black midi Bring Avant-Prog to the Masses on Cavalcade
Where Schlagenheim felt serrated and sharp-edged and packed tight with grooves, Cavalcade feels brooding and explorative

I tried shaving while playing the new black midi album and promptly cut my face. What’d I expect? Black midi’s music isn’t meant to hover in the background while you carry out household chores. It’s like trying to watch Tenet while filing your taxes. Black midi’s music is meant to play at high volume while you nod intensely and scroll through Reddit threads analyzing the band’s time signatures.
It’s been two years since the band’s debut, Schlagenheim, consummated months of buzz about the mysterious London band’s frenetic live performances. The buzz was not unearned. Schlagenheim’s unholy mix of avant-prog and math-rock aggression wasn’t just technically masterful; it also felt refreshingly out-of-style, the rare indie buzz album more likely to draw comparisons to Trout Mask Replica than, say, Joy Division.
In the lead-up to black midi’s second album, Cavalcade, the band did indulge one indie-rock cliché: slagging off their celebrated debut and promising the new one will be different. “People seemed to really like the debut album but after a while we all became pretty bored with it,” Geordie Greep told The Quietus recently. “So, it was like: this time let’s make something that is actually good.”
Consciously or not, Greep was warning the group’s fans that Cavalcade wouldn’t feature more of the same, and it doesn’t. Where Schlagenheim felt serrated and sharp-edged and packed tight with grooves, Cavalcade feels brooding and explorative. It’s wordy and lyric-minded, with long, serpentine narratives that unfold like shape-shifting fruit roll-ups. Greep sings more than he mutters or shrieks, and sometimes he even croons, as on “Marlene Dietrich,” an uncommonly melodic nod to the 1930s screen legend outfitted with velvety strings. Fans may spend the lush tune on edge, waiting for a careening crash of guitar noise that never comes.