{"id":3860,"date":"2022-07-22T12:23:10","date_gmt":"2022-07-22T11:23:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/fr-nt.nl\/?p=3860"},"modified":"2022-07-22T12:30:37","modified_gmt":"2022-07-22T11:30:37","slug":"black-midi-geeft-een-cursus-worldbuilding","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fr-nt.nl\/en\/2022\/07\/22\/inside-the-worldbuilding-of-black-midi\/","title":{"rendered":"Inside the worldbuilding of black midi"},"content":{"rendered":"

Working with knotted melodies and complex compositions, black midi develops a sonic assemblage loosely focused on building things up and tearing them down. Each album transforms the band's sound while maintaining their gifted musical skills at the fore through performances both technically masterful and ambitiously zany. Now on their third record, Hellfire<\/em>, black midi no longer have anything to prove, and they can dig into the singular trail they've blazed with confidence.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Written by Sara Nuta<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On a breezy May afternoon, the band members of black midi sit around a table on the rooftop of NEMO, the mammoth green structure and science museum in Amsterdam. There\u2019s vocalist and guitarist Geordie Greep (23), bassist Cameron Picton (23), and drummer Morgan Simpson (23). The museum\u2013known for its playful, immersive exhibits\u2013is a fitting location to chat with the experimental trio ahead of their infernal and endlessly thrilling third album, Hellfire<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Designed by architect Renzo Piano, the rooftop is made to feel like an elevated town square, and with enough wind, it feels like sitting on a terrace among the clouds. From this vantage point, the docked boats bobbing in the distance appear like little LEGO ships, and the city splays out like a Sims creation. We\u2019re surrounded by cascading cement steps, oblique fountains trickling water, and children running about; yet, the ostensibly chaotic elements, much like a black midi song, converge harmoniously.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When black midi splashed onto the scene in 2018, there were many questions. They made a name for themselves with their riotous live shows around the South London circuit, playing at Brixton\u2019s famous Windmill venue; they were labeled the \u201cbest band in London<\/a>\u201d before publishing any music online. The band\u2019s early sound reeled through the post-punk discord of The Fall, prog associations of King Crimson, and virtuosic jazz of Miles Davis\u2013but rather than sounding anachronistic, black midi brought these elements to life with teenage verve.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With no social media presence at the time, black midi\u2019s cultural capital was based on word-of-mouth buzz. That is until video clips on YouTube of their live shows began to gain traction online. Later, the video of their mythologizing KEXP performance<\/a> would springboard them to the attention of millions. In 2018, black midi premiered their first single, \u2018bmbmbm\u2019, a sprawling, exploration of avant-noise rock, and a year later, their debut album Schlagenheim<\/em> was released on famous UK label, Rough Trade Records.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The buzz was warranted. After being heralded as one of Britain's most exciting new bands, black midi made good on this promise by amping up the drama and shaking up the time signatures. Last year, the band zagged into a new direction on their sophomore release, Cavalcade<\/em>. It was a searing collection of songs that ventured further into amorphous free-jazz machinations and knotted classical compositions replete with bruising melodies and heady references to Marlene Dietrich and sinister cult leaders. Where Schlagenheim<\/em> ripped through post-punk and math-rock, Cavalcade<\/em> felt like a band learning to embrace adventure by proxy of jazzier forms. Hellfire<\/em> falls somewhere in between, or perhaps on an entirely different astral plane.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tidying up their noise rock experimentations, the band's third LP doesn't sprawl as much as it combusts into flames. Maximalism doesn't begin to cut it. Listeners are lurched to a rock opera universe, both grim and grandiose. Hellfire<\/em> chronicles the lives of \"morally suspect characters\" from a first-person perspective and grapples with intersecting themes of \"pain, loss, and anguish,\" as detailed in their press release. \"If Cavalcade<\/em> was a drama, Hellfire<\/em> is like an epic action film,\" said Geordie Greep in a statement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a time when artists are vocalizing discontent with how their labels are pressuring them to create TikToks, black midi is a refreshing, vital reminder that a band, given the room to realize their ambitious visions, will always be able to cut through the noise. On artistic autonomy, Cameron Picton says, \u201cthe record label has never told us what to do with music,\u201d and drummer Morgan Simpson adds, \u201cit\u2019s crazy how that\u2019s not actually that common.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Mosaic Process<\/strong>
\nCavalcade<\/em> took over 18 months to record, but Hellfire<\/em> was finished in a few months. Greep locates a metaphor describing the difference between the two journeys: \"It's kind of like the second album was the blacksmith making his smithy, making his anvil, getting his tools all ready, and making the technique for perfect sword building,\u201d he says. \u201cBy the time of the third album, we had that technique down, so the songs came out quickly.\" It\u2019s an apt comparison for an album that welds together tangled compositions, sardonic humor, operatic theater, vocals reminiscent of a 50s radio broadcaster\u2014and, out of these swerves, forges new directions at an exhilarating momentum.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

black midi is a band that values musicianship and trust. The three met at the acclaimed BRIT School, whose fellow alumni include Amy Winehouse, FKA twigs, and Adele. However, their alma mater shouldn't cloud the conversation around their artistic output. Still, it\u2019s clear that recognition and admiration of one another's unique skill sets were vital for the record to come together. \"The main thing that we don't do now that we did in the first album is all sit together in a room and debate how the song should be structured,\" says Greep, \"because that leads to nowhere; you'll just get into arguments.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When asked what they were listening to around the recording time, each gave me an answer more different than the previous.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"I was listening to Stevie Wonder,\u201d says Simpson. \u201cI was going through his earlier stuff all the way to Journey Through The Secret Life of Plants and Hotter Than July<\/em>. In my opinion, a lot of the greatest shit, no matter how many times you listen to it, you're always hearing or finding something new about it.\"<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Picton: \"I was listening to loads of Flamenco music, particularly Enrique Morente. Then John Renbourne as well, the Live In Kyoto 1978<\/em> album. During the recording of the album, I don't think it had much impact on the record at all, but I was listening to lots of Pet Shop Boys.\"<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Greep: \"A lot of Wagner, to be honest. I went to see Sigfried<\/em>, Wagner's opera, and I got really into Wagnerian opera after that, just the grand scope of it and the idea of seeing a show and having a grand theatrical thing became more and more important.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A few misconceptions are floating around about the extent to which improvisation plays a role in the band's composition process. I ask if they want to set the record straight. \"The improvisation has kind of disappeared at this point,\" says Greep. \"The myth is that Schlagenheim took as long to write as it does to listen to. People think it's literally like we just sat down and played, and that's the album.\" Picton adds: \"When we did this version of the press trip in 2019, in ten interviews, at least three would be like: \u2018Oh, so you improvised the whole record, it's really impressive\u2019. It's like, no?\" Simpson muses: \"I think maybe a lot of that previously came from our live shows and how we used to jam a fair bit in between songs and tried to make jams part of the set. But we do that less so now because it doesn't really lead us anywhere.\" Greep describes their process of workshopping riffs together as a kind of \u201corganized jamming.\u201d Simpson laughs, \u201cjamming, we're a jam band! Grateful Dead part 2, you get me!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ready Player One: Inside the black midi universe<\/strong>
\nblack midi are no stranger to constructing their universes, whether sonically, visually, or lyrically. Each album's knack for storytelling feels more sharply honed, drawn from a tradition of literary references. Hellfire<\/em> veers through the animated villainy of scumbags and scallywags, from the Flamenco-tinged hero's journey of \u2018Eat Men Eat\u2019 to the thunderous scorcher of a boxing match on \u2018Sugar\/Tzu\u2019 to the dark cabaret theatrics of \u201827 Questions\u2019. Like an open-world concept video game, the album sweeps through landscapes and characters \u2013 a nefarious mining company in the desert, a soldier looking for love in the wrong places, and a mischievous actor with a few tricks up his sleeve. I wonder what the inspiration was behind these morally bankrupt characters. \u201cThe audience gets to vicariously live out these murderous acts,\u201d says Greep. \u201cAll the best characters have a kind of anti-hero streak. In a movie with a good villain, you end up rooting for the villain.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

black midi's characters are both recognizable and anonymous, morally depraved and heroic, villainous and empathetic. Gustaf Holtenas, the artist behind the videos for \u2018Slow\u2019 and \u2018Welcome to Hell\u2019, uses AI to create an animated, faceless style that extends the black midi world through his music videos' surreal aesthetic. Holtenas, in an interview<\/a>, described portraying the song's protagonist as \"an entitled martyr of an incel.\" The album artwork created by David Rudnick, similarly uses AI to generate a mingling of uncanny textures that contribute to this sense of the distinct black midi spirit.<\/p>\n\n\n