Fatima Al Qadiri

Born in Senegal, raised in Kuwait, and based in New York, Fatima Al Qadiri was one of the most creative and conceptual electronic music producers to surface during the 2010s. She debuted in 2011 with a pair of EPs: Warn-U (as Ayshay, released on Tri Angle) and Genre-Specific Xperience (UNO). Early on, she displayed a remarkable ability to draw from and switch between several dance-music modes. In particular, the latter release ranged from juke to trance. A subsequent digital download-only EP offered remixes from the likes of DJ Rashad, Nguzunguzu, Ikonika, and Girl Unit. Night Slugs subsidiary Fade to Mind issued her next set, Desert Strike, a baleful 2012 EP inspired by Desert Strike: Return to the Gulf — a video game she and her sister played in Kuwait, shortly after the Gulf War. Al Qadiri then connected with Kode9's Hyperdub label, where she released the album Asiatisch in 2014. The set fell into place as an audio travelog for a trip through "an imagined China."