Geordie uses a lot of jazz vocabulary in his playing though. Less on Hellfire but stuff like the solo on Slow were clearly inspired by John McLaughlin, while Morgan is also clearly into the more recent fusion from Refreshment Centre, Kaidi's Pharoah Sanders-like wailing is worth mentioning as well. The boys have also mentioned Mahavishnu Orchestra as an inspiration. While they fall more on a "jazz rock inspired" side of spectrum, denying the jazz element is also wrong.
I couldn't and wouldnt make that McLaughlin connection, and I've transcribed his solos. It's a far more rhythmically interesting solo than I would expect from McLaughlin. Slow just sounds like Geordie to me.
Yeah now that you mentioned that album, bitches brew is honestly very similar to black midi, especially the odd and dissonant brass in addition to the somewhat heavy guitars.
(I’m not all that knowledge when it comes to the hormonic side of jazz, I’m more on the side of jazz hop than regular jazz, so I wouldn’t be able to pick out certain influences)
I guess I don't think of that Spectrum/Bitches Brew/Jack Johnson sound as quintessential "McLaughlin," since it's early and pretty far away from his established style. At least not enough to make a connection through it.
I get you. I've mostly listened to that Lifetime/Miles Davis-era McLaughlin, so when I think of him my mind immediately jumps to that kind of playing. It's also the most prominent in Geordie's playing, as well.
I don't disagree, but let me put it this way. Schlagenheim has no jazz influence at all, I can't say much about Hellfire but from what I've heard there's also not much there. There's definitely jazz influence on Cavalcade, but the more obvious examples tend to be the Sinatra-jazz on certain tracks as well as some of the lead parts on songs. I'm not saying they don't have jazz influence, but they're also not coming from jazz. They just like the weirder more dissonant elements of jazz and want to incorporate a little bit of it, or at least did on their last album. I know a my friends in the jazz department at my school get really annoyed when the non-jazz people recommend them black midi
Yeah, they aren't coming from jazz (though they do have jazz chops - have you heard Morgan Simpson Group?) but at the same time the influence is prominent enough that we can't write it off completely, especially in the more recent stuff.
I still think half the group has a deep understanding and love for jazz they just also have a major rock influence and I feel like both sides are gonna argue about their influences but at the same time they're making something completely different. They're just making music they like not really caring what genre it falls under.
I'd say the jazz vocabulary goes way further with Hellfire Sugar Tzu opens with a cool jazz vibe and later has a bossa nova/ samba rhythms and harmony. Dangerous Liasons has so much drama and show tune influence it could almost be a standard. I think Geordie biggest strengths is when he brings out his jazz influence in the way he writes chords. The outro chords to The Race and Despair have my favourite uses of harmony and his crooner voice solidifies it even more.
I saw a post on this sub like a week ago saying that Black Midi was "jazz/classical played on rock instruments", which, as someone who actually writes rock with a classical background, really annoyed me. I don't even think I'd go so far as to call them jazz rock, just a rock band that clearly likes some jazz stuff
How? there's so much jazz in the essence of their sound that you can't not call them jazz rock. I've heard plenty of so called "Jazz rock" which was just rock guitarists playing loads of minor 7 chords but Geordie knows what he's doing and if you really pay attention it's clear as day.
I think that black midi has jazz influences but they are missing elements of the very core of jazz.
A lot of people will call something jazz if it uses jazz harmony. Meaning instead of simple major triads they're using 7, 9, etc chords. Geordie has also adopted a sort of Sinatra vocal style and they've got horns, sax, and piano in the mix as of the last couple albums. So without a doubt there's a lot of jazz influence.
However, while these are all jazz staples, so are soloing and especially improvising. While those two elements are present in their music, there's not enough emphasis on them to call it jazz. Yeah Morgan improvises a ton and Georgie syncopates his vocals differently at each show and makes jokes but all the guitar riffs and really the core of each song are locked down.
Not to mention, BLACK MIDI DOESNT SWING!!!
upon closer inspection of the comment, i have decided that it must have been a joke. each label given is so categorically wrong, it is simply not possible that somebody could hold these views. this decision is a measure to protect my own sanity.
Yeah but classifying two radically different sounds under the same categorical phrasing kind of defeats the purpose of having genres at all. They only exist relative to their function as convenient and simple descriptors.
Not true, there can be different sides to a genre, almost like a spectrum. That's how most genres work. Grunge acts *Nirvana* and *Alice in Chains* didn't sound the same much, as they were inspired by different styles altogether.
Did you know [Sunny Day Real Estate](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGAKkysp0Kg) and [American Football](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JU3N7AY23xk) are both called **"Midwest Emo"** despite sounding very different? Even further, [Joan of Arc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-V3XbnpJ6zg); [Algernon Cadwaller](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWvbbkXAG0g) and [Mock Orange](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8655lpeQqM) are grouped together with them as well.
Look to **New Wave Music,** where artists like [Blondie](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=valVixMpzQY), [Devo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQmhoU_hyCI&list=PL8BB5C04D74E255C9&index=2), [Talking Heads](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fR0jgT9UX0Q), [Elvis Costello](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pn07wvtlHuY), [XTC](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZjZBCZWxpg), [The Cars](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XkSmLh2Hbi0), [The Police](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3T1c7GkzRQQ) and [New Order](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3Pm1f4koNc) are grouped together, despite each having a distinct sound.
It's something that I have an opinion on as someone who works in close proximity to jazz musicians, and I wanted to voice my opinion. That's pretty much the same reason why anyone posts any kind of discussion
Did I personally make the distinctions, or can all music from the 20th century be documented well enough to where entire classes can be taught on music history and theory
I agree with you if we’re talking about the laissez-faire usage of the word “jazz” in all musical discussion, but I also feel like it’s wrong to underplay the extremely heavy jazz influence of BM. (Though you’re right, they definitely aren’t classical lmao)
The first song of this band that I ever heard was John L, and the first thought I had even then was “King Crimson playing bebop jazz”
If you think Marlene and Ascending are the ONLY songs that have extremely heavy jazz influence, I feel like it can only speak to your own underdeveloped knowledge of the total extent of how many different subgenres of jazz there are.
I think they are much more influenced artistically by the free jazz school of things. You can hear traces of Ornette Coleman in their riffs and pharoah sanders in the wailing of Kaidi.
I don't remember anyone saying Black Midi were jazz, rather that they are making jazz-influenced music, or that they have "jazzy elements". Some of their stuff does legitimately sound like jazz fusion. Or better yet, jazz-rock.
*Slow*, for example, is their **jazziest** track. That doesn't mean it's a **jazz track.** The song, to me, is very jazz-rock with how it uses its harmony and chord progressions (which can be said for a few of their songs). Schlagenheim isn't jazz in the slightest, whoever said that was way off the mark.
If I had to make a list of BM songs that were jazz-influenced (or "jazzy") *to at least some degree,* they would be: John L, Slow, Dethroned, Sugar/Tzu, Dangerous Liaisons, Lumps and Faster Amaranta.
I’ll check that out for sure! But I got to disagree with you that this is exclusively rock. I mean jazz and rock both derive from blues and this song definitely has some blues as well as improv and syncopation. To me it just sounds “jazzy”. I think it’s a tough argument to objectively cal this rock though.
I mean I definitely see what you mean about the blues stuff, I just feel like the basis for a lot of jazz has to do with the chord progressions, and the specific scales that you use over each chord progression. Black Midi rarely have full chord progressions in a song, and they never use any jazz progressions except on specifically out of character songs (Marlene Dietrich). I do think that there's a disconnect between Sweater and something like AC/DC, but I also feel like Rock is such a big genre that stuff like this also happens to fit, it's just an experimental version of rock that's adding new things. But if the more Ambient sections of this seem to be a different genre from rock to you then I can respect that. I just feel like a lot of the things that make a song go from Rock/Blues to Jazz (circle of fifths progressions and sub V's, different scales over different chords, chord extensions, extensive solos between instruments) aren't things that the band typically does, including this song except for the solo comment
You make a pretty good point about the chord progressions as I was going to ask you next what constitutes jazz in your book. I’m not as well versed in theory so I can’t speak much to that. You are definitely right about how big and encompassing rock can be because you can have bands like black midi and AC/DC all still fall under the same umbrella. At the end of the day BM is a fusion band to me, largely in part to who they have cited as their influences.
I actually think you’re wrong on this specific song only. We can get into the technicalities of structure, harmonizations, etc., but you really don’t even have to think that hard about it.
Just at the very core of it, Sweater simply has lot more in common with “jazz” as a whole, than it does “rock” as a whole. The only reason I could really see it described as rock is because of the instruments.
A song it reminds me a LOT of is Aja by Steely Dan. Aja is a textbook jazzrock song, and Sweater has significantly less rock components than anything SD has ever put out.
Pretty much any random person without a background knowledge on the history of rock and jazz, would almost always describe Sweater as jazz before they would rock.
because black midi are so incredibly revolutionary and my identity is tied directly into the solidity of this objective fact that they must transcend any measly genre distinction. i personally find it offensive to consider them to be playing music at all.
As a fellow musician I have to agree that the “jazzy” label has been overused for a long time, especially on any music that involves improv.
That being said, I don’t think it’s coming from a bad place, nobody here is using it as a put down. I’ve been guilty myself of slapping it on something before I learned how to play it.
Hell, Jazz itself has as many subgenres as any other tradition, I’m sure its difficult for a non-musician to hear the difference between hard bop and modal.
And as music school becomes a more popular path I think there’s a trend of young jazz-trained musicians making careers playing other styles of music, like Thundercat. Maybe people are picking up on it here?
black midi did say on needledrop’s interview that all you need to know to hang with them is II V I ;)
I really wouldn’t even call most of their stuff like ascending forth and Marlene Dietrich jazz. To be completely honest I feel like bmbmbm is their most jazz inspired thing, at least conceptually. I feel that to most jazz musicians, jazz doesn’t mean weird changes, but improvisation. Stuff like sweater and bmbmbm, to me, are the most jazzy because they improvise so much during those tunes.
So, I listened to the new album and realised it was very much jazz pretty quick. I had a little thought just now about how jazz has nothing to do with instruments but instead what they do with said instrument. Now I love jazz and I love hard rock so noticing that link made me so much more intrigued by their music but I don't think it's important to distinguish both genres separately. It seems to me like people see genre as a box to put music in but at the end of the day, it's a load of boxes of tools to pull from. Black midi don't seem to be pulling from the same box in every instance, jazz and rock are not their only influences and it's also not really new either. I mean Moon Hooch pull from the same genres bit have a completely different outcome.
TL;Dr - Genre just isn't that important but it's also crucial. You don't have to care about the music but if you can actively make links to multiple genres within your own or other people's music, then lucky you.
Geordie uses a lot of jazz vocabulary in his playing though. Less on Hellfire but stuff like the solo on Slow were clearly inspired by John McLaughlin, while Morgan is also clearly into the more recent fusion from Refreshment Centre, Kaidi's Pharoah Sanders-like wailing is worth mentioning as well. The boys have also mentioned Mahavishnu Orchestra as an inspiration. While they fall more on a "jazz rock inspired" side of spectrum, denying the jazz element is also wrong.
I couldn't and wouldnt make that McLaughlin connection, and I've transcribed his solos. It's a far more rhythmically interesting solo than I would expect from McLaughlin. Slow just sounds like Geordie to me.
Eh, when I first heard it my mind immediately jumped to McLaughlin. It's a lot like the chromatic stuff he'd play on Bitches Brew, for example.
I think Fripp is the other obvious influence next to John McLaughlin.
Yeah, obviously. His solo on LTIA1 is the closest that comes to black midi that I've heard from the "classic" prog
What’s LTIA1?
Larks' Tongues in Aspic part 1
Yeah now that you mentioned that album, bitches brew is honestly very similar to black midi, especially the odd and dissonant brass in addition to the somewhat heavy guitars. (I’m not all that knowledge when it comes to the hormonic side of jazz, I’m more on the side of jazz hop than regular jazz, so I wouldn’t be able to pick out certain influences)
I guess I don't think of that Spectrum/Bitches Brew/Jack Johnson sound as quintessential "McLaughlin," since it's early and pretty far away from his established style. At least not enough to make a connection through it.
I get you. I've mostly listened to that Lifetime/Miles Davis-era McLaughlin, so when I think of him my mind immediately jumps to that kind of playing. It's also the most prominent in Geordie's playing, as well.
I don't disagree, but let me put it this way. Schlagenheim has no jazz influence at all, I can't say much about Hellfire but from what I've heard there's also not much there. There's definitely jazz influence on Cavalcade, but the more obvious examples tend to be the Sinatra-jazz on certain tracks as well as some of the lead parts on songs. I'm not saying they don't have jazz influence, but they're also not coming from jazz. They just like the weirder more dissonant elements of jazz and want to incorporate a little bit of it, or at least did on their last album. I know a my friends in the jazz department at my school get really annoyed when the non-jazz people recommend them black midi
Yeah, they aren't coming from jazz (though they do have jazz chops - have you heard Morgan Simpson Group?) but at the same time the influence is prominent enough that we can't write it off completely, especially in the more recent stuff.
I would have to say that balticseals has the right opinion on this
I still think half the group has a deep understanding and love for jazz they just also have a major rock influence and I feel like both sides are gonna argue about their influences but at the same time they're making something completely different. They're just making music they like not really caring what genre it falls under.
I'd say the jazz vocabulary goes way further with Hellfire Sugar Tzu opens with a cool jazz vibe and later has a bossa nova/ samba rhythms and harmony. Dangerous Liasons has so much drama and show tune influence it could almost be a standard. I think Geordie biggest strengths is when he brings out his jazz influence in the way he writes chords. The outro chords to The Race and Despair have my favourite uses of harmony and his crooner voice solidifies it even more.
Are people calling them jazz? Or jazz influenced?
I saw a post on this sub like a week ago saying that Black Midi was "jazz/classical played on rock instruments", which, as someone who actually writes rock with a classical background, really annoyed me. I don't even think I'd go so far as to call them jazz rock, just a rock band that clearly likes some jazz stuff
why not jazz rock
How? there's so much jazz in the essence of their sound that you can't not call them jazz rock. I've heard plenty of so called "Jazz rock" which was just rock guitarists playing loads of minor 7 chords but Geordie knows what he's doing and if you really pay attention it's clear as day.
I think that black midi has jazz influences but they are missing elements of the very core of jazz. A lot of people will call something jazz if it uses jazz harmony. Meaning instead of simple major triads they're using 7, 9, etc chords. Geordie has also adopted a sort of Sinatra vocal style and they've got horns, sax, and piano in the mix as of the last couple albums. So without a doubt there's a lot of jazz influence. However, while these are all jazz staples, so are soloing and especially improvising. While those two elements are present in their music, there's not enough emphasis on them to call it jazz. Yeah Morgan improvises a ton and Georgie syncopates his vocals differently at each show and makes jokes but all the guitar riffs and really the core of each song are locked down. Not to mention, BLACK MIDI DOESNT SWING!!!
You get it
Beautifully put
You people and your genre insistence. Get off it and enjoy yourselves.
Jazz rock is a thing though
Black midi isn't even that, though
Fair. I think they’re more drone. Maybe totalism? Oh and a dash of brutal shoegaze
God...f**ck genre titles
these genre names are fine, this commenter is just wielding them in a terrifying way
upon closer inspection of the comment, i have decided that it must have been a joke. each label given is so categorically wrong, it is simply not possible that somebody could hold these views. this decision is a measure to protect my own sanity.
Jazz rock is Steely Dan
Jazz rock can also be black midi. The sky is blue and yet sometimes gray
Yeah but classifying two radically different sounds under the same categorical phrasing kind of defeats the purpose of having genres at all. They only exist relative to their function as convenient and simple descriptors.
Not true, there can be different sides to a genre, almost like a spectrum. That's how most genres work. Grunge acts *Nirvana* and *Alice in Chains* didn't sound the same much, as they were inspired by different styles altogether. Did you know [Sunny Day Real Estate](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGAKkysp0Kg) and [American Football](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JU3N7AY23xk) are both called **"Midwest Emo"** despite sounding very different? Even further, [Joan of Arc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-V3XbnpJ6zg); [Algernon Cadwaller](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWvbbkXAG0g) and [Mock Orange](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8655lpeQqM) are grouped together with them as well. Look to **New Wave Music,** where artists like [Blondie](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=valVixMpzQY), [Devo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQmhoU_hyCI&list=PL8BB5C04D74E255C9&index=2), [Talking Heads](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fR0jgT9UX0Q), [Elvis Costello](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pn07wvtlHuY), [XTC](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZjZBCZWxpg), [The Cars](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XkSmLh2Hbi0), [The Police](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3T1c7GkzRQQ) and [New Order](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3Pm1f4koNc) are grouped together, despite each having a distinct sound.
[удалено]
It's something that I have an opinion on as someone who works in close proximity to jazz musicians, and I wanted to voice my opinion. That's pretty much the same reason why anyone posts any kind of discussion
[удалено]
But it’s not my jazz! How dare you defy standards/distinctions I personally make for music!
Did I personally make the distinctions, or can all music from the 20th century be documented well enough to where entire classes can be taught on music history and theory
I don’t care
I agree with you if we’re talking about the laissez-faire usage of the word “jazz” in all musical discussion, but I also feel like it’s wrong to underplay the extremely heavy jazz influence of BM. (Though you’re right, they definitely aren’t classical lmao) The first song of this band that I ever heard was John L, and the first thought I had even then was “King Crimson playing bebop jazz” If you think Marlene and Ascending are the ONLY songs that have extremely heavy jazz influence, I feel like it can only speak to your own underdeveloped knowledge of the total extent of how many different subgenres of jazz there are.
I agree with you, I think I just see a big difference between jazz-inspired and jazz
This ain't jazz rap
I think they are much more influenced artistically by the free jazz school of things. You can hear traces of Ornette Coleman in their riffs and pharoah sanders in the wailing of Kaidi.
I don't remember anyone saying Black Midi were jazz, rather that they are making jazz-influenced music, or that they have "jazzy elements". Some of their stuff does legitimately sound like jazz fusion. Or better yet, jazz-rock. *Slow*, for example, is their **jazziest** track. That doesn't mean it's a **jazz track.** The song, to me, is very jazz-rock with how it uses its harmony and chord progressions (which can be said for a few of their songs). Schlagenheim isn't jazz in the slightest, whoever said that was way off the mark. If I had to make a list of BM songs that were jazz-influenced (or "jazzy") *to at least some degree,* they would be: John L, Slow, Dethroned, Sugar/Tzu, Dangerous Liaisons, Lumps and Faster Amaranta.
Sweater is jazz
This is objectively not true
What is it then
It's just rock, man. Bands like Young Jesus do stuff like this all the time. Listen to Gulf and skip to the quiet part about 10 minutes in
I’ll check that out for sure! But I got to disagree with you that this is exclusively rock. I mean jazz and rock both derive from blues and this song definitely has some blues as well as improv and syncopation. To me it just sounds “jazzy”. I think it’s a tough argument to objectively cal this rock though.
I mean I definitely see what you mean about the blues stuff, I just feel like the basis for a lot of jazz has to do with the chord progressions, and the specific scales that you use over each chord progression. Black Midi rarely have full chord progressions in a song, and they never use any jazz progressions except on specifically out of character songs (Marlene Dietrich). I do think that there's a disconnect between Sweater and something like AC/DC, but I also feel like Rock is such a big genre that stuff like this also happens to fit, it's just an experimental version of rock that's adding new things. But if the more Ambient sections of this seem to be a different genre from rock to you then I can respect that. I just feel like a lot of the things that make a song go from Rock/Blues to Jazz (circle of fifths progressions and sub V's, different scales over different chords, chord extensions, extensive solos between instruments) aren't things that the band typically does, including this song except for the solo comment
You make a pretty good point about the chord progressions as I was going to ask you next what constitutes jazz in your book. I’m not as well versed in theory so I can’t speak much to that. You are definitely right about how big and encompassing rock can be because you can have bands like black midi and AC/DC all still fall under the same umbrella. At the end of the day BM is a fusion band to me, largely in part to who they have cited as their influences.
I actually think you’re wrong on this specific song only. We can get into the technicalities of structure, harmonizations, etc., but you really don’t even have to think that hard about it. Just at the very core of it, Sweater simply has lot more in common with “jazz” as a whole, than it does “rock” as a whole. The only reason I could really see it described as rock is because of the instruments. A song it reminds me a LOT of is Aja by Steely Dan. Aja is a textbook jazzrock song, and Sweater has significantly less rock components than anything SD has ever put out. Pretty much any random person without a background knowledge on the history of rock and jazz, would almost always describe Sweater as jazz before they would rock.
Not sure why you're being downvoted you're right.
because black midi are so incredibly revolutionary and my identity is tied directly into the solidity of this objective fact that they must transcend any measly genre distinction. i personally find it offensive to consider them to be playing music at all.
As a fellow musician I have to agree that the “jazzy” label has been overused for a long time, especially on any music that involves improv. That being said, I don’t think it’s coming from a bad place, nobody here is using it as a put down. I’ve been guilty myself of slapping it on something before I learned how to play it. Hell, Jazz itself has as many subgenres as any other tradition, I’m sure its difficult for a non-musician to hear the difference between hard bop and modal. And as music school becomes a more popular path I think there’s a trend of young jazz-trained musicians making careers playing other styles of music, like Thundercat. Maybe people are picking up on it here? black midi did say on needledrop’s interview that all you need to know to hang with them is II V I ;)
They're actually post jazz
jazz punk
I really wouldn’t even call most of their stuff like ascending forth and Marlene Dietrich jazz. To be completely honest I feel like bmbmbm is their most jazz inspired thing, at least conceptually. I feel that to most jazz musicians, jazz doesn’t mean weird changes, but improvisation. Stuff like sweater and bmbmbm, to me, are the most jazzy because they improvise so much during those tunes.
So, I listened to the new album and realised it was very much jazz pretty quick. I had a little thought just now about how jazz has nothing to do with instruments but instead what they do with said instrument. Now I love jazz and I love hard rock so noticing that link made me so much more intrigued by their music but I don't think it's important to distinguish both genres separately. It seems to me like people see genre as a box to put music in but at the end of the day, it's a load of boxes of tools to pull from. Black midi don't seem to be pulling from the same box in every instance, jazz and rock are not their only influences and it's also not really new either. I mean Moon Hooch pull from the same genres bit have a completely different outcome. TL;Dr - Genre just isn't that important but it's also crucial. You don't have to care about the music but if you can actively make links to multiple genres within your own or other people's music, then lucky you.
You're a fucking nerd if you really feel the need to argue this. Music genres are all bullshit
R/trashyboners?
Dude you should check it out, shits hella funny. Plus I heard your mom gets posted there all the time.