Preamble

"Perhaps “abstract modern composition” best describes Preamble, a record perfectly suited to its title. Composed by Dawn Of Midi’s Qasim Naqvi and realized by the Contemporary Music Ensemble of NYU, Preamble is a thrilling, sonorous maze of conservatory gestures that stops just short of cohering into anything continuous or definitive. Grouped, these carefully carved mini-movements confound one another like opposing weather fronts, swinging through moods without quite resolving into a full-fledged schizophrenia. But impressionism is hardly a crime, and the disappointment of Preamble is its brevity; half an hour is hardly long enough to truly get lost in the drift on offer here." —Raymond Cummings / Magnet Magazine