Fatima Al Qadiri’s “Mojik (Your Waves)” explores a languorous, conceptual melancholia, a direction catalyzed by her work scoring Mati Diop’s 2019 film, Atlantics. The track opens with phantasmic peals of brassy synths, which quickly cede to the piercing vocals of Gumar, the Kuwaiti vocalist from whom her forthcoming Gumar EP takes its title. (Gumar is Arabic for “moon.”) Informed by formal training in Arabic lamentation singing, Gumar repeats a chilling verse that translates to “your waves, your waves have killed me, oh sea” in a meditation on unrequited love. Clear swells of bass pull the song into the depths as Gumar’s pitch and tone darken to match; the track’s final reverberant moans float away like soft froths of seafoam. “Mojik (Your Waves)” expands the insular universe of Medieval Femme into a space ripe for collaboration and frames isolation as a communal, eternal refrain.
