Music / Reviews
Review: Black Midi, Fiddlers
Black Midi roared through my world for the second time at the Fiddlers on the eve of their debut release on Rough Trade, Schlagenheim.
The inexplicably chosen background hum of Mary by the Scissor Sisters gives way to a barely detectable collage of beeps, blips and fuzzy found dialogue. Rapidly amping up in a trajectory not dissimilar to the bands own hype machine in the last year.
As the start of the show comes into focus, the band take to the stage following the deafening growl ‘contenderrrrs rrrready?! Gladiatorrrrs rrready?!’ of mid-nighties Saturday Night fame. It feels more like the start of an episode of Black Mirror than a mid-week gig. With serious faces, a couple of cowboy hats and without pausing for breath, that is it. I am submerged.
is needed now More than ever
For precisely the next hour I completely lose the ability to grab on to anything tangible. I feel like I’m being flung around inside a pinball machine. Bouncing off Morgan Simpson’s incredibly intricate beats and smacking into shimmering guitars from Matt Kwasniewski-Kelvin then plunged back down to a gnawingly juicy bassline chug from Cameron Picton. Geordie Greep’s affected, otherworldly delivery flips from adenoidal growls to sweet, haunting crooning. Always moving, never ceasing. Have you ever said a word over and over so many times, it’s meaning kind of dissolves but eventually reappears? They do that. With noise.
The perfect soundtrack to the dystopian future we all inhabit in 2019. Most referred to with the catch-all Rock/Math Rock labels despite that being way too prosaic. If its efficiency you are after let’s chat about the genres and moods that they don’t acrobatically capture in the hour.
Simpson’s sticks lead the micro and macro pace changes that pepper the orbit of the set and begin to build to the crescendo that is bmbmbm. One of a couple of songs released on YouTube that proved the band’s existence outside of the venues and festivals they were delighting in the last year or so. A freight train of pounding, sparse and repetitive blasts punctuated with plumes of more discordant sound with improvisational precision. Accompanied by the increasingly insistent lyric “She moves with a purpose” and underpinned with more found sound.
It’s cinematic, ferocious and intangible. They channel the past, present and future with an immediacy unparalleled. Seeing them in the flesh seems to raise more questions than it answers. As quickly as they arrived, without a word, their jackets are buttoned, and they are off into the night leaving me (and I think the rest of the audience) raw, delighted and maybe even ready to give guitar music another chance.
Read More: Review: The Hu, SWX
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