black midi have, since 2018, occupied a fascinating place in the music culture of the late 2010s to now. Fusing jazz, metal, prog, no-wave, and fantastically experimental musicianship, the band wore their distorted influences very much on their sleeve. They were well known for their chaotic live shows and intense musical punch, helped in no small part by their bizarro frontman, Geordie Greep. On August 10 2024, Greep (perhaps accidentally) announced over Instagram Live that the band would be taking an indefinite hiatus to work on solo projects. Enter: The New Sound, Greep’s clear statement of intent.
Recorded between London and São Paolo with over 30 different musicians, the album does incorporate a massive variety of genres and tastes. Morgan Simpson is the only member of black midi to have followed Greep into this new project, indicating a desire to shift away from what had come before. However, the album kicks off with one of the lead singles ‘Blues’, which frustratingly has all-too-similar musicality and vocals to Greep’s former band, falling immediately short of the album’s mission statement. The fusion noodling goes at a million miles an hour, and while impressive, simply sounds like black midi again.
Interestingly enough, while the opening track doesn’t particularly introduce anything new in terms of music, Greep does lay out a new element to his solo project. Lyrically, the album seems to pivot solely around exploring insecure, hyper-masculine oddballs. The record is a concept album of sorts, examining these various characteristics in almost every track. The lyrics in the opener, however, don’t cut the mustard for me.
The most identifiable lines in ‘Blues’ (“soon your balls will self castrate”, or “I want you to cum like a thousand stallions”) just lack sophistication. The character pieces don’t seem terribly complex, and are miles away from some of his lyrical contemporaries exploring similar themes. At some points in the album, Greep gets a witty or clever lyric in here or there, for example with “I would’ve disembowelled myself just to hold your hand” in the track ‘Through a War’. The honest truth is, however, that he misses the mark by some standard, and often just comes across as juvenile – a 14-year-old egdelord’s conception of ‘adult themes’.
The album’s second track, ‘Terra’, does set more of a tone of what I believe this LP is attempting to push: the ‘new’ bits. These new elements consist of a more overt Latin-jazz influence, with almost theatrical, Steely Dan-esque layers of production. It grants a nice break from the post-punk-isms of ‘Blues’, before the album drags you right back down to earth with ‘Holy, Holy’.
The groove flies along at pace, driven along by a scream of fuzzy guitars, and yet Greep’s vocals grab you at every moment, pulling you right into its freakish narrative – this time, an awkward character negotiating with a prostitute. More playful influences are clearly still at play, with Lipps Inc and Donna Summer punching through the obvious nod again to Steely Dan, but at the heart of it, post-punk has its grubby mitts all over the track. Greep’s narration throughout is almost inescapable, for better or worse.
Following this brash leading track is ‘The New Sound’, the LP’s first and only instrumental track. The grandiose, lyric-less jazz meditation could have come straight from an Alice Coltrane album – a welcome break from Greep’s nasal bite. It also allows the listener a brief moment to pause and enjoy Greep’s arrangements which are, of course, incredibly complicated.
One thing that is inseparable from black midi as a group is their identity as ‘music school’ kids. Many of the members, including Greep himself, are graduates of London’s illustrious The BRIT School, and it shows. On many of the album’s tracks, there is a degree of musical showing-off that only extremely well-trained musicians could pull off. ‘Bongo Season’ seems like an exercise in musical timings; ‘Through a War’ seems as though they were tasked to use classical orchestration; ‘The Magician’, standing at a crushing 12 minutes in length, showcases almost every musical trick in the book. Much of the album feels like this – the prog-rock experiments of a band who haven’t set themselves limits, in taste or otherwise.
At certain points, this works incredibly well. ‘As if Waltz’ is a prime example of a song that’s melodically strong, and one that earns its various musical interruptions. Flowing from groove to waltz, the lush production works impeccably in this track’s favour. It is a bizarre yet compelling prog epic, and where, in my opinion, this endeavour peaks. The album’s closer, ‘If You Are But a Dream’ is a similarly compelling three-minute music-hall ditty, measured and tasteful in its references.
At other points, the over-wrought musicality risks tampering with an otherwise fine song. Seth Evans‘ feature on ‘Motorbike’ threatens to be a delightful break from Greep’s nasal whimperings, before the track fully betrays you and zooms off at break-neck speed. The excruciatingly long outro only adds insult to injury.
While the album is varied in one sense, The New Sound could have just as easily been the next black midi album. The influences and experiments are inseparable from the exact ethos that governed his former band, with the most definitive feature being Greep’s dogged narrative lyrics which just constantly seem to miss the mark. Geordie Greep has a lot to offer this world, but oddly enough, he must go beyond The New Sound to find something truly ‘new’ if he wants to impress.
