Paradise Rock Club, July 21. Doors at 7, show at 8. $30. Tickets available here.
It was only a matter of seconds of first pushing play on black midi‘s 2021 album Cavalcade [Rough Trade] that I thought, “King Crimson. ’21st Century Schizoid Man’.”
Thus, it was in the pleasantly so sense of the word that I was surprised that they had released a cover of that KC song earlier this year. The EP that it is on, Cavalcovers, also includes a Captain Beefheart song, which in retrospect hardly comes as a shock. The other song contained therein, however, is unexpected in all possible regards.
The song on the aforementioned album that provided me with my initial impression of black midi was the single “John L.” If you are wondering why the title guy is repeatedly referred to as “John 50,” consider that there are cases in which “L” is not a letter but a numeral.
The other two singles pulled from Cavalcade, “Slow” and “Chondromalacia Patella,” are further instances of sonic bombardment in the prog rock/jazz fusion vein. Both are as unlikely as “John L” to attract the ears of listeners who don’t have the head start of having immersed themselves in the less-than-radio-ready music that influenced black midi. (In addition to King Crimson, other band names that are dropped in reviews include Can, The Fall, and Primus.)
Hellfire (Rough Trade), black midi’s third album (2019’s Schlagenheim [also Rough Trade] preceded Cavalcade), dropped last Friday. The sometimes cacophonic barrage is still there, but the collection also ups the jazz rock ante quite a bit. Still (which happen to be the title of one it’s songs), the 10 tracks clock in at a digestibly compact 39 minutes.
Reviewers have certainly turned some phrases in their assessment of Hellfire, be it Guardian critic Alex Petridis’s not-so-complimentary (depending on one’s perspective) comparison to the “the more headache-inducing bits of the Mahavishnu Orchestra’s jazz-fusion classic Birds of Fire,” or the NME’s more generous praising of its “zippy jazz, murky post-punk and opiated, dreamy psychedelia” (Andy Price) and Exclaim!’s appreciation of how the “crisp production magnifies every jeered note and impulse crash” (Sydney Brasil).
I am bit loath to describe any artist as love ‘em or hate ‘em, so let’s just say that black midi kinds of listeners will probably not be able to get enough, while pretty much everyone else likely won’t care enough to listen beyond whatever small portions that they are willing sample.
But as the band said in a 2019 interview, ”All great art comes from self-indulgence.” And whatever one thinks of their music, Black Midi are certainly to be given credit for milking that mantra for all it’s worth.
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