Courtesy of Marcia Kempf

❝Aya Metwalli (b. 1988) is a singer who spits the demons out. A cat with a broken tail born of Cairo’s heat and smog. She grew up in the kind of noise that gnaws at your bones. Car horns punch like brass knuckles. Shouting vendors wake the dead. Busted loudspeakers burst out discordant calls to prayer like orchestras that never tune. The piano offered her a different kind of melody, but the guitar taught her how to bleed and write for the loners and the lost. Then she traded strings for static, turning melancholic musings into gut-wrenching lament. The Guardian called her “something of a musical enigma”. Pitchfork praised her “spellbinding brand of anti-pop”. She calls herself a woman who stitched herself back together with her teeth. She takes the stage, and it’s a spine-reveal spectacle that might disturb you a little, but damn if it doesn’t leave you mesmerised.❞