black midi - anyone been tracking these?

This year’s Wu Lyf.

that comparison leapt instantly into my head too, although this lot are a bit further along the 'avant-math prankster' spectrum

Todd Rittman was in US Maple then Dead Rider that is really something

You know what was a good English band?

Giddy Motors

File black midi alongside Julia Holter in the category of acts imago should like but (in)explicably doesn't.

Tbf my sole exposure to this band is watching them jam for 10 mins on YT.

You know what was a good English band?

Giddy Motors

― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Thursday, June 27, 2019 7:59 AM (two hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Haven't heard anyone mention them since 2004

Sorry to cause the confusion. Was not familiar with black midi, the genre :(

Black MIDI the genre is an audio meme, much like Extratone. Bite-sized, amusing for a moment, but then it's dropped for the next shiny sliver of mylar balloon that floats off the power lines.

RYM user The_Pamps is upset:

It honestly disgusts me that people are calling this shit "rock" music. This is a fucking disgrace, and really highlights how far rock as a genre has fallen. REAL Rock Music is AC/DC, Rose Tattoo, Guns and Roses, Led Zepplin, Aerosmith and INXS. This isn't rock, This is shit.

that review gets even worse later

Oh got, his YT channel.

*god

The last great Skin Graft-y band I'd heard was Stabscotch, which was decidedly not dismissed by imago as 'fucking awful' so I'm going in a bit skeptically here

Dead Rider are brilliant, and seeing them live was the closest I'll get to seeing US Maple. To me, black midi don't sound like Dead Rider (for one, there's no discernible soul influence to my ears) but I could absolutely see them on the same bill, or sharing a label.

xp I'm watching the KEXP performance--aw this ain't that bad; kind of a more post-rock-ish Girl Band? I do kinda get a vibe that both vocalists here have difficulties telling good ideas from bad ones

(Ok nm that "both vocalists" bit; totally unfair to the bass player here...)

Stabscotch are a brilliant example of this sort of thing done well

Noted.

Good band, bad songwriting

A lot of the animism in the press for the band seems based in the prospect that they will eventually make better music, which is a funny way for justifying mediocre reviews with better scores. I don't remember Iceage - another explicitly youthful band, premiering - benefiting from this, but they also benefited from an average 2 minute track length and more cohesive idea of themselves.

pretty good album; most of the reasons it’s bad stem from them being 15 year olds

I have an antipathy as I get older to bands that inspire critics to turn reviews into works cited pages.

you could blame the critics and not the bands

why on earth would I?

lol Alfred you wouldn't like this band either way

rong

all the influences are in the right paragraphs but in the wrong order.

What do you mean?

I was going to say this is the acceptable face of LJ music but turns out he doesn't like them!

The vox are a delight btw

SHE MOVES WITH A PURPOSE!!

I dunno I gave the Stabscotch album a try but there's a groove to these guys which I appreciate a lot more

finally the This Heat + late nineties screamo mashup everyone was waiting for

LJ's response to this is a near enough perfect illustration of why the industry can't just drop stuff like this on people from above. In that the people most likely to be receptive to music like this are also the least likely to be receptive to feeling marketed to. They need to feel at least in part like they've discovered stuff for themselves which certainly doesn't happen once you get a whiff of 'industry buzz band'.

I dunno, maybe there's a vast untapped resource of 18 year olds who are open to hearing compressed prog rock and don't care about all that stuff at all.

There's merit to that analysis and I'll confess my eyes rolled when I read they were from the Brit school, but I wasn't sure about them aesthetically or musically regardless of this - the name, firstly, which is wholesale ripped from another style of weird music without even approaching the sort of insane dedication and ultra-maximalism promised by it - but then their flippant-but-not-punkish demeanour, their seeming abhorrence of melody - even weird, atonal melody; it's just not a concern of theirs beyond the absolute rudiments - and above all the lack of any sense that there's much at stake aside from showing off. It's hard for me to summarise exactly why I find them offputting but it might be the refusal of beauty, the yowling prating kiddish soullessness of it all, the lack of vision. IDK, I just have a bad feeling about them, no matter how good some of their grooves are (and tt has been persuading me around to 'Near DT, MI' at least). This isn't to discount the possibility they'll do something good later, of course, but the hype feels way premature - they're proficient musicians but the compositions are just not there yet for me

btw here's an example of some comparable math freaks who get how to use melody

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJxd_Lu8VPA

idk, plenty of melody in black midi to my ears. definitely more than other bands of their type imo

Guess I'm gonna see these kids tonight. I would definitely have bailed (out of standard don't-wanna-leave-the-house inertia) but my friend is very excited.

their drummer should be a treat

saw them last night, he's a force. room was packed and very enthusiastic.

Ok, so this was really great actually. They're definitely a rhythm band, but it hit really hard live, and they were very tight and controlled. The drummer is just ridiculously good (I tried to do my part by his fallen cymbal in the first song, he was looking around for assistance but no one ever notices that besides drummers). Lots of very enthusiastic kids at the show.

(Fwiw I just heard the KEXP performance; maybe the good ideas crowd out the bad once in the studio)

Bands with great drummers need more kudos.

They need more than just a great drummer though.

They need to drop the vocals for a start.

Played here in SF last night, pretty good I thought. Definitely already have a VERY busy and active fanbase, at least on a club level. (Also more varied than I would have guessed -- I was not the oldest person there by a long shot; I swear there was someone who was at least in her sixties getting into it right in front of me.)

A- from Christgau on his email newsletter

So I've been playing the album by Black Country, New Road, a seven piece from London that apparently came up in the same scene as black midi. There is a lot of Slint and American Football worship going on, but I think I love it? Definitely not something I'd have expected from Ninja Tune in 2021.

knew they had to get brought up eventually and this is about the right place to do it

I fucking loathe them with every fibre of my being, also they have the worst lyrics I've ever heard

https://genius.com/Black-country-new-road-algorithm-lyrics

other than that, how was the play mrs. lincoln?

Ha, I'll be honest, I had it on in the background while I worked and mostly had the lyrics tuned out. There seems to be nothing original about their approach at all, but the Slint / American Football sound they nail hits some nostalgic spot for me.

I don't know, clearly very divisive overall. They've got the the #2 album of the year over at RYM (I know, I know, but it's useful to see what others think) but it has a ton of 1-star reviews mixed in with all the 5-star ones.

Okay that particular song isn't on the album, I def would have caught those lyrics!