The band are celebrating the release day of their second album Cavalcade with two shows at Hackney Church, and take the opportunity to treat the socially distanced audience to some eerie church organ music straight from a Hammer Horror movie soundtrack in place of a support act.  

 

Taking to the plainly lit stage dressed, inexplicably, as chefs, with the church's spectacular golden fresco as a backdrop, they blast out the 20th Century Fox fanfare. Indeed, we are in for a widescreen epic.

 

With the band's core three members joined by a sax and keyboard player, they present the album in all its super-complex glory. For those yet to hear it, they've taken the dense, compact post-punk sound of their first and fused it with an unabashed prog-rock sensibility and an element of the hard jazz sound that's been bubbling away on the South London underground for the past few years now. If you're looking for a comparison, try Motorhead doing a note for note cover of Miles Davis or Frank Zappa. Bewilderingly fierce, in short.

 

A breakneck speed run through of 'John L' is an early highlight, with its sudden stops echoing thrillingly around the church's walls. Geordie Greep, the band's singer and guitarist, is the undoubted central focal point, jigging around the stage with the grace of a pixie on speed,  occasionally flashing a pair of red socks above his black winkle pickers. His voice is lost in the muddy mix for a while - social distancing does not do much for acoustics it seems - but when it does start to emerge, it comes with a wonderfully un-self-consciously emotive nature that brings Billy Mackenzie of The Associates to mind. High praise indeed.

 

Thrilling though the experience definitely is, these are not ideal surroundings to experience BM's multi-faceted delights, and despite some highlights - the off-kilter groove and Captain Beefheart-like wonkiness of 'Slow' cutting through the clouds of the venue's natural echo - it's a bit like hearing proceedings come in and out of focus. 

 

That said, 'Ascending Forth', the closing track to both the album and the show tonight, manages to achieve maximum clarity as it winds things down, Greep's voice becoming more and more clear and filled with melancholy. After all the bluster and firepower, it's actually the most effective moment in the set thanks to its simplicity.

 

But at the same time, black midi are definitely onto something original and pocked with promise. It won't be for everyone - this is way more off the weird scale than the bands like Shame, Squid and Dry Cleaning - that they're bang lumped in with. That means you need to hear them all the more.