Schlagenheim

Another six-minute effort closes the album, Ducter, and like all the album’s best tracks it manages to navigate all the band’s best checkpoints of note, showcasing those spellbinding vocals and extraordinary percussion as they tread a truly staggering path. Schlagenheim will open up a whole new bottle of weird, if you let it in. It’s Troutmask Replica for a new generation, or perhaps it’s Can attempting to recreate the madness that Captain Beefheart’s enigmatic classic contained.

Schlagenheim may possess some semblance of the aforementioned genres, alongside others like kraut and yes, even jazz, but pining for some rigid label is futile, because Schlagenheim is one of the most unique rock records released this year and maybe of the past five years.

If bands like Can or The Residents or Public Image Ltd only existed on paper, you would imagine that they’d sound a lot like black midi (and vice versa), but it is only through direct experience with the songs that make up this exceptional album that we realise that there are some things (including track names) that are best left unsaid, virginally awaiting the experience of the listener.

There is a sort of pure, youthful exuberance to what black midi are making, but their experimentation also carries with it a sense of mission.

It is primordial and juvenile, dumb and clever, arch and true, and captures a band at that rare time before any self-conscious tones creep into their music. All the while, black midi discover what has been pioneered by countless bands before, and still present it as something entirely new.

A debut album that suggests anything is possible.

It does little to dispel any of the mystery that surrounds the band, even while proving them worthy of the praise they've received across the pond.

black midi aim to dazzle and perform, and with Schlagenheim, their mammoth ideations never cease to thrill, the product of a boundless creative spirit and unwavering techni

A joyously spiky yet danceable debut. [Aug 2019, p.90]

There’s so much going on here that nothing ever gets bogged down enough to fees indulgent or wanky; most songs clock in at under five minutes, and even the longer ones seem to go by in a blip, as if pranking our iPhone-addled attention spans. Indeed, there’s humor here.

As a first chapter, Schlagenheim crackles with the same excitement as ground breaking records that came before it did when expanding the known boundaries of experimental sounds.

All four members of Black Midi are extremely young, wildly competent, knowledgeable about all sorts of music (classical, jazz, free improv, etc.) and willing to go way out on a limb. Schlagenheim is a really exciting start, which could lead in any number of directions.

Their determination to not bend to conventional song structure makes Schlagenheim an engaging piece of work that will reveal its true nature over time, perhaps. Black Midi are making music like no other band in the world.

An arresting, astonishing experience, Schlagenheim is a vital, stunning, puzzling album, one that demands to be heard.

A rousing debut that constantly eschews genre conventions. As a result, the record manages the impressive juxtaposition of perpetual unfurling in unpredictable ways yet remaining tonally coherent. [Aug 2019, p.26]

An unmitigated success. [Summer 2019, p.108]