Where Chamber Music Meets Miéville

Qasim Naqvi is one-third of the compelling, often experimental Brooklyn trio Dawn of Midi. He’s also a composer in his own right. Next month, NNA Tapes will release “Preamble”, a collection of new compositions written by Naqvi and performed by The Contemporary Music Ensemble of NYU. There’s also a literary connection, which may well interest those who like their music and their fiction unpredictable and unconventional.

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Notes on Fictional Cities Forbidden and Strange

For some readers, there’s a romance to reading about cities or countries that never were, or have vanished, or exist only in the most conceptual way. Not far from my desk is Lonely Planet’s guide to micronations, which features profiles of theoretically sovereign states ranging from Sealand to British West Florida. The title of the first collection of the G. Willow Wilson-written comic book Air neatly summarizes the romance of geography disappeared and nonexistent: Letters From Lost Countries. If you […]

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