black midi Share Disorienting New Single “Slow,” Announce North American Tour
Art by Anthrox Studio
English math-rock connoisseurs black midi unleashed their newest single, “Slow,” ahead of their second studio album Cavalcade, out May 28 on Rough Trade. The album comes two years after their debut Schlagenheim, a Paste staff favorite, and their daring innovation of guitar music has made them one of the most exciting bands to watch.
With only a month until the release of Cavalcade, “Slow” is the band’s third song from the album, featuring twirling jazz guitars and vocals from bassist Cameron Picton. It is accompanied by an appropriately vibrant, AI-animated music video directed by Gustaf Holtenäs.
Speaking on the concept of the video, Holtenäs says:
The “Slow” video was made to fit the oscillating dynamics of the song. Going from calm to chaos over and over again. The video tells the story of a character who creates AI-generated worlds. To emphasize this, I let real AIs generate a lot of the backgrounds in these worlds. So they are partly AI-generated, but It isn’t long before an AI could create the whole deal and create endless iterations of fantasy worlds. It can already create a random beautiful landscape painting in 1 second.