While there is a great deal of texture to Fatima Al Qadiri's music, what's so striking about it is how steely it can be. "D-Medley," a song that heavily uses a steel pan, the Caribbean's buoyant percussion of choice, is repeatedly jabbed with digital moans and a corresponding low tones, the end result being almost clinically rhythmic. For Al Qadiri, everything is meticulously juxtaposed, bliss and distress mingling chummily. Her songs are such sad bangers. The above video for "D-Medley," which its creator, Thunder Horse Video, says, "riffs on the notion of electro-tropicalia, a tenuous genre that inhabits a fantasy realm loosely inspired by Brazil's Tropicalia movement," seems to be equally inspired by Tom Ze and that thing that happens on iTunes when you set it to visual mode. It also has women in pastel bikinis dancing on your desktop. The below remix, by UK agitator Girl Unit, of "Wut" fame, maximizes"How Can I Resist U" to such a degree that it feels from a different stratosphere than its source material. Good for Roland Barthes fans. It's from Al Qadiri's GSX Remixes EP, out now.
Stream: Fatima Al Qadiri, "How Can I Resist U" (Girl Unit Remix)
