Fear, anger and alienation have been dominant emotions in Ruhail Kisar’s music. His early solo releases and live shows – under the now-defunct moniker Sister – married the short-lived band Vajravara’s death metal with power electronics, wave and post-industrial noise. A guitar- and laptop-wielding techno shaman who harnesses the forces of cosmic chaos for a shock and awe-inspiring assault on the sensibilities of Mumbai and Delhi’s hipster elite, Qaisar has made music that evokes the brain’s full potential. A friend of mine once called it a palate cleanser for the soul.
But Caesar had higher ambitions than creating sonic mind-wipes, and at some point in 2016, he shifted gears. On that year Lathalam E.PBringing back the raucous noise, the tension, the eldritch atmosphere and the altered sounds – from pre-modern Ladakh, the geographically isolated and geopolitically contested Himalayan region that is home to Caesar. He also began experimenting with analog photography and film, drawing these disparate efforts into an overall project of ethnological excavation to tease out Ladakh’s past from its hiding place in its post-capitalist, tourist-economy. On his debut album, he takes that forward, FatimaA tragic tale of personal and generational trauma, and a psychological exploration of the windswept granite peaks and bushy valleys of his homeland.
Ladakh where Caesar mourns Fatima The European imagination is not the mystical and secluded “last Shangri-La” or the Himalayan fantasy of contemporary Indian tourists. Instead, it’s a political hybrid culture that sits at the crossroads of the Silk Road, a land where Indian and Tibetan Buddhism, Islam, Hinduism and remnants of pre-Buddhist religions rub shoulders – according to the residents. Anthropologist Martin A. Mills, once saw themselves as part of a complex of spirits, guardians, and traveling demons. It is a world of chthonic rites, exorcisms, and possessions formally associated with the supernatural.
Also disappearing fast is Ladakh – its borders were redacted by 20th century nationalism; phasphun Interfaith harmony is torn apart by communal politics, the few remaining tomes are crumbling under the pressure of rapid technological change and what Caesar calls “the subjugation of the tourism industry to soft power.”
Fatima It is an elegy for this Ladakh, and it cannot be realized in the future. The album’s discordant drones and atonal screams are framed by the horrors of recent history—colonialism and militarization and industrialization and the psychic assault of late capitalism. As we traverse this ruined, decaying landscape, we stumble across echoes of a bygone era that Kaisar has painstakingly reawakened by experimenting with traditional Ladakhi music and folklore.
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