If you’re reading this, it’s too late to get tickets to the “post-human, post-geographical” musical act Future Brown playing at London’s ICA on February 19. Maybe next time.
The four-person act brings together Fatima Al Qadiri – a c0-founder of the conceptual Persian Gulf-focused art project GCC and the artist behind releases on both Fade to Mind and Hyperdub – with Nguzunguzu duo Daniel Pineda and Asma Maroof and J-Cush (of the New York label Lit City Trax).
The sound is swaggy, bassy, with tight distorted beats and grimy lyrics that combine braggy rap rifts with Eastern melodies and electronic simulacrum instrumentals.
NYC producer and part-time conceptual artist Fatima Al Qadiri has announced her debut album, Asiatisch, to be released on London-based label Hyperdub,May 5.
Quietly posting the cover on her Facebook page, the album artwork is credited to pan-global non-brand Shanzhai Biennial. There’s been no music to speak of yet but considering earlier releases on labels like UNO as Ayshay and Fade to Mind, as well as her work with Future Brown and the GCC, there’s no doubting it’ll be both excellent and culturally relevant.
Not only that, but the signing to Hyperdub isn’t so surprising, considering the Kode9-founded label’s history with Grime and dubstep, which is a visual aesthetic and sonic palette that has had an undeniable influence on Al Qadiri’s expanding catalogue.**
Running under the theme Dis Continuity, from January 24 to February 2, 2014, the event’s focus is on “revealing hidden connections between past and present musical movements, reconstructing forgotten achievements, and strengthening exchanges between the worlds of DIY pop culture and academic research”.
In furthering their efforts “to reinforce and serve Gulf and Artistic causes” the recently formed art collective GCC, will be celebrating their accomplishments made during their first meeting in Morscach, Switzerland. In a corporatised global tradition, with a government sanctioned edge, the group aims represent their “official Communiqué” as “a High Level Strategic Dialogue” for their Achievement in Swiss Summit at Mayfair’s Project Native Informant, opening October 18 and running, through Frieze week, to November 16.
Forged in 2013 and featuring Abdullah Al-Mutairi, Amal Khalaf, Aziz Al Qatami, Barrak Alzaid, Fatima Al Qadiri, Khalid al Gharaballi, Monira Al Qadiri, Nanu Al-Hamad and Sophia Al Maria, there’s no doubting the delegation’s efforts to reaffirm “their common desire to enhance and diversify these strong relations in the artistic field”.
In a match made in utopia fashion designer Telfar Clemens and our favourite ‘fake capitalist’Babak Radboy echo the mainstream fetishism of the day by introducing the forthcoming TELFAR line. It’s a collection of customizable sportswear that they describe as neither conceptual nor practical; “highly polished, eminently accessible, yet stranger than any underground production”.
The backing instrumentals come from a track called ‘Marbles’ by none other than 2020 hyper-stars Future Brown. As a band named after an inorganic colour, its an ideal complement to the creepy grins reminiscent of Shanzhai Biennial‘s Yue Minjun-inspired branding campaign, as well as DIS’ ‘Watermarked I Kenzo Fall 2012′. Mind is blown.
There are all sorts of things you could extract from an project of truly global DJs Nguzunguzu, Fatima Al Qadiri and J-CUSH called Future Brown. It might surprise you to know that, in spite of the dark connotations and imagery of Facebook reappropriation, it’s actually after a an in-group meme sprung from a shared fascination with a colour that doesn’t exist in nature.
Their first drop ‘Wanna Party’ features a skull crushing bass and typically creepy embellishments from the quartet, plus lyrics from Chicago rapper Tink. A debut featuring other vocalists is coming and Fatima Al Qadiri plays XOYO in London tonight.
New York’s The New School continues to live up to its reputation as being founded on innovation by hosting Rhizome’s Seven on Seven Conference on Saturday, April 20. Recognising the intersection of art and science as the way forward, the event will be pairing seven significant contemporary artists, with seven equally compelling technologists and challenging them to create something new.
Featuring the likes of artists Fatima Al Qadiri, Jill Magid and Jeremy Bailey on one end, and developers Julie Urhmann, Tiger Tara Brown and Dennis Crowley on the other, there is no limit to what the artists are allowed to produce, across media and disciplines. With author of The Net Delusion, Evgeny Morozov, giving the keynote speech, anyone on the other side of the Atlantic can only hope there’ll be stream to follow. **
Sometimes the art work of the Fade to Mindaesthetic threatens to overshadow the work of its artist, almost. As part of that LA/ New York based world of excellent electronica melting RnB, dub and pop into an exquisitely contemporary sound for the body, it’s artists like Kingdomwhose output is frustratingly sporadic. But it makes the music all the more thrilling when it does finally drop. So, following the New York producer’s 2011 Dreama EP and an intermittent record of dub reworks, VIP Edition, a new EP titled Vertical XL is due for release on Tuesday, May 28.
Adding to the new music credentials is that Kingdom actually runs the Night Slugs sister-label and is responsible for putting out a stable of excellent outfits, from Fatima Al Qadiri to Nguzunguzu and ‘Blank Head’ featuring vocals from LA-based RnB artist Kelela is no exception. See the EP track list below.**
TRACK LIST:
1. Bank Head (feat. Kelela)
2. Zip Line
3. Corpse
4. OG Master
5. Viper Lash
6. Takedown Notice
7. Viper XL
Type ‘VIOLENCE’ into a search engine and you’ll find all manner of human brutality. But when it comes to the Maryland, USA artist of the same name and disposition, you might have better luck with the stylised V†L£//:CE, V†LENCE or VILENCE to find any information on this specific mode of audio cruelty.
In fact, the Baltimore artist applies a powerful aggression inspired by those juke, metal, goth et al. influences that have yielded a sea of fledgling sound abusers in recent years worldwide –an influence most explicitly felt in his 2011 LP release Apophenia through online label Aural Sects. But for his most recent cassette release, Reptile/Hand Me Downs From Heaven, out early March on French label Steak AU Zoo,there’s less gratuitous carnage and more a prolonged undertone of menace that keeps things interesting.
Opening with a persistent minimal beat that sounds like an isolated mechanical heartbeat, ‘when my heart was dark and cold’ crawls along a brooding emptiness that comes across, less as a tender metaphor and more a discomfiting anatomical cross section of human life at its barren core. Often urgent repetitive keyboard samples call to mind the cultural zeitgeist of digital darkness, according to Gatekeeper, Bodyguard and Fatima Al Qadiri, while some consciously outmoded samples hark back even further to the nihilistic era of 80s New Romanticism.
In fact, one of VIOLENCE’s many monikers is Robert Smith, which, with a namesake in The Cure front man, is as hard to believe as ‘Palmtrees Caprisun Citrusblast’. The latter becoming not only an absurd reference to the balmy weather of a west coast vibe with an east coast complexion but part of the haunting theme of ‘hiding in plain sight’, as an artist that is near impossible to find on the internet among unrelated search results and option-key dependent song titles like Apophenia’s ‘V†L£//:CE – BRITNEY_T34R§ (THE TRÅG¡PØÇÅL¥P§£ ØV BR¡TN3¥_T34R§)’.
The pixel haze dissipates a little around Reptile/Hand Me Downs From Heaven, which limits itself to the Roman Alphabet but there’s still the surreal, Dadaist approach to meaning(lessness), which the online media mind scramble has no doubt contributed to. There are the requisite typos of a world raised on computer keyboards with ‘sumtiems’ -a contorted hip hop interpretation led by a crushing bass line and the emotionless appeal of “who will love me now?” -as well as the disrespect for spelling in the synthesised volley of ‘iluvu’. Then there’s no escaping the aimless articulations between seemingly disconnected ideas. How exactly could a lizard have anything to do with the divinely acquired second hand implied by the title track ‘reptile/hand me downs from heaven’? That’s except for the undeniable sample of fighter character ‘Reptile’ from Mortal Kombat; a famously bloody Nintendo game anyone growing up in the 90s will be familiar with… as well as a young inheritor, perhaps? Fans of Miami-based rapper SpaceGhostPurrp and his Raider Klan crew, could also probably relate to the retro-thrill of pre-millennial consoles for Generation Z.
Needless to say, there’s an unshakeable sense of alienation to Reptile/Hand Me Downs From Heaven, as a heavily distorted vocal moans “fuck me mama” on the aforementioned title-track while being assaulted by jagged guitar lines, a-la early 90s cop drama or repetitious 8-bit video game scores. Things are looking bleak in our modern dystopia right now and VIOLENCE is making art from the chaos.
VIOLENCE’s Reptile/Hand Me Downs From Heaven is out on Steak AU Zooin March, 2013.
