black midi
Cavalcade
released: May 28, 2021

black vinyl pressing

black midis follow-up toSchlagenheimis a dynamic, hellacious, inventive success.Cavalcade, their second studio album for Rough Trade, scales beautiful new heights, reaching ever upwards from an already lofty base of early achievements.

Ground was broken onCavalcadein those now weird seeming pre-pandemic days of 2019. Songs that had been brewing since the release ofSchlagenheimin July began muscling their way onto set lists and finally became individual entities by October, getting refined in between an extensive world tour and ascorching turn at the UKs Mercury Prize ceremony.

But then, just as they were gearing up to record the album, the pandemic hit.Eventually the band found themselves in the aptly named Hellfire Studios, aremote Irish facility in the Wicklow Mountains, south of Dublin, wherein you can hear all the planets align for this recording session.

Cavalcadeis dynamic in its musical ambition above all else.
black midi listen widely and deeply not just to rock and jazz but to hip hop,electronic dance music, classical, ambient, prog, experimental… and they arequick to bat away any suggestion that its a risky strategy drawing from sucha wide source of influences. Geordie says simply:If you worry about thatbefore you start youre limiting yourself.You have to try because you could either end up with a madmans breakfast or you could end up with a fantastickaleidoscope and the only way to find out which one its going to be is to try.If you fail, so what? Try again.

The armory of additional instruments onCavalcadeincludes (just to name afew) cello, sax, grand piano, accordion, violin, trombone, two bouzoukis, a late 19th Century zither called a Marxophone, flute, lap steel, synths, and yes, awok.

Spend some time withCavalcadeand youll acknowledge black midi are back with the biggest of bangs.