Brute

Unlike your average grime productions, these tracks are rarely propulsive or tailored for the dancefloor, but rather shift and shake convulsively under the weight of stark, metronomic beats, swathes of sub-bass and icy synth swirls. Listen carefully, and there is a certain melodicism nestled in the heart of this album, but its tone is despairing and subdued, glimmers of light in a dark and uncaring world.

Its loose theme is authority: on Curfew and Battery, beats hit like police baton rounds, sirens wail and every chord feels significant. [May 2016, p.91]

All discussion of technique aside though, there can be no doubt that with Brute, Al Qadiri has invoked her own personal brand of protest in a world in which discussion over that right has become ever more charged.

Though the sonic palette, beautiful and immersive, warm like a hot mug in the frost, the dubstep-derived hints of double-time, perpetually held in reserve, create the ominous feeling of an attack dog straining at the leash. [Apr 2016, p.69]

Her conceptual sounds don’t offer blatant, fist pumping anthems for movements like Occupy and Black Lives Matter, instead they seem to capture the still, quiet tension that echoes around that space between the battle lines and point to the psychological fear on both sides.

Cleverly sampling the incapacitating Long Range Acoustic Device (LRAD), the Kuwaiti-born producer offers a sonic account of the power utilized to deter political uprisings. Al Qadiri, though, uses the fragility of her signature minor chord progressions to rebut that aggression.

Overall Brute is a frustrating mish-mosh of middling and artful. When it’s working, there is a certain panache in the high-powered, informationally dense musical speedballs she creates.

In essence, Brute is dark ambient grime, with Al Qadiri's stamping drums and probing bass frequencies heard less frequently than her synthesized choirs and horns. At its most vivid, it evokes the feeling of anticipating a shove or a bean bag round.

There are moments of serene beauty, like "Oubliette" and the seductive gondola romance of "Fragmentation," but the album's action scenes feel glossy and detached, picturesque rather than visceral. [Mar 2016, p.42]

Despite the forcefulness of its concept, Brute thus often feels less like music of protest than music of exhaustion, confusion, and diffuse rage. This can make for an oppressive and tiring listen, but at best its effect is unsettling, and suggestive of traumatised detachment--a familiar enough reaction to the barrage of grim reports that make up the daily online news churn.

Rarely makes for easy listening.... though the album's second half is notably more harmonious. [May 2016, p.104]

Her signature hollowed-out minimalism nicely suits the subject matter, sometimes rising in urgency before falling into a deceptive calm.

Brute's most interesting flourishes are all surface-level. Take them away and you're left with Al Qadiri reusing the same musical ideas.