We're still about a month from Black Midi's new album Cavalcade, but the gnarled, alternately evasive and explosive Band To Watch is sharing a third song from the album today to go along with dual lead singles "John L" and "Despair." It's a positively batty experimental jazz-rock excursion called "Slow," one of two songs on the album sung by bassist Cameron Picton. The song arrives with a suitably wild animated video by Gustaf Holtenäs.
Holtenäs explains the visuals like so:
The "Slow" video was made to fit the oscillating dynamics of the song. Going from calm to chaos over and over again. The video tells the story of a character who creates AI-generated worlds. To emphasize this, I let real AI’s generate a lot of the backgrounds in these worlds. So they are partly AI-generated, but it isn’t long before an AI could create the whole deal and create endless iterations of fantasy worlds. It can already create a random beautiful landscape painting in 1 second.
Additionally, Black Midi have released a new KEXP performance video bookended by "John L" and "Slow," which also features Cavalcade tracks "Dethroned" and "Hogwash And Balderdash" plus another song called "Sugar/Tzu." On top of that, the band just announced a bunch of North American tour dates throughout October. This is exciting news because Black Midi's live show rules. You can find everything below, starting with the "Slow" video.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=4tJ4ISRpl-Q
https://youtube.com/watch?v=QyWH8CPwp7E
TOUR DATES:
10/04 - San Francisco, CA @ Great American Music Hall
10/07 - Los Angeles, CA @ The Fonda Theatre
10/08 - San Diego, CA @ The Casbah
10/09 - Pioneertown, CA @ Pappy and Harriet's
10/11 - Minneapolis, MN @ Fine Line Music Cafe
10/12 - Milwaukee, WI @ Turner Hall
10/14 - Lakewood, OH @ Mahall's
10/15 - Pittsburgh, PA @ Spirit
10/15 - Kingston, NY @ Tubby's
10/18 - Cambridge, MA @ The Sinclair
10/19 - New York, NY @ Webster Hall
10/21 - Baltimore, MD @ Union Brewery
10/23 - Asheville, NC @ The Grey Eagle Tavern
10/26 - Birmingham, AL @ Saturn
10/27 - New Orleans, LA @ Republic
10/29 - Austin, TX @ ??????????
10/30 - Houston, TX @ The Secret Group
Cavalcade is out 5/28 on Rough Trade.
