The Fashionably Late Top 125 of 2019: black midi

Another rough year corresponded to another bumper crop of excellent music. Once again, my list is huge, because I fell in love with each of these 125 records and found it impossible to not include all of them in my fashionably late list.

I'm choosing to post my favorites in alpha order from A-Z again this year. You'll probably find some records that everyone and their fifth cousin raved about, but I hope you'll also find a few records that might be new to you, and that you'll fall in love with them as much as I have.

My thanks, as always, to the artists who created these records.

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Who: black midi

What: Schlagenheim

When: June 2019

Where: Rough Trade

Why: A big, bad mess of an album. Schlagenheim is full of avant/en garde noise, an elaborate, chaotic swirl of kraut meets thrash meets jazz meets punk...and that's just in opening track "935." As well-planned as the record undoubtedly is, it retains a sense of improvisation and the unexpected, as if it came together through a series of happy accidents. Black midi takes genres and lays waste to them, chewing them up and spitting them out, and in doing so the London outfit made one of the most complex and captivating records of the end of the decade. With a purpose.



[posted 2.9.20]

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