Y. Misdaq is a jack of all trades. Not content with busting some beautiful electronic soundscapes through the streets of Brighton, he’s gone on to run his own artist’s hub website, record 2 hip-hop albums, travel the world and write a book. He and I share a strong vibe from the similarity of our mindsets. His first book, ‘Pieces of a Paki’ shows the growth and nurturing of a truly original homegrown talent.

‘Pieces of a Paki’ is set in a semi-realistic future where the worst possible elements of our magazine-obsessed society have realised themselves in a un-topia built on paranoia, fear and organic milk. Charles is King, Brazil is the enemy and Arsenal are top of the league. A future built on the ridiculous, as well as the real. Like most science-fiction writers, Misdaq holds up a damning mirror to our times and shows the ugliness, corruption and insanity at play by taking these elements to their natural conclusion in a possible future timeline. But, to call Misdaq a science fiction writer would do him a disservice. His protagonist, Jonathan, is the serial outsider, awkward, shy, quiet, from a home shattered but not yet broken.

Jonathan lives in a future where the outsiders and the weirdos are ‘Pakis’, as that’s the worst possible thing you could be called. Seen through his childlike eyes, we follow him through flashbacks from his childhood, which reveal more about our own futures to come and the sly politics he subtly interweaves into the narrative. He relates his past and his likes and dislikes in an awkward, child’s way, innocent and inquisitive yet impossibly shy. He travels from London to boarding school to London to Spain to Morrocco to Highbury to the outer limits of space.

It’s an ambitious book that loses its way slightly through two slightly forced plot contrivances that advance the narrative. But these can be ignored as the book is steeped heavily in fairytale and airy dreams. As a first novel, Misdaq should be proud of his creation, a simple yet sly indictment of life in the last 5 years and where it’ll send us if we continue to worship at the altar of celebrities and fictional wars. Misdaq shares the wide-eyed optimism leading to weary worldliness exhibited by bands like Belle and Sebastian and Radiohead, and his writing is sweet and simple and free of oppositional metaphor. As a musician, he weaves poetry and rhythm into the delicate writing and develops a world for us that is both all too real and "far out, dude" at the same time.

Before reading this, I couldn’t have recommended his music enough, now get a hold of these reading materials. Next, he plans a film. Get on board with this completely independent, self-financed, self-reliant artist now.

www.nefisa.co.uk

Yam Boy's profile on Indian Electronica

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