Weekend Recap

Fatima Al Qadiri, Mdou Moctar, Hausu Mountain, Ghédalia Tazartès, etc

It’s Sunday, or maybe Saturday. Who even knows anymore, right? I’m planning to head out for coffee soon, but before I do that, I just wanted to pass a few items of note over your desk, into your inbox, whatever works. As with Wednesday, today’s photos are Black + White 35mm film shots I took down in Christchurch last week.

WHAT I’VE BEEN READING:

AnOther: Fatima Al Qadiri - “Melancholy Is the Highest Form of Art”

“There is only the past and future when you’re depressed, because you’re lost in the present… I wanted the music to communicate this.”

As her new album Medieval Femme is released, Fatima Al Qadiri tells Günseli Yalcinkayawhy she felt destined to write this record at this moment and the mood of melancholic longing which underpins the tracks. (Read Here)

Dazed: Mdou Moctar - the shred star of the Sahara

“The darkest skinned people are the least powerful minority, and I make the point of sharing my privilege with them – in concrete terms, that is the money I have access to. But if 90 per cent of the population doesn’t have access to electricity, how can we possibly live good lives in these conditions?”

On the precipice of international success and new album Afrique Victime, Gabriel Szatan meets the world’s most uniquely thrilling guitarist at home in Niger, building wells and advocating anti-imperialism. (Read Here)

Pitchfork: How Chicago Label Hausu Mountain Became a Home for Oddball Experimentalism

Hausu Mountain has released a staggering array of music in the nine years since the label was founded: longform drone and lysergic easy listening; slow-motion techno and blown-out breakcore; hymns to the Weather Channel and fingerpicked Americana; mutant gabber-screamo and whatever the hell you call the music of Ohio duo Moth Cock. For all its range, though, the label’s guiding aesthetic is easy to describe. “We like gaudy, trippy, rainbow stuff,” says label co-founder Maxwell Allison.

Philip Sherburne on the label is proving that outré music doesn’t have to be serious all of the time. (Read Here)

BONUS READ:

Bandcamp Daily: Remembering the Work and Wit of Experimental Innovator Ghédalia Tazartès

There’s a photo of sound artist and composer Ghédalia Tazartès, who passed away in February this year, sitting in his apartment nicknamed “L’Atelier” (“the Studio”) near Bastille in Paris. He’s astride a chair, wearing a kilt, with an accordion perched on his lap. The way he stares at the camera at first seems imperious—as if daring you to mock his get up. But a closer look suggests that maybe his stare is more knowing. He’s in on the joke.

The excellent Phil Bloomfield on the titan, Ghédalia Tazartès. (Read Here)

WHAT I’VE BEEN LISTENING TO:

Roland Ray, Hot, Cold & Blue (Smiling C)

German singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and home recording guy Roland Ray has the sort of backstory you can’t write and the kind of melodies you can’t forget. His 1985 D.I.Y psych-pop LP Hot, Cold & Blue is just one of those private press records - you know - the brilliant ones that didn’t take at the time. Smiling C recently unearthed a box of deadstock copies. They still have a few available for purchase on bandcamp alongside a digital reissue. ESSENTIAL.

Hoshina Anniversary, Jomon (ESP Institute)

After dropping a few spectacular singles, Tokyo’s Hoshina Anniversary delivers his debut album for LA’s ESP Institute label, Jomon. The culmination of three years of study of Watechno (traditional Japanese instruments), over Jomon’s fourteen songs, Hoshina reframes his love of jazz, house and techno within a worldview, which while global, is all his own. AGAIN, ESSENTIAL.

Senyawa, Alkisah (Released through 44 different labels worldwide)

Earlier in the year, Senyawa, one of Indonesia’s truly great modern experimental music groups delivered their masterwork, Alkisah. Alkisah is a sandblasted meditation on power, how meaningless it is when the end is at hand. It’s also about how through the cycles of time, we often repeat the mistakes of the past. Their devotional noise rock music is jagged and mercurial, and so is the process they went through to release the album. You can read more about that (here).

RANDOM:

Before anyone was doing anything, the Egyptian-American DJ Mutamassik was doing everything. I’m not sure why, but for some reason I kept thinking about her music this week. For those unfamiliar (or familiar), here’s an interview with her from Bidoun Magazine. Originally published in 2004!

If you like insightful and interesting podcast format interviews, here’s one that ticks both of those boxes. Sonia Fernández Pan in conversation with Sarah Badr, the musician, composer and visual artist who produces music under the name FRKTL.

A prayer: may we all one day be as incisive with expressing emotion and feeling as San Antonio, Texas musician Claire Rousay is. I finally listened to her October 2020 recording ‘it was always worth it’ this week, and it wrecked me.

FIN.