Hear ‘John L’ and place pre-orders for Cavalcade now.
Lauded experimental rock upstarts black midi have announced the release of a new album.
Cavalcade is due for release in May and sees the band rekindle their fruitful relationship with revered independent label Rough Trade Records. A press release for the album notes that compositional ideas trace back to 2019 whilst recording sessions for the looming project took place the following year between London and Dublin.
With core member Matt Kwasniewski-Kelvin recently detailing a leave of absence from his duties within black midi to focus on his mental health, Cavalcade saw peripheral cohorts Kaidi Akinnibi and Seth Evans join the fold to bolster writing and recording sessions with saxophone and keyboard contributions respectively.
Discussing the album’s creation frontman Geordie Greep explains
“We wanted a natural, open sound combined with fourth wall breaks – for lack of a better expression. Do you know on record when you can hear the tape screeching, the things that make you aware that you’re listening to a recording? [With a lot of records] it feels like either you’re listening to the ECM, high-fidelity, 25 mic amazing sound or you have the lo-fi album full of crazy effects. And I thought, ‘Why not have an album where you combine the two?’ That was one of the main ideas going into it and John was very keen on that idea.”
Losing none of the momentum gained from their daring, guttural and Mercury-nominated debut, new single and album opener ‘John L’ deftly pairs the band’s unrelenting and contorted sense of rhythm with hair-raising strings courtesy of Jerskin Fendrix for striking results.
Cavalcade releases on May 28th via Rough Trade. Pre-order the album on a number of physical variants including picture disk vinyl and red cassette tape here.
Words by Sam Wilkinson.
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Fruit and Grooves Collective 