- Critic score
- Publication
- By date
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MojoMay 15, 2014At Asiatisch's heart is bass, gargantuan and window rattling, around which she builds an elaborate framework of complex rhythms and melodies using analogue hardware. [Jun 2014, p.93]
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May 15, 2014With so much theory and style to cut through before you get to the actual music, it's to the album's credit that it often stands up as much more than just a high-brow, Edward Said-inspired thought experiment.
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May 9, 2014It's immersive and transgressive, if you care about this stuff.
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May 5, 2014The most striking aspect of Asiatisch is the confidence of Al Qadiri's sound, demonstrating that the quality of her music has finally caught up with her artistic ambitions.
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May 5, 2014Al Qadiri doesn’t just walk the line, she strides.
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May 7, 2014The immaculate emptiness is, in a sense, Asiatisch’s masterstroke, helping bolster the pervading sense of dislocation of being exposed to a society that’s been fed through the photocopier one too many times.
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May 12, 2014Asiatisch sounds better when heard as an experimental grime album and left at that. You certainly don't need to know anything about China to enjoy it.
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May 6, 2014For all its conceptual flaws, Asiatisch is both a pleasurable and an intelligent take on sinogrime--proof that its initial wave of productions was brief not for lack of potential.
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May 5, 2014Asiatisch is impersonal and airtight. Musically, the album is fascinating, diverse and expertly produced. But a chance was perhaps missed to deliver something with more to say.
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May 5, 2014The ambition is staggering and for Fatima Al Qadiri to have made Asiatisch both a coherent listen and a sensible comment on western perception it means we’ve not only got a talented musician on our hands but also an extremely wise cultural commentator.
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Q MagazineMay 20, 2014Not always easy to decode, but worth the effort. [Jun 2014, p.103]
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May 13, 2014Tuning out the conceptual aspect is close to impossible, but there are some moments--as in the hypnotic "Shanghai Freeway"--that can be enjoyed on a purely musical level.
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May 12, 2014If you stop trying to hear it as grime, and listen to it as a sci-fi movie of an album, a classy electronica dream journey through a high tech Orient, then that gloss becomes a strength, and it really does stand up on its own.
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May 5, 2014There is still much to admire and enjoy, not least Al Qadiri’s pursuit of an individual, politicised, socially-conscious path that never lacks ambition or self-confidence.
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The WireJul 17, 2014It's hard not to feel that this dense conceptual flotsam is arranged around a lucuna. [May 2014, p.67]
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May 5, 2014With such an unbending focus on intellectual ideals, Asiatisch is as erudite and wildly impenetrable as its maker.
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May 5, 2014Asiatisch, however, is even more pretentious [than two previous EPs], pairing instrumental UK grime with Asian flourishes to explore the relationship between the west and China.
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May 8, 2014Asiatisch mixes repetitive industrial noises, poetry samples, Asian synth motifs and vaguely menacing atmospherics into tepid, listless and melodically bland soundscapes that serve the concept more successfully than they do the listener.