Asiatisch

It must be tough to be the sort of artist that operates in a category of dangerously indulgent ideas so nonpareil that they get lobbed with statements from critics that call her latest albums “even more pretentious [than her past ones].” I find Al Qadiri’s museum-placards-as-music ideas rewarding for the commitment to a bit. Here is one that sounds like a treatise on Baudrillard, or an undergraduate art thesis: Asiatisch, the German term for ‘Asian,’ is a concept album that tours through a vision of China as if it were a theme park. The chintziest, hollowed-out keyboard presets of pan-’Oriental’ music plink out terrifyingly glassy, lopsided melodies; the notion of “Shanzhai” — the term used to describe pirated consumer goods produced by Chinese companies — abounds in songs like “Shanzhai (For Shanzhai Biennial),” itself a “nonsense Mandarin” copy of a copy of Prince’s “Nothing Compares 2 U.” Al Qadiri, obviously, has no Xeroxes.