On the Horizon: Rehydrate, Fatima Al Qadiri.

Comprising vapid steel pans, pieces of smutty R'n'B, and some ominous processed groans Hydra is the not exactly grand, but by no means anticlimactic finale to New York producer Fatima Al Qadiri's comeback EP, Desert Strike. Hydra sounds like a lost burst of an Omar Souleyman LP reproduced by Zomby, and it's utterly compelling. Yet the backstory to the EP is substantially more enveloping: released last week on Fade To Mind, the five-track was inspired by the grim reality that the virtuality contained within the Sega Megadrive classic can cross over into our waking actuality; that console-simulated death can somehow inspire those more impressionable young individuals amongst us. Al Qadiri got hooked on the game back in '92 when she got her hands on the thing at the tender age of ten. In the aftermath of the Kuwaiti conflicts of the epoch that saw Iraq invade and subsequently annex the Middle Eastern state in order that it may plumb the oil resources of its dimensionally inferior neighbour, the parameters of her known reality were thereby blurred as fact and fiction became interchangeable. Having witnessed the drastic dishevelling of her native New York going on at the minute from the safety of afar, it'd appear as though Al Qadiri courts catastrophe although this latest showcase of one of the more immaculate electronic arrangers operating today exhibits triumph in adversity. It's absolutely breathtaking, and becomes ever more so once contextualised as above.

Stream Desert Strike in full.