black midi have kept up their mysterious persona by dropping a brand new track, unannounced. They sure have kept eager fans waiting and intrigued for them to drop new material, but in true BM style they’ve bent the rules of traditional release schedules in the same way they bend the rules of genre and, ultimately, sound. Their sound is both off-kilter and perfectly spot-on time signature - if such a thing is possible, Black Midi have sure managed to pull it off. Math rock, psych rock and post punk all bubble together in this melting pot of carefully considered chaos.
Geordie Greep, who sounds like his name has been plucked from a cartoon horror movie, and his comrades operate under the cover of darkness. They stalk around stages, assaulting and intriguing audiences with their frenetic drum patterns and blistering musicianship. Their music is undefinable, which is possibly the reason why they’ve taken both the underground music press and the mainstream press by storm. They’ve laid waste to every stage they set foot on, their apocalyptic live show leaving everyone left behind in a disorientated trance, suffering from tinnitus, and a sense of ‘everything I’ve thought about music is all wrong’.
A foreboding, menacing bassline grabs your attention right from the get-go on new track ‘Crow’s Perch’. They flit between restraint and riot, all held tightly together by the strong glue that is Morgan Simpson’s impeccable drumming, which is rightly becoming the stuff of legend. As a band, their musicianship is faultless; it’s mind bending, face-melting, cacophonus, and just one hundred percent brilliant. This is their first release since signing to Rough Trade, and with this as the benchmark, the future is shaping up to be epic.
The accompanying video for the track, directed by Vilhjálmur Yngvi Hjálmarsson operating under the moniker susan_creamcheese, manages to capture the sound’s energy and translate it into a brilliantly peculiar visual form, comprising saturated graphics and sharp edit cuts between scans of mundane, everyday items, frantic handheld footage, and shower cleaning routines. Rightly so, the visuals come with a strobe warning - the intermittent flashes somewhat mirror their live show, and reflect their sound - flashes of condensed, intense light and brilliance. Watch the video below:
We tipped black midi as one of our sounds for 2019, read the rest here. black midi play the following dates:
APRIL
06 - Brussels, BRDCST
20 - Rotterdam, Motel Mozaique
MAY
05 - Manchester, Sounds From The Other City
09-11 - Brighton, The Great Escape - TICKETS
25 - Totnes, Sea Change
30 - Nimes, This Is Not A Love Song Festival
31 - Dudingen, Bad Bonn Kilbi
JUNE
01 - Neustrelitz, Immergut Festival
06 - Gothenburg, Garden Festival
08-09 - Paris, Villette Sonique
10 - Moers, Moers Festival
15 - Bergen, Bergenfest
18 - London, EartH - TICKETS
20 - Bristol, Fiddlers
21 - Liverpool, Phase One
22 - Glasgow, Mono
23 - Nottingham, Contemporary Space
JULY
05 - Roskilde, Roskilde Festival
05-07 - Moscow, Bolь Festival
12 - Madrid, Mad Cool Festival
14 - Nijmegen, Valkhof Festival
18 - New York, Bowery Ballroom
21 - Chicago, Pitchfork Music Festival
22 - Minneapolis, 7th Street Entry
23 - Madison, The Terrace at University of Wisconsin
26 - Hyères, Midi Festival
AUGUST
02-04 - Katowice, Off Festival
04 - Waterford, All Together Now Festival
08 - Rees Haldern, Haldern Pop
10 - Oslo, Øya Festival
16 - Viana do Castelo, Paredes de Coura
16-18 - Biddinghuizen, Lowlands Festival
24 - Gueret, Check In Festival
31 - Dorset, End Of The Road Festival
SEPTEMBER
19 - Paris, La Boule Noire
OCTOBER
07 - Berlin, Lido
08 - Hamburg, Kampnagel
09 - Cologne, Bumann & Sohn
