black midi recently returned with news of a new album called Cavalcade on its way, as well as an insane song and video “John L”. We’ve barely recovered from it, but they’re back at it again, delivering a new song from the upcoming album called “Slow”, along with its video.
“Slow” gallops on physical, tactile drums, Morgan Simpson corralling the band’s mania into a single beam of extra-dimensional force. When not in the brief moments of reprieve, the guitars interplay with such noodling velocity that it seems to open up a wormhole in the very fabric of space, out of which come unsettling squeals of sax and other disembodied noises. Above all this destruction, bassist Cameron Picton’s voice remains passive, almost bored, as if he’s a god overlooking all this destruction like it’s just another everyday game of marbles.
The video, directed and animated by Gustaf Holtenäs, taps into all of this, shifting with the song’s vicious swings, harnessing its multi-dimensional potential. He 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 AI’s 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.”
black midi’s new album Cavalcade is out on May 28 via Rough Trade (pre-order/save). You can find them on Bandcamp, Facebook and Instagram.
