Black Midi at Paradise Rock Club 7/21

Black Midi are undeniably an enigma in the world of modern alternative music. Every attempt to describe the band’s music feels like a reduction of their work, every label a failed exercise in trying to make sense of the transcendent. Nothing at all could represent the reality of the band’s creative expression better than seeing them live, a setting in which their sound, the one only Black Midi can truly make, shines brighter than ever, the aliveness of the occasion.

Quite quickly, the state of affairs inside Paradise Rock Club devolved into uncontrollable chaos. After the night’s opener, keiyaA, tore the roof off with their powerful performance, the room’s near-hysterical desire to see Black Midi took over the sweaty air more loudly than I could have ever imagined. Cries of “Greep!” echoed throughout Paradise Rock Club, and as various sound guys made their way on and off the stage, each received a round of cheers for their service in the name of the set to come. 

Then, the lights change—and you know who’s walking out this time. Over the PA system, the hardest-working band in showbusiness’s wrestling-style intro, in which “3.5 million wins” all “by way of knockout” are attributed to their campaign, was blasted, and Black “Hellfire” Midi entered the arena.

Everything that followed is effectively a blur for me. The band opened their set with “953” off their debut record Schlagenheim, their go-to starting song. The crowd’s frenetic energy continued to build until finally the track’s wall of noise was released, and when it was, everything went insane. I made the questionable decision to shoot the show from about the second row in the general mass of bodies that was on the main floor, so I had to make sure at least a decent portion of the people around me knew what I was up to so my camera didn’t get absolutely smashed. I’m pretty sure most of them forgot like a minute into the show, though, and it wouldn’t have mattered either way—the sheer strength of the people pushing forward as they moshed behind me would have flattened everyone in all conceivable scenarios.

This in mind, my attempts at taking photos of the show were really a matter of luck, as far as I’m concerned. There were tiny windows in which things either subsided a bit, or somehow, my body was freed from the shackles of being slammed again and again into the person ahead of me and the barrier ahead of them, and in those lucky moments, I desperately tried to get something serviceable. I think it somehow worked, too, which is absolutely wild. The whole time, I was so absorbed by the impossibility of the moment, both when I was attempting to photograph the affair and when I was not doing so. Everything around me was infinitely surreal and infinitely there, the drenched mess of bodies serving as proof that I was indeed there, and my own awful mess as proof of my aliveness. What a beautiful thing to feel in such a chaotic place, how rewarding the catharsis of that place, where you are just another body in a sea of them, but where you walk outside after the music has died, and know that the soreness and the sweat and the dizziness are your own. At Black Midi, this collective excitement and release, this collective drowning in sound, this togetherness of motion. Tides through the mass of people jumping toward the stage like waves rippling, this sea of us, knowing you are oh so alive, all present.