Dawn of Midi
Within the group name exists a full description of what they have set out to accomplish with their album Dysnomia. I suggest you start to listen to it before continuing.Dysnomia
They have captured something primitive and beautiful here. An ignorant and superficial mind will overlook the album and write it off as boring or some other bullshit. It does require some work on the listeners part to truly understand and appreciate it.
Its about 45 minutes long and continuous. It should be listened to as such because listening to only one song is taking it out of context, much like one might eat a cup of flour to know what a cookie tastes like. You sort of have to surrender yourself to it, become entranced by it, at least once. Besides the music itself, its an amazing work for other reasons.
This was created by three guys playing acoustic instruments. Don't let the precision and production fool you. This shit is not done with computers and they can pull it off live. The group is composed of bassist Aakaash Israni, pianist Amino Belyamani and drummer Qasim Naqvi. They started collaborating back in 2007 in LA after a drunken tennis match. They started making free form jazz; locking themselves in a pitch black with no prior knowledge of what they were going to do. Take a listen to their earlier albums just to hear how different they are.
They then set off to make this rhythmic masterpiece, which more closely resembles African drum circles than anything else recent. A part from the whole, each instrument is carrying its own rhythm. Try just listening to one instrument, then another and compare the rhythms. Its fuckin' bananas. They seem to have nothing to do with each other. Yet as a whole they make this gestalt of a myriad of shifting feelings. In this section of the album I feel like I might raise my ancestors from the world of the dead, and in that section I felt like I wanted to rip someones face off in obsolete rage, and still yet in another section I felt I could achieve meditative bliss.
Give it an honest listen. They just had a live show at Mahalls and I'm sorry you missed it. They're coming back to Ohio in November, somewhere in Columbus. Don't miss it. Shit's historic.
-nick mercurio