Interview with Aakaash Israni of DAWN OF MIDI

Dawn of Midi, who perform at Roulette on September 24, is Indian contrabassist Aakaash Israni, Moroccan pianist Amino Belyamani and Pakistani percussionist Qasim Naqvi. Based in New York and Paris, the group’s debut record ‘First’ (Accretions) has garnered a startling amount of critical acclaim for an album of completely improvised music. Dawn of Midi’s sound-world draws from a variety of musical idioms: from minimalism, to musique concrète through romanticism, the leaderless trio breathes rigor, lyricism, and silence.

ROULETTE: Tell us about the work you’ll be doing at Roulette.

DAWN OF MIDI: The band is Dawn of Midi, with Qasim Naqvi on drums, Amino Belyamani on piano, and myself on contrabass.  The three of us met at California Institute of the Arts in Los Angeles where we would find windowless rooms in the building late at night and improvise in complete darkness, something that we continue to do to this day when we record. We are a collective, in that there is no leader, and musically this is reflected in the fact that although what we do is often completely improvised, the traditional application of ‘soloing’ does not occur, rather, a common aesthetic leads us to the creation of certain atmospheres and emotional states as an ensemble. One of the things we are exploring as a band is the role of technique in improvised music, and perhaps even the de-emphasis of it in the manual sense. Amino and Qasim are certainly extremely technically proficient practitioners of their instruments, but what makes them so rewarding to play with is that their highest commitment is to what’s happening in the music at any given moment, they play with their ears, not their hands.

Space and silence also play an important role in our music, for aesthetic as well as practical reasons. This music is a form of dialogue and very little is understood if everyone speaks at the same time; we play through the consensus that it is more important to say something necessary than to have something to say.

R: Are there working artists today with whose work you identify?

DOM: We are inspired by many great musicians:

Sleeping States, Henry Threadgill, Radiohead, Lachenmann, Arcade Fire, J.S. Bach, The Books, Ligeti, Boards of Canada…to name a few.

R: What are some defining characteristics of the musical scene you would fit yourself into? What elements of your scene differentiate it from what has come before, or what is happening now?

DOM: It’s difficult to say if DoM belongs to a scene, but if such a thing exists, I think it has to do with the creation of music in which sonority and timbre reside more in the foreground narratively; a music in which genres are mixed intuitively. This has certainly been explored before (musique concrète comes to mind), but there seems to be a convergence taking place today between so called ‘art’ and ‘popular’ music, and it is about the breaking down of strict allegiances to consonance or dissonance and genre, as well as a heightened sensitivity to sound, resonance, and color as musical elements that are capable of telling a story.

These specific qualities aside, one of my most fundamental concerns in music is, admittedly, completely subjective. For me, taste is the sole element of art that is non-negotiable, everything else: technique, virtuosity, cleverness, originality, as well as the absence of these things, ultimately succeed or fail depending on the subtlety of their presentation and delivery, which is measured by taste.

R: What was the last music you listened to?

DOM: Arcade Fire – In The Backseat

R Do you consider yourself more a composer or a performer?

DOM: Both, but since almost all of my performing activity involves either improvising or performing works I have written, composition (be it real time or months in the making) is perhaps more central to my musical identity.

R: Who do you see as instrumental in your development as an artist?

DOM: I had the very good fortune to work with Mark Dresser during my first few years on the instrument, and while he is certainly a virtuoso of contrabass technique, it was rather his brilliance as a composer and investigator of sound and rhythm that really exerted an immense gravity on me when I was starting out. Today, it is my collaborators who contribute the most to my development; the most interesting ideas (not to mention mix tapes) always come from friends.

R: Do you do other things aside from music?

DOM: I live in France and struggle continuously with the subjunctive.

For More Info Visit : www.dawnofmidi.com