yønderwuff - The Return of the Traumatized (2024)
yønderwuff aka Grace Brown is a vegan straight-edge Muslim trans woman and an increasingly ambitious artist. Compared to her previously released material, this debut album stands out clearly as more publish-worthy, though it can feel like mashing up two EPs coming from seemingly two different directions: conscious emo (t)rap and Islamic music smothered in wall noise, both previously explored, yet not as successfully as on here.
As clashing as it appears, this mixture does have sense: the rapping tracks convey her traumas in plain, and Grace comes across as someone who, despite all her inner struggles, won't go down without putting a fight with them nasty fascists; then you've got the anasheed, a genre which in contemporaneity suffers from associations with Islamofascists, yet at heart its repetitions illustrate how religion (which also had its revolutionary strands, including, in the case of Islam, a lesser-known strand of Muslim anarchism, about which you can read in scholars such as Mohamed Abdou) is, for the better or the worse as more secular people might argue, our species' naturally-evolved anti-depressant... and this is where the catharsis kicks in through the way of noise!
This hits way too hard; as a trans woman, albeit having suffered less from depression and self-harm, this is all too relatable, including the political parts which express more than skepticism about so-called democracy and liberalism. The things Grace say are so point and I want her to know she's not alone in her struggles.
To be perhaps too blunt (excuse my autistic ass), I am a bit less warm about the otherwise serviceable trap productions, except for Ghais Guevara's brilliant sampling on what is also lyrically the highlight of this part of the album, "No More" - inshaAllah, hope this collab gonna last from now on.
"Salawat" works well as a transition from the trap side to "Ya Nabi Salam Alayka", which is a cover of Maher Zain, but three times longer than the original. Grace's vocal delivery is drenched in a rising and receding wash of noise, with neither of the two elements being entirely static. Compared to "And We Shall Reduce This All to Barren Waste...", Grace has really went from what seemed like a mere novelty to making an organic and cathartic work of art, and I love it - probably the first instance of nasheed noise that actually works, coming from one of the first openly trans nasheed artists (I've also met on discord another sister who allegedly makes anasheed, yet she hasn't revealed to me her recording name for whatever reason...).
Poverty is hard when you're openly trans and not a sex worker (sorry not sorry), so that alone should be a strong reason to support Grace if you can empathize in the slightest, and all the more so considering she is genuinely an unique artist! And if you're Muslim, consider sadaqah before judging.