Atmospheres of rage and control: Fatima Al Qadiri on 'Brute'

Fatima Al Qadiri is back with new album 'Brute'. It's her second full length for Hyperdub (following 2014's 'Asiatisch') and sees her explore themes such as Occupy Wall Street, totalitarian regimes and the affectivity of sound design and sampling in consumable music.

The Kuwait-raised, Berlin-based artist is a singular and curious mind in contemporary electronic music, moving through the academic and the experimental.

Acting as a contributing editor for DIS Magazine, she helmed the Global .Wav radio blog in which she sifted through the depths of the internet for the world’s most intriguing, little-heard sounds, while her collaborations with the Gulf Arab GCC art collective positioned her in the art world where she, along with her cohort, redefined the group exhibition format.

Early releases for UNO and Fade To Mind contained dancefloor-testing grime experiments, with her sound more recently unfurling into something abstracted and wholly her own, as heard on both albums for Hyperdub (as well as in the palette of Future Brown, the group she's in alongside Nguzunguzu and J-Cush).

Al Qadiri’s approach to sound has always posited context and history as a highly necessary component, and ‘Brute’ makes these touchstones more immediate, as recordings and sound objects interact with her own production.

‘Asiatisch' placed world building at the fore, constructing an imagined China that emerged out of Al Qadiri's own speculations of futuristic aesthetics in the East. But ‘Brute’ is set firmly in the present and the real, standing as a deeply personal critique of structures that confine, whether they be governmental or musical.

With her latest LP dropping next week, Mixmag's Deforrest Brown caught up with Al Qadiri to discuss the political roots of her latest record and the casual way in which we take in and participate in events of the world.

Exclusive Q+A and premiere of new track 'Power' below.

Note: 'Power' features the voice of Sgt Cheryl Dorsey, a retired LAPD Sargent, speaker, freelance writer and sought-after police expert. She enlightens and empowers audiences with her candid and honest approach to surviving police encounters