A memorable performance from Slowspin at the Ragas Live Festival 2024 featruing Zeerak Ahmed (vocals+electronics), Grey Mcmurray (guitar), Marlon Patton (drums) Shahzad Ismaily (bass) This was the 9PM set on October 21st, the 4th set during 24 hours of continuous music at Pioneer Works, in Red Hook Brooklyn.
US-based Pakistani artist, Slowspin (Zeerak Ahmed) has a distinct sound practice grounded in North Indian classical vocal traditions, dream-folk, ambient and experimental-electronic music.
By taking the thumri and recontextualizing it for contemporary music—ambient, dream pop, guitar-based folk—she is excavating this buried alternative history. These centuries-old songs and traditions send down fresh roots into new soil on TALISMAN, still aching for home but open to new possibilities for growth, new histories to write. Much like Ahmed herself, and millions of others in the South Asian diaspora. “They tell me not to plant things where they don’t belong,” Ahmed sings in understated defiance on the closing “Belong.” “What if that’s all I know?” – Pitchfork
US-based Pakistani artist Zeerak Ahmed, who performs under the stage name Slowspin, produces voice-based sculptures, sound installations and uniquely fragile sound collages. Slowspin has a distinct sound practice grounded in North Indian classical vocal traditions, dream-folk, ambient and experimental-electronic music. Poetry and melodies in her mother tongue(s)—Urdu, Farsi, Purbi and English—build new textural soundscapes. Her collaborative album, TALISMAN, opens a world of Slowspin’s uncanny and heart-wrenching refrains, delivering a balm for the migrant’s journey into the unknown: the abyss of love, loss and longing. Since the release of the TALISMAN, she has been performing with the album’s co-producer Grey Mcmurray (Tongues in Trees trio, Beth Orthon, Ali Sethi), Marlon Patton (Lonnie Holley, The Mace Hibbard Quintet) and Grammy nominated multi-instrumentalist, Shahzad Ismaily (Yoko Ono, Laurie Anderson, Love in Exile).
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