About Half Waif
In the deep Upstate New York winter of 2022, trees bare and taunting, Nandi Rose found herself searching for an apricitic clarity. She has always found the season difficult; its ruthless theft of birdsong and flora, heavy clouds low and smothering what little light remains. But the cacophonous silence of that winter was particularly brutal. It should have been stirred by the growth of life, a promise of a new chapter, a bright dawn, as Rose learned she was pregnant with her first child. That promise was broken in early December, when stillness took over the ultrasound screen; slow-motion mouths told her the life inside her had ended. Like a snapped branch weighed down by leaden frost, Rose lost a part of her future she thought would blossom.
Baldwin tells us we must say yes to life, to “embrace it wherever it is found – and it is found in terrible places – nevertheless, there it is.” This is the guiding force of See You At The Maypole, the sixth full-length album in Half Waif’s prolific catalog. If we look for color in the midst of our own personal winters, the brightness will soon begin to bounce off the snow. This gathering of resilience and clutching of chiaroscuro––celebrating both light and dark––guides us on a journey towards acceptance and surrender. Rose had to figure out how to love her life, even if it didn’t look like what she wanted it to.
About Slowspin
Slowspin / Zeerak Ahmed is a US-based Pakistani artist. She produces voice-based sculptures, meditative installations and uniquely fragile sound collages. Slowspin has a distinct sound practice grounded in Hindustaani 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. Exploring new ways of listening, composing, and performing the sounding body, her work addresses critical immaterial art.
With the release of her first EP, “Nightfall’s Reverie” (with Mooshymoo) in 2013, she became a formative member of the independent music community in Karachi, Pakistan. Frequently moving between Pakistan, Germany and the U.S., she has performed, exhibited and curated shows at a number of international venues. Notable events including the Re: Sound New Music Festival Cleveland in 2022, CONTEXT ART MIAMI, Art Basel 2021, Artist Platform - International Coproduction Fund Berlin 2018, Lahore Music Meet 2017 and Dosti Music Project U.S. Tour 2016. After the completion of her MFA in Creative Practice, she served as the Assistant Curator for the Inaugural Karachi Biennale 2017 and began teaching as Associate Professor for Studio and Liberal Arts the following year. In 2022
she received the Akron Museum CAN Triennial Prize and is presently teaching at the Cleveland Institute of Art.
Slowspin’s latest album, TALISMAN, presents the spatial richness and complexity of the contemporary South Asian voice. The collaborative album hosts contributions from a stellar line up of NYC-based musicians including Shahzad Ismaily (executive producer), Grey Mcmurray (co-producer), Aaron Roche and Greg Fox. 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.
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