Black Midi - Schlagenheim review | Alexis Petridis's album of the week

The Guardian 60

(Rough Trade)
This hyped quartet of Brit School graduates deliver some powerful kicks between the clattering, self-satisfied rackets

Croydon performing arts institution the Brit School has long been a major pop bugbear: criticised by everyone from Arctic Monkeys to Ed Sheeran, charged with turning out a certain kind of artist. That’s perhaps a reductive view, but it certainly seems to major in earnest, pop-facing vocalists, from Adele to Jessie J to Leona Lewis. If nothing else, the swift rise of Black Midi puts paid to that idea: Brit-schooled they may be, but pop-facing they are not.

In interviews, the quartet have discussed their love of 20th century classical music from Bartók to Alfred Schnittke, and Schlagenheim is an album that waits a mere three minutes and 23 seconds before hitting you with its first burst of free improvisation: you can tell it’s free improvisation because, for some reason, rock bands always sound exactly the same when they indulge in free improvisation, the effect of unburdening themselves from the shackles of structure and melody and allowing their imaginations to drift without limitation invariably resulting in a very particular kind of clattery racket.

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