ENDLING/LIMITED

Description

An endling is the last member of a species. When an endling dies, the species is extinct. Pakistani-American composer Qasim Naqvi returns with Endling, his new album for Erased Tapes Records. Written as a modular synth prequel to his 2023 BBC Concert Orchestral work, God Docks at Death Harbor, Endling takes the listener on a 43-minute odyssey through an intense and beautiful landscape, set hundreds of years in the future. All of the music on Endling was made with an ARP Odyssey, a Minimoog and a modular synthesizer. For me, one of the many stimulating and satisfying aspects of modular synthesizers involves developing complex timbral ideas from scratch, which can rarely be repeated perfectly. The device can be organically unstable and fallible. It can feel like an organism and, as a performer, you control the flow of its energy, or its tension. This mechanical approach to Endling was the perfect complement to its orchestral predecessor; it felt like a different kind of orchestra from this album’s future - with the organic consuming and transmuting the artificial. Qasim Naqvi is a percussionist, composer and synthesist. In addition to being the drummer in the cult minimalist trio Dawn of Midi, Naqvi is an accomplished solo artist and his passion for multidisciplinary work has taken him into the worlds of film, dance, installation art and the orchestral and chamber music scene.