Dawn of Midi
Dysnomia

I feel bad.

Weeks pass by, months fly, I listen to the old albums that I've always carried in my heart, I throw myself with commendable enthusiasm into new releases, but I struggle immensely to let anything musically pierce the cardiac armor that has gradually hardened over the last thirty years of my life. Therefore, I feel bad. I am in the perpetual search for something that perhaps even I don't know...

Like an old addict, my drugs no longer have an effect. Growing tolerance torments me. My body now craves the most gummy Nepalese, the most hallucinogenic mushroom that exists, the most crystallized filth on the market... I feel bad, but maybe, for a few days, I'm starting to feel better. I took a stroll on Bandcamp, a labyrinthine neighborhood of a strange megalopolis. Everywhere there's someone offering you something. You have to trust, you have to test, you try once and if you don't like it, you move on, but if by chance you arrive at the right dealer, it's leaps of joy and heart flutters.

I'll leave you a name, but don't advertise it too much around: Dawn Of Midi. This strange New York acoustic trio (bassist Aakaash Israni, pianist Amino Belyamani, and percussionist Qasim Naqvi), active since 2010, has good stuff. They proposed the "Dysnomia", their latest delicacy from 2013. It's a perverse drug that throws you into another world, into your own small lonely world. It's that damn piano that keeps insisting on very few notes and micro-variations! It's those damn hands of the Moroccan Amino who, unsatisfied with hitting the conventional black and white keys, sticks his hands on the strings to modify the sound's timbre. And how can we not mention the underground and incessant work of the bassist perfectly tying with the dry drumming of the Pakistani Qasim. It's an alienating and sly drug, dangerous, not for everyone. It's a drug that mixes a geometric, rigorous, and minimal idea of jazz (a contradiction, I would say) with the idea of human and vital electronics (another contradiction, I would say). Dawn Of Midi are two contradictions that unite or collide, it's up to you. Nine pieces that magnetize and flow without any real interruption where there is no space for melody but only for the barrenness of rhythm.

And then, damn, searching for the right dealer and encountering a gang called Dawn Of Midi seems to me almost bordering on perfection. And then, damn, searching for drugs and confronting a Pakistani, an Indian, and a Moroccan!

I warned you: this is music that can make some heavy addict feel good but can make a novice feel bad.

Beware, drugs are harmful (to some more, to others less).