Sheherazaad Qasr (TRANSPARENT RED VINYL)

Today, migration seems to be encoded into everyday habits. As so many of our minds and bodies aggressively globalise in unprecedented ways, previously fixed genres and identities of any kind are constantly being dismantled, made redundant, and born anew. Its from this space of flux that American composer and vocalist Sheherazaad derives song. Her mini-album, Qasr, was engendered during a time of family estrangement, grief over a lost elder, and the racial polarisation of her country as she knew it. Translating to castle or fortress in Urdu, Qasr is indeed a monument like encapsulation of the real strains of displacement, the push and pull of diaspora, and the depravity of erasure and forgotten roots. These experiences and their inherent violence, hysteria, and romance imbue her sonic deep-dive into the world of the so-called in-between. Native to the S.F. Bay Area, Sheher studied Arabic, Hindi, and Urdu in an attempt to re-access lost heritage, where she quickly advanced a