9.99

    v

    Hyperdub

    Fatima Al Qadiri 'Asiatisch'

    £9.99

    Fatima Al Qadiri is a multidisciplinary artist and musician from Kuwait. In just a few years, she has quickly built a reputation as a conceptual artist, exploring themes informed both by her own background and global pop culture, through a number of highly acclaimed EPs, multimedia projects and writings. She is also a founding member of the production team Future Brown.

    Fatima's debut album is called 'Asiatisch', and as the track titles suggest, the record provides a simulated road trip through an imagined China. Musically, the album is an homage to that quietly influential sub-strain of grime, often loosely termed 'sinogrime' due to its preoccupation with Asian motifs and melodies, pioneered by the likes of Wiley and Jammer at the beginning of the 2000s in East London.

    'Asiatisch' is a provocation which asks more questions than it answers. The title is the German word for Asian. Unlike its title, however, the music on 'Asiatisch' revolves around the fantasies of East Asia as refracted through pulpy Western pop culture, in particular Hollywood, literary fiction, music, cartoons and advertising.

    Fatima asks what is meant by the term 'Asian' in a digital age of viral interchange and the hi-speed trading of cultural bytes; the concept of 'shanzhai' proves pivotal, a term whose meaning stems from a wild, out of control zone of banditry, but which has come to be used to refer to the Chinese counterfeiting of Western brands and goods. While a number of producers have made takes on 'sinogrime' over the last few years, 'Asiatisch' is really the first record that attempts to articulate this weird complex of sonic interchanges between the West and China.

    With the exception of the opening track, 'Shanzhai', a haunting cover of 'Nothing Compares to You' with nonsensical Mandarin lyrics, and the shimmering 'Loading Beijing', 'Wudang' and 'Jade Stairs' which sample and distort classical Chinese poetry staging an epic confrontation between China's ancient soul and the onslaught of the industrial factory machine, most of the tracks blend mallets, bells, gongs, flutes, steel drums and choral atmospherics with the searing synth-brass and the skittering drums of grime, playing melodies that are inflected as much by classic R&B as to synthetic versions of traditional Chinese music.

    On "Dragon Tattoo" for example, stereotypical iconography of imagined China is slotted into a threatening, robotic R&B format. The carefree pirating of Western brands blurs into a soft-synth pirating of Chinese musical signs.'Asiatisch' is wrapped in pristine artwork by Babak Radboy from Shanzhai Biennial, and the music was given a 3D sheen by in demand mixer Lexxx.

    Proclaiming both its love of both ancient and imagined China, 'Asiatisch' is a rare album that is both icily beautiful and conceptually layered. 

    Tracklisting:
    1. Shanzhai [for Shanzhai Biennial] ft. Helen Feng 
    2. Szechuan 
    3. Wudang 
    4. Loading Beijing 
    5. Hainan Island 
    6. Shenzhen 
    7. Dragon Tattoo 
    8. Forbidden City 
    9. Shanghai Freeway 
    10. Jade Stairs 
    Visit product page