Andy Kilbride
Senior A&E Writer
I’m generally wary of the term “buzz band” as a concept because it evokes hordes of over-excitable PR-men more than the visceral thrill of witnessing musicians perfect their craft in real time. Falling in love with new music should feel like riding a rollercoaster as it’s being built, like the present is this tangible, exciting and truly real thing that you’re experiencing. It’s something both rare and unforceable. This was my experience with British experimental rock band Black Midi and their debut album “Schlagenheim,” a 45-minute whirlwind of intense and forward-thinking sounds that always feels urgent and deserving of your full attention.
Though they had little to their name before this, the album had a lot to live up to; their batshit live performances were already the stuff of legends, and just watching them from YouTube is enough to send chills down your spine. Drummer Morgan Simpson alternates between time signatures with cyborg-like precision and unbelievable intensity — often seeming like the band’s defining member — as singer/guitarist Geordie Greep speak-yelps his way through songs — loose enough to serve as skeletal frame works for jamming and interplay — and Matt Kwasniewski-Kelvin plays iPhone recordings through his guitar pickups.
On “Schlagenheim,” the band makes the brave choice to exploit the studio setting, as opposed to just recreating their live shows, flowering their songs with eccentric layers like the banjos on “Western” and the airy background synths on the closing track, “Ducter.” This is both a blessing and a curse for the record, as it allows the band great attention to detail while never feeling quite as exciting as their KEXP (90.3 FM Seattle) performance or putting Simpson in the front and center as much as it could.
This, however, is a minor complaint because the album exudes talent and creativity in a way that most releases could only dream of. From the first few seconds of the labyrinthian opening track “953,” you know you’re in for a treat, and like the subject of the surrealist jam “bmbmbm,” the album “moves with a purpose. And what a magnificent purpose.”
Suffice to say, Black Midi is a buzz band that truly excites and captivates me. I think this is because their work feels fresh and unabashedly alive while clearly not existing in a vacuum. Like most contemporary post-punk bands, you can pick out their influences — the pseudo-Afrobeat grooves of “Remain in Light”-era Talking Heads, the Mark E. Smith’s spoke-sung ramblings and the unstable spazz-rock of Hella — but unlike their contemporaries, this fusion always feels like a futuristic expansion on their ideas as opposed to retreads of pre-existing sounds. With bands that are hyped to death, there’s a constant dread that their future work can never live up to their breakthrough album’s potential.
Obviously, the future is way too unknowable to explain or predict, but I’m far more excited than concerned to see what the future holds for Black Midi. Like the best debut records, “Schlagenheim” offers a unique sound that lays a framework for expansion and improvement on future releases, and I can’t wait to hear what those sound like.