'Hellfire' by Black Midi
Black Midi creates the kind of mental beehive an open-minded observer might get from watching brilliant cinematic neuroses like this year’s Crimes of the Future (written and directed by David Cronenberg) or last year’s Titane (written and directed by Julia Ducournau): the buzz of beauty inside the sting of wondering if the primary point of the art is to fuck with one’s head.
The British band’s third album, Hellfire, continues a tendency toward playfulness, even silliness, that suggests Primus, if Les Claypool had hailed from East London rather than California.
Admittedly, Cameron Picton isn’t yet the bassist Claypool is, but then Picton, guitarist Geordie Greep, and drummer Morgan Simpson layer in several additional instruments, including accordion, grand piano, flute and cowbell. And that doesn’t account for Kaidi Akinnibi’s several varieties of saxophone nor the contributions of other ancillary personnel.
Yet the sounds don’t really pile atop each other, or, when they do—as in the seven minutes of tempo, tone, and genre shifts that form “The Race Is About to Begin”—they manage not to tangle into a cacophonous lumpen ball.
That distinctiveness among segments within the whole is one way in which Black Midi’s work resembles jazz from, say, the Second Great Quintet period of Miles Davis. Another way is how Greep elongates his vocal phrasing until, especially in a narrative like “Sugar/Tzu,” he could be channeling the haughty grandeur of Nine Simone.
Picton’s phrasing is more amiable, as if he’s a butler telling you about his garden, particularly when the music backs into the gentler, more reflective acoustic mode in some sections of “Eat Men Eat” and the tropically tinged C&W within “Still.”
Coming out around 14 months after Cavalcade, the band’s second LP, Hellfire has the enthusiasm of a hot creative streak. Black Midi’s ideas are almost as voluminous as its sounds, and it’s the kind of swarming head-fuck one doesn’t have to learn to love.
|
|
