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“I hate the moshers, the squashers, the sploshers, or at least the ones, who seem not to understand rhythm, those who, unlike me, are not good at it, at rhythm. More than that, the ones who take no pleasure from … rhythm, and the rhyme of music. They feel, probably, as though they are destroying rhythm, I think. And when the music becomes more intricate, when it compels those who enjoy life to dance, they stand still, confused. It is not a refusal, more a lack of ability. They don’t get it at all; they don’t understand.”

–        Elliott Mills

 

Before I got to this Black MIDI gig I made sure to read up on them and see what the current critical responses were. I thought about those critical responses as I found my spot at the Button Factory, whilst I also thought about how I didn’t like when people reviewing music described the venue and the atmosphere from where they stood when they arrived. Hate that. But thinking through the reviews I did and did not like would set the scene for myself so that I could arrive feeling that I knew where to position myself. I had to hand it to myself, I, myself, was extremely knowledgeable. I had listened to all Black MIDI’s albums of course, preferring the first two, but their recent debut was pretty good as well.

Of course, arriving on the scene knowing so much means that I was aware of what I would be feeling when I was just about to feel it. I could just feel it. I could sense the anticipation. The palpable anticipation, in myself, for how I would experience something new, and write about it; I could, in other words, tell that what I would be interested in was how I wrote about it. I thought to myself: “I have already got the idea in my head that I will (by the end have) work(ed) out why the music I will (have) listen(ed) to will (have) represent(ed) something … something that will be better described in my voice than by the music.”

I used to be a reviewer of the Manchester post-punk scene of the late ‘80s, so this is not a big deal for me. I have long side-burns and I bought my apartment during the era of New Labour. Corbyn won the argument. Trust me on that. I guess the main thing about me is that I have this feeling that, over the years, I have developed the power to control reality.

Ok, so this is big league stuff. Not the music, that is, but my review. I can just feel it; I can just feel that there is something going on to do with the idea of having already experienced the present moment whilst experiencing the moment.

…As I sat down with the band in the venue, I could sense they had a special energy. They are the kind of person who you notice when they walk through the door and enter the room. They arrive ten minutes late, a distinct smell of joints, of alcohol and weed on their breath. In their hair? They all have hair, I start off by commenting on it.

You have hair? “Haha” he laughs. (Real name: George Stimpson) He was born in London, and since then lives back in London, where they first formed. So it is important to you? Was that a conscious decision? I probe. They laughed. They are friends with me and are angry at me and I have absolutely nailed it so that they seem to be becoming just as I would like them to be.

Ok ok, so my review will be something about the reviews of Black Can Be Used As A MIDI Keyboard Controller, I sense. I think what I wrote before will be carried through, that this will be about not being able to hear anything these days without already having heard it. You will have already heard what it will sound like before it has…sounded!

With that, the music starts, not of Black MIDFIELD, but of their support act. This support act is truly enigmatic, meaning I haven’t heard of them, meaning I can only find about 50 photos of them online. The enigmatic frontman of the act (a one piece) has a presence alone which alone marshals the crowd, like some kind of marshal. It takes all that is best from UK Grime, which began a year or so ago and is already showing signs of becoming the most urgent message that we didn’t know we needed.

Ill Japonia is the solo project of Taigen Kawabe, 1/4 of the visceral metal freaks BO NINGEN. This was the supporting act of Black MIDI and I always knew that. He raps in Japanese and I understand it all. I am aware that some reviewers who would have given their account of the event might not have been able to offer a translation of the performance. It would have been as though they were speaking in a different language.

(Make sure to make it seem later as though the reader gets the point that all reviewers want to make it seem as though they do what the musicians do through music through words, as well if not better than them. In this case, the reader would be aware that the writer is/would have been trying to deconstruct the experience in the same way that Ill Japonia deconstructs trap, in the same way that Black MIDI play with influences and fashion something peculiar and their own out of those influences.)

And perhaps that will be the whole point of the article, that improvisation is a key element to Black MIDRIFT’s sound, and so there simply had to be in my response to it, because I was only ever going to attempt in my own way to compete with the sound, or to merge myself with it. But would improvising, therefore, paradoxically, be too predictable? We would have to wait and see, as their set had not yet even started.

Then Black MIDI performed their songs.

On the way out, I overheard an older guy say that he didn’t rate Black MIDI’s performance at all, that they had no respect for the audience, that they were just focused on themselves. He didn’t get it at all; he didn’t understand.