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Channelled madness – the sound Dawn of Midi spent years shaping, culminating into their most mesmerising work yet

With Dysnomia, the Brooklyn-based group Dawn of Midi abandons improvisation in favour of composition, utilising sophisticated rhythmic structures from North and West African folk traditions to weave a sonic tapestry of trance-inducing grooves. From close up one may see only dots, but when stepping back an undulating image reveals itself. “We didn’t want to create anything cerebral,” says Belyamani, “we wanted something visceral, something that would awaken our instinctive dance impulses.”
Having met at California Institute of the Arts in Los Angeles in 2006, bassist Aakaash Israni, pianist Amino Belyamani and drummer Qasim Naqvi found their original rapport through late night tennis matches on the campus court. The chemistry they founded there eventually led them back indoors to improvise together; something they did in total darkness to deprive themselves of all their senses except the crucial one – their hearing.
The manner, by which a trio of solely acoustic instruments ends up sounding like electronic music, has to do with the unconventional ways the group play their instruments on Dysnomia. The record comes to life in the trio’s critically acclaimed live shows, a test of endurance and trust that involves performing their hand-looped acoustic minimalism note for note, just as the compositions were recorded. Dawn of Midi’s sets are as energetic and rhythmic as a seamlessly mixed DJ-set, mesmerising fans in the same way the group’s favourite experimental and electronic acts have for decades.
The album was recorded to 2-inch tape at Waterfront Studios in Hudson, New York - a former church that was purchased and transformed into an analogue recording playground by the great engineer Henry Hirsch. Once the band visited the studio and met Henry, an expert in analogue recording equipped with a vintage Helios console, 16 and 24-track tape machines and a superb collection of microphones, it was obvious they had to record there; it was miles ahead of anywhere else they had visited. Rusty Santos then mixed the album to make sure it would hit as hard as the group’s favourite electronic albums do in spite of it being entirely acoustic.
“We wanted to make a record that sounded both musically futuristic and sonically vintage,” explains Israni, “and since the album never saw a proper international release, it is very exciting to see what might happen when more people are exposed to it. And to be aligned with Erased Tapes, whose enthusiasm for the music they release has done a lot for exposing unique instrumental and electronic music, makes it that much more interesting.”

Dysnomia will be released worldwide on June 1st, 2015 through Erased Tapes – available on 2x LP, CD and Download.

Made up of some of the Boston area’s most talented and active musicians, the Redline Brass is quickly growing to be one of the most exciting groups to see on stage.
The combination of a diverse collection of musicians, the Redline Brass accepted the fellowship in Community Outreach at the Longy School of Music in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Now in their second year as Candidates for the Artist Diploma at the same school, Redline Brass is quickly gaining traction as one of Boston’s most exciting groups to see live. Between innovative performances in outreach, wowing young audiences with the technical and musical fireworks or blazing a new trail in the classical repertoire, Redline Brass is always pushing the boundaries of the art form

If you are interested in our Educational Outreach Programs please contact us! Visit www.redlinebrass.com  for bios, pics, audio and more!

This page features the music of members of California State University, Fresno's Composer's Guild.

Elbert Liu (b. 1988) is a native of southern California and earned a DMA degree in music composition from the University of Missouri - Kansas City (UMKC), where he studied with Chen Yi, Zhou Long, and Paul Rudy. He received his Bachelors and Masters degrees from the University of Southern California (USC), where he previously studied under Frank Ticheli, Stephen Hartke, and Erica Muhl. 
He has attended the Boston University Tanglewood Institute, the Bowdoin International Music Festival, and the Atlantic Music Festival. In 2009, he won the 2nd Annual Charles E. Gamper Contemporary Student Compostion Competition Award, and in 2013, he was selected as one of 15 composers to partake in a 15-Minutes-of-Fame event hosted by the contemporary music organization Vox Novus, featuring the Crane Harp Ensemble. Most recently, Elbert won the 2014 Gerard Kemner Wind Ensemble Composition Competition Prize, and his winning work, "A Particle-ar Theory", was performed by the UMKC Wind Symphony in 2015.
Apart from his studies in composition, Elbert served as a conducting/library assistant intern for the California Philharmonic, headed by Victor Vener, during the summer seasons of 2012 and 2013. He currently serves as an independent contractor under the USC Thornton School of Music, as well as a librarian for the Los Angeles Youth Orchestra (LAYO). Elbert has also served as a tutor in piano, music composition and music theory.

Trumpet player and composer based in Austin, Texas.

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