Fans of the incredibly popular “arty, krautrock-y, minimalistic math-rock” genre will undoubtedly remember a few years back, when a little Brooklyn-based trio called Dawn of Midi made us all fear the impending day when we can no longer tell the difference between men and machines with their apocalyptic dance album Dysnomia.
Well… now here we are, several years later. I’m pretty sure that everyone I know and love hasn’t been replaced by cyborgs, and so is Dawn of Midi’s percussionist Qasim Naqvi, who has just announced that he’s releasing a new album of slightly less dystopian electronic music (composed entirely on a Moog Model D synth in collaboration with painter Pippo Lionni for NYC’s P! Gallery) via New Amsterdam Records on November 4. The digital-only release is called Chronology, and you can get your hands on it a month early exclusively through the New Amsterdam Records Bandcamp Subscription page.
“I was keen on somehow mirroring Pippo’s process through sound,” Naqvi says of the project. “I was struck by his restraint and use of one color source [in his paintings], and the kind of visual distortion achieved through a process of slow layering. So for the music, I reacted by using an analog device instead of a computer.” But ditching computers for finicky analog devices is not without its pitfalls, as Naqvi also explains: “On the level of functionality, the machine was kind of janky […] it was like bringing some ancient thing back from the dead and having it adapt […] but with sound that always leads to interesting results.”
Check out the “janky” analog results for yourself down below via the album’s trailer (featuring music from the amazingly-titled second track, “Aftertouch”), and order the thing by the warm, reliable, soothing glow of your trusty ol’ nonthreatening computer screen now.
Chronology tracklisting:
01. Kindly Static
02. Aftertouched
03. Head Within a Head
04. Turtle on Fire
05. Chronology
06. Mt. Erased