Fatima Al Qadiri's greatest strength as an artist is her ability to conceptualize a world-- typically a sci-fi fantasy that blends the physical, the spiritual, and the technological-- and beautifully render it with beats. On the 2011 EP Genre-Specific Xperience, she envisioned an atmosphere of dark luxury and conjured a kind of underground new age embodied by the gothic Tropicália of songs like "Hip Hop Spa". This follow-up EP, befitting its title, moves into exquisitely violent terrain. "It's named after a Sega Megadrive game from 1992, based on Operation Desert Storm from the first Gulf War in 1991," Al Qadiri told Ruth Saxelby. "The record is dedicated to this sci-fi period of my childhood-- surviving the invasion of Kuwait, the war, and then playing a video game based on those events a year later." It's her best and most affecting work yet.
With Desert Strike, Al Qadiri creates a new mood and aesthetic while maintaing the essential character of her music. The basic construction is similar to that found on Genre-Specific Xperience and WARN-U, the EP she released under the name Ayshay: Tracks are built using pointedly synthetic versions of steel drums, spectral chanting, organs, and horns, but despite the almost cartoonish texture, the result feels more like sacred music. Topical elements reinforce the militaristic cast-- song titles like "War Games" or "Oil Well" and sounds of weapons cocked or shells clinking on the floor are not exactly subtle-- but they shade the tone of the project instead of defining it. Each arrangement is a carefully constructed exercise in urgency and tension, from a bloodthirsty kickdrum right out of the gates on the title track to the faux horns on "Ghost Raid" ballooning in and out in a way that could menace a band of spirit-possessed army tanks. But in spite of the music's inherent ties to aggressive themes-- war, violence, international strife-- it is not abrasive. Al Qadiri can make this stuff sound uncannily feminine and soothing.
Highly conceptual music always comes with limitations, and it's is difficult to imagine hearing Desert Strike EP outside of a private listening setting. But Al Qadiri makes the specificity work. It's one thing to mine the internet for scattershot cool sounds and throw them all at a wall in the hopes that some will stick; it's another thing to imagine an insular parallel universe and build it from scratch. On the evidence of Desert Strike, Al Qadiri has got a few more worlds in mind, just waiting to come to life.
