Some great Jazz albums have caught our attention on FRUK and graced our pages over the years including the Neil Cowley Trio (The Face of Mount Molehill), Get the Blessing (Ronnie Scotts Live Review), the future jazz of Portico Quartet and most recently the defiant poet and activist John Sinclair’s Jazz-hop ‘Mohawk‘. One album that deserves a very worthy mention is the well-oiled 2013 release from Dawn of Midi – Dysnomia. Anyone that keeps their ear to ground would have picked up the vibe on this band but as this is their first introduction on FRUK here’s a little introduction:
If you were listening to this album for the first time with no knowledge of this trio then you’d swear blind that electronic gadgetry, samples and loop pedals were at play but there’s none in sight. The tight grooves you hear are down to incredible endurance and discipline and a natural gift that’s in the blood…
Pianist Amino Belyamani was born in Morocco, where he “grew up in a culture where people do polyrhythms in their sleep.” A stateside move didn’t happen until he turned 18 and decided to study abroad at CalArts. Meanwhile, bassist Aakaash Israni relocated from India to Southern California when he was just four months old, and percussionist Qasim Naqvi’s parents left Pakistan before he was born in Connecticut.
“Both my parents are major music fans,” says Naqvi. “They love old Hindi songs from the black and white film era, and different kinds of traditional music from the South Asian subcontinent. So that stuff has definitely filtered through me somehow, but scales and rhythms from that part of the world are not something that are central to my musical thinking. At least not yet.”
Whatever the reasons, their high wire balancing act has led to them gracing many 2013 best of lists including NPR and BBC Radio 3…remember the buzz of that opening percussion and bass line from Portico Quartet’s Ruin…well with this lot that buzz just keeps on going. They eat beats and rhythms for breakfast and as you can see from this video Belyamani plays that piano like he’s playing a tabla and Israni’s bass lines are insane whilst Naqvi just defies science on drums:
Boston, October 2013
