Imaad Wasif

Imaad Wasif’s new album is Strange Hexes and his new band is Two Part Beast. The songs that came to form Strange Hexes were written during 2006 while Wasif was touring the world in support of his self-titled debut. From thought streams penned on scraps of paper and carried via coat pocket through painstaking revisions and airport metal detectors, to melodies that floated unsuspectingly through hotel windows after midnight – interlacing themselves with the ubiquitous drones of an electronic tamboura - the narrator is a devotee of Barthes’ Lover’s Discourse and obsessed with the testament to vigilance and volatility in love, yet in a curious twist, he seems to be writing within the deranged emotional scope of a schizophrenic androgyne. He/She inhabits both sexes and perspectives at all times, channeling romantics Baudelaire and Rimbaud by way of speed freak fags Bowie, Reed, Bolan and Iggy and seen through the eyes of surrealists Dali and Buñuel. The lyrical fragmentation we encounter here is akin to the absurdist methodology found in Alfred Jarry’s Visits of Love.
Withdrawn into the realms of Blake’s illuminations, Fuseli’s “gloomth”, the hash frenzied writing of Paul Bowles, a rare Blind Lemon Jefferson/Huddie Ledbetter 45rpm titled The Male Blues, the recurring influence of Bob Dylan, Black Sabbath, Neil Young & Crazy Horse, The Troggs, Doc Boggs, The Zombies, John Fahey, Jimi Hendrix, and Indian classical music, Wasif is a straight-edged hermit with shamelessly self-inflicted heart wounds and a completely obvious covetous inclination towards rock stardom. He has gained repute for his live performances, swinging wildly between extremes and changing personas. We may find Wasif in white face and lipstick moustache, plugged in, flipping out and conducting experiments in inner transcendence and euphoria, or we may find him in his most naked revelatory state playing intense intimate acoustic sets evoking the spirits of his astral champions. In attempting to dispel the chimerical and cryptic Wasif we may cite the following from The Dictionary of Symbols: “The initiate passes through the fiery curtain which separates the sacred from the profane. By passing from one world to another the initiate undergoes a transformation; changes the plane of existence and becomes a different being.”*
Two Part Beast formed in 2006 to harness the nascent electric vision that Wasif had conjured for Strange Hexes. The band, featuring the totemic musical wizardry of Bobb Bruno (bass and keyboards) and Adam Garcia (drums), entered BWF Studios in Los Angeles with producer Tom Biller. Wasif and Biller carried on mercilessly to see the record to its completion, often working insane hours to stave off Wasif’s imposing irrational fear of sudden death, a mindset which he claims “looms over” him when nearing the final stages of an album and one that he also tried to quell by undergoing extensive cognitive therapy and half-heartedly attempting to implement the techniques demonstrated in the national bestseller, Feeling Good, by David Burns, M.D.
So just exactly who is this crazed outpatient, this lover, this recluse, this megalomaniac, this weirdo, this elusive puss-in-boots, this paranoid, this self-saboteur, this true believer? Can he live up to the calling of his name, which means “pillar of faith” in Urdu? To try to answer these questions we may consult the oracle of Strange Hexes, or perhaps take a glimpse inside the record’s unreleased companion piece, a collection of aphorisms and ciphers titled Letters of a Suicide Profiteer that Wasif hopes will surface one day. In an excerpt from the introduction of Letters, he writes, “…for I have committed no wrongdoing but to be weakened by my intoxications and clouded at times so much so that I am misled and come undone…there is no relief…there is nothing to say that could be more powerful than the pure words, the simple ones that haunt me…I need the electricity to shock - I need to be jilted. I am no good, I feel no good…to be lost in the cacophonous swells of love…to think no more of myself and my needs, if such a freedom could be granted then I know of such a heaven as foretold in the scriptures.” Wasif believes that he is not creating music, but a different form altogether, a sound for everyone’s ears and no one’s ears. “What the fuck does that mean?” you may ask. If you listen closely to Strange Hexes, then you will understand.
*The Dictionary of Symbols, Jean Chevalier & Alain Gheerbant, © 1996 Penguin Books.