black midi w/ Circuit Des Yeux
2023 Bell’s Beer Garden Summer Concert SeriesThis is a 21 and over event. Five facts about black midiOne. black midi are: Geordie Greep (guitar, vocals), Cameron Picton (bass, vocals), and Morgan Simpson (drums). Two. Coincidentally, Morgan and Geordie both played in church bands growing up Three. The band met at the BRIT School. Geordie and Matt borrowed the name from a Japanese music genre where a MIDI file is stuffed with so many musical notes that its visual representation looks solid black. MIDI files do not contain sound. Four. After leaving school Cameron worked in the Wimbledon branch of stationery store Ryman. Geordie taught music. Morgan briefly toyed with the idea of becoming a professional footballer but eventually chose drumming and teaching music. Five. black midi got their first gig two weeks after leaving school, in June 2017, at south London’s renowned Windmill venue. It led to a Windmill residency, a publishing contract, a record deal, a Mercury nomination for Schlagenheim, and you reading this. Myths about black midiOne. black midi don’t expect, or want, you to take themselves or their music too seriously. black midi music can be exuberant, cathartic, theatrical, comic, absurdist, over-abundant, intense, cinematic, brutal, restlessly brilliant. Two. None of black midi’s released music is entirely improvised. They did spend a long time jamming at the start, but would record the jams and select the best bits to replay as part of structured recordings. Three. The BRIT School’s importance in the black midi story can also be overplayed. Yes, the school was where they met, and their generous facilities afforded the group time and space in their final year to experiment and rehearse until they had a better idea of what they could become.The album“Geordie had a dream that we called the album Hellfire, he kept saying it all the time” ‘Hellfire’ has long burned in black midi’s world. First, Geordie imagined it was the title of their debut album; Cavalcade was mostly recorded at Hellfire Studio, Dublin; then Cameron dreamed it should be the title of their third. The skeleton of the new album was assembled while Cavalcade was being made, with the meat put on the bones at London’s Hoxa HQ. The main difference between Cavalcade and Hellfire is a switch from third-person to first-person storytelling. Cavalcade depicted everyone from cabaret singers to cult leaders, while Hellfire largely sticks to more morally suspect characters, given power by their direct dramatic monologues, their flamboyant appeals to our degraded sense of right and wrong. You’re never quite sure whether to laugh at or be horrified by the tales these people tell. One connection between Cavalcade and Hellfire is that the mysterious military mining corporation behind the previous album’s Diamond Stuff reappears in Cameron’s new song Eat Men Eat. “I really enjoy the storytelling on Eat Men Eat, Welcome to Hell and 27 Questions,”says Morgan, who didn’t write any of Hellfire’s words.“I find myself laughing when we play them at gigs.”As on Cavalcade, most of the lyrics came from Geordie, but Cameron does some of his best-ever work on the forcefully sweet Still, the album’s least abstract, most lyrically personal song. The range, power and potent production of black midi’s music has never been greater than on Hellfire, partly thanks to genius producer Marta Salogni, who’d worked on Cavalcade opener John L. But, as always, the type of music black midi play isn’t as important as its quality. And whatever you think about black midi’s music isn’t as important as how you feel about it.
