Ruhail Qaisar - Fatima
Cat. Nr: DN019
Format: DL + 48 page photography & text publication (Urdu / English)
Release Date: January 27, 2023
Buy / stream: dansenoire.ffm.to/fatima

Ruhail Qaisar’s Fatima is a requiem for a dead future. The debut album release by the self-taught artist and producer screams with the trauma and decay of life in his hometown of Leh—a high-altitude plateau region in the contested Ladakh area, extending from the Himalayan to the Kunlun Ranges. Qaisar absorbs this external condition of perpetual conflict between nation states into his internal life and resulting compositions, crossing sound art, noise music and experimental filmmaking. Hauntological drones, power electronics and convulsive post-industrial dissonance create an unnerving sense of fear, anger, and alienation. A broken transistor with a knob tuned to the abyss is bombarded with the cries and bitter laughter of a city’s inhabitants tyrannized, not only by military occupation but the soft-power subjugation of the tourism industry.

Following 2016’s Ltalam EP—released under Qaisar’s now-defunct Sister moniker—Fatima serves to transmit memories carried through the events, local mythos and personal recollections of growing up between the remote agrarian villages of Ladakh and the urban center of its joint capital—Leh. The album was mixed between that area, and a DIY home studio in New Delhi, where the artist amalgamates his collected found sounds and field recordings into unrecognizable hybrids. Discordant pads and atmospherics on the dark ambient of “Daily Hunger” is disrupted by a crashing, pounding reverb, while contributor Elvin Brandhi shrieks towards its horrifying conclusion in the squelching, scratching sound of something soft being chewed.

An anti-lingual conjuring of metaphysical totems in music, Fatima is a seething chronicle of experience through the dynamics of riots, violence, colonization, unemployment, PTSD, and self-abuse. The cycling tumult of “Namgang” hosts a menacing whisper that echoes the hissing fury of something like Einstürzende Neubauten and Lydia Lunch’s “Thirsty Animal,” while a trouncing distorted bass line on “Fatima’s Poplar” circles a voice that barks, "The Western Civilization Show has been discontinued."

The Bunker, New Delhi
Choglamsar Village, Ladakh

Mastering by Rashad Becker
Mixing by Julien Racine
Photography by Rana Ghose
Design by Niels Wehrspann

Fatima

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Ruhail Qaisar - Seventh Dream (Ramazan's Wedding)

bd girl

The result of an experiment made by playing back live composite video output captured from the ULA of a 1981 Sinclair ZX81 home computer 6 times slower so its within the audio range and then processing the result with a mix of delay, Hideaway tube EQ, classic tube mixed Bruel & Kjaer L/C resonator and Hideaway Klockwerks random modulated reverb.

The captured raw audio was transposed 4 times creating an interesting polyrhythm in the process which turned out to be a happy accident :)

Must be weird being an electron trapped inside one of these things!....

No instruments whatsoever were used in the making of this recording

Composition & Recording Copyright D.A.Wilson, Hideaway Studio 2023.

1981 Sinclair ZX81: ULA2C210E Inside the Machine...

field day 2023 [unreleased tracks]

Field Day 23  Unreleased 1

Field Day 23  Unreleased 3

Debuting on Eastern Nurseries with her first solo release since late 2020, Emma Acs delves further into the realm of chamber pop with the single "Human Siren". Rooted within the Danish songwriter's poetic sense of melancholy and impeccable timbre, Emma's diverse world of influences culminates in a forlorn serenade that flows with a sense of intimacy rarely found in contemporary language.

The experimental, free-flowing impetus that drove her 2020 EP "While I Shoot From My Fortress of Delusions" remains steadfast, albeit more subtly defined. Subdued in its striking minimalism, "Human Siren" enthrals with a combination of soft orchestral strings, piano and foreboding electronic drones, building across a hefty backbone of bass guitar and drums. A pop ballad of exquisite tenderness, love and longing.

Digital only. Pay what you want.

EN34

Vocals, piano, noise, samples: Emma Acs
Choir: Atusa Zamani, Ditte Amby & Veronica D’Souza
Bass: Ida Duelund
Guitar: Bo Høyer Hansen
Clarinet: Daniel Hilden Honoré
Drums: Oskar Dinesen
Voice sample: Rui P. Andrade

Written by Emma Acs
Produced by Emma Acs & Gustav Bertsen
Mixed by Mathias Sarsgaard
Mastered by Owen Pratt

Field Day 23 Unreleased 3

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