【搬运】【译】叉婊Pitchfork评black midi 2021年专辑《Cavalcade》
搬运自：网易云音乐专栏【Music Online Zine Courier】（在原文基础上添加了英语原文与排版调整）
翻译：Beans_Beans
The UK band stakes out even more ground on their glorious second album. The chord changes are more elaborate, the rhythms more twisted, the pretty parts prettier, the heavy parts heavier.
这支来自英国的乐队在他们辉煌的第二张专辑中取得了巨大的成就。和弦的变化愈加精细、节奏愈加诡辩多样，精彩的部分愈加精彩、沉重的部分愈加沉重。
Let’s start with the ending, an orchestral finale so grand it might as well come with a title card attached: That’s all, folks! The last two chords of Cavalcade, black midi’s second album, form a harmonic exclamation point that would have been recognizable to listeners even centuries ago, indicating that it was time to pack up their opera glasses and head home. After the previous 40 minutes of Cavalcade, an avant-rock labyrinth of maddening intricacy, navigated without any such conventional signposts, this is a perverse way to wrap things up. Arriving with an abrupt cut from the full band’s pummelling and caterwauling, the gesture’s familiarity makes it unsettling, surreal, like the punchline to an obscure joke. How could a record so full of noise and contradiction ever end on such a fine point?
让我们从结尾开始走上这段旅程，这是一个宏伟的管弦乐尾声，以至于可以附上一张卡片写到：乡亲们，这一切结束了！black midi 乐队的第二张专辑《Cavalcade》的最后两个和弦构成一个和谐的叹号，即便将之送回几个世纪前，普罗大众也能识别出来——是时候放下歌剧面具打道回府啦。在专辑《Cavalcade》的前40分钟后，便化身成了一个前卫摇滚的迷宫，错综复杂，完全没有任何传统导向的影子，这是一个反常的收尾方式。随着整个乐队的剧烈敲击和咆哮的突然中断，这个姿态的熟悉感让它令人深感不安、仿佛置身于超现实之中，像晦涩笑话一般捉摸不透。这张充满了噪音和矛盾的唱片，又怎能在如此精巧的一点处结束呢?
black midi became a sensation among adventurous rock listeners almost immediately after releasing their first single in 2018, and with good reason. They were just out of high school but played like they’d been woodshedding for decades. There was something almost obscene about their early performance videos, that those gawky kids were playing like this. The giddiness you felt upon watching was not unlike that of seeing a particularly outrageous internet meme. They seemed to have completed multiple lifetimes worth of left-field listening by the time they made Schlagenheim, their debut album—The Fall, Touch and Go post-hardcore, Miles Davis in the ‘70s, King Crimson in the ‘80s—and channeled those touchstones in songs that were exuberant and alive rather than fussy and reverent.
black midi在2018年发布第一首单曲后，几乎立即在狂热的摇滚乐迷中引起了轰动，这是有原因的。他们刚从高中毕业，但他们所演奏的音乐听起来却像在丛林中生活了几十年一般。这些愚蠢的年轻人玩世不恭，在他们早期演出的视频中添杂有一些近乎淫秽的东西。当你在观赏他们的作品时所感到的头晕目眩与看到一个离谱至极的互联网讯息的体验并不相同。在他们制作首张专辑《Schlagenheim》时，他们似乎已经完成听好几辈子左倾主义聆听的壮举——后硬核乐队 The Fall, Touch & Go、70年代的 Miles Davis、80年代的 King Crimson——并将这些先驱借用充满活力的歌曲传达出来，而非苛刻亦或虔诚。
The excitement had something to do with their dazzling instrumental expressiveness; drummer Morgan Simpson, especially, was like a free-jazz virtuoso going undercover in a punk band. It also involved guitarist and de facto frontman Geordie Greep, whose hectoring anti-charisma may be the band’s most distinctive element, whether you love his free-associative rants or wish he’d dial them back just a hair. (For me, and I suspect plenty of other fans, it’s a little of both.) Finally, there was the sense that black midi were discovering their powers in real time as you listened, an impression they heightened with frequent onstage improvisation. For all the hours they’d evidently spent doing their homework, the music never felt charmlessly studied or proficient. It was raw.
这种兴奋与他们令人眼花缭乱的器乐表现力有关；特别是鼓手 Morgan Simpson，宛如一个自由行的爵士乐大师在一朋克乐队中卧底一般。这也与吉他手也就是主唱 Geordie Greep有关，他恐吓一般的反魅力可能是乐队中最独特的元素，无论你是喜欢他自由联想式的咆哮，还是仍怀有一丝他能够偏移回常态的侥幸。（对我而言如此，相信对绝大多数乐迷而言也是如此。）最终，你会深感 black midi 乐队在实时发掘他们自身的力量，他们在舞台上频繁的即兴演出使这一感觉更加强烈。尽管他们花费了很多时间做功课，但他们的音乐从未让人觉得是在刻意研究或精通，他们仍保留有原生态的部分。
If there was any pressure to flatten out their idiosyncrasies for Cavalcade, they clearly rejected it. The album is a good deal more ambitious and more difficult than its predecessor, stretching even further in almost every direction that Schlagenheim staked out. The chord changes are more elaborate, the rhythms more twisted, the pretty parts prettier, the heavy parts heavier. Schlagenheim aspired toward jazz fusion and 20th-century classical; Cavalcade has passages that sound like Mahavishnu Orchestra and Olivier Messiaen. Schlagenheim had its fair share of dopey-awesome metallic grooves and guitar parts; Cavalcade comes thrillingly close, a handful of times, to Primus or System of a Down. Greep, who handles vocals on six of the eight songs, has upped his flair for the theatrical, abetted by new contributors on sax, violin, and keyboards. Listening to Schlagenheim, it was easy to imagine black midi kicking out the jams in a basement somewhere. Now, the imagined setting is more like a Hieronymous Bosch painting, or a three-ring circus. There is a vague but persistent feeling that someone involved might be wearing a monocle.
如果说要为《Cavalcade》的创作平添任何压力，他们显然杜绝了它们。这张专辑比前作更具野心，当然也更富难度，是在《Schlagenheim》既定的几乎所有方向上延伸的愈加长远。和弦的变化愈加精细、节奏愈加诡辩多样，精彩的部分愈加精彩、沉重的部分愈加沉重。《Schlagenheim》向往的是爵士乐与20世纪古典乐的融合；《Cavalcade》有些段落听起来则像 Mahavishnu Orchestra 和 Olivier Messiaen。《Schlagenheim》有其超赞的金属旋律及吉他部分；《Cavalcade》有几次则十分逼近于 Primus 或 System of a Down。Greep负责了这八首新乐曲中六首的人声部分，在萨克斯、小提琴和键盘等新元素的加成下，他逐步提高了自己人声部分的戏剧性。在聆听《Schlagenheim》时，你很容易联想到 black midi 在某个地下室里拳打脚踢制作它的场景。如今，想象中的画面变为 Hieronymous Bosch* 的画作，或是一场大型演出。好似带着一副单片眼镜，时而模糊不清，时而清晰连贯。
“John L,” the album’s first song, is also its most broadly representative. The central theme creaks and lurches like a see-saw in need of WD-40 and Greep slurs out a portrait of a cultish political leader at the end of his rope. When the singer takes on the voice of John L himself, offering his followers a blend of nationalist fear and capitalist wish fulfillment, a grotesque vocal effect enters the mix to underscore the message’s dark familiarity: “A man is his country, your country is you/All bad is forewarned, all good will come true.” When there’s simply too much going on, the band creates powerful tension by paring things away: deconstructing their own groove in the song’s electrifying middle section, or plunging into cavernous silence between outbursts of drums and violin.
“John L”，专辑的第一首歌，也是这张专辑最广为人知的代名词。它的中心思想像需要润滑油的跷跷板一样嘎吱作响，遮遮掩掩；而 Greep 则含糊不清地描绘了一个逐步走向落败尽头，被狂热崇拜的政治领袖形像。当歌手借 John L 的声音，为他的追随者提供民族主义恐吓及资本主义愿望果实的混合体时，另一种怪诞的声乐效果混杂其中，实时强调着这讯息暗黑的亲切感：“A man is his country, your country is you/All bad is forewarned, all good will come true.（每个人都享有他的国度，你将坐拥你的城池；一切罪恶终有先兆，一切善意都将触及真相。）”当有太多东西一齐发声时，乐队便通过沉默来营造紧迫感：在歌曲电光火石般的中段旋律进行解构，或者在鼓和小提琴的爆发之间突陷空洞寂寥的沉默。
In building so elaborately atop the black midi framework, Cavalcade loses a bit of Schlagenheim’s spartan urgency; there’s nothing like “Near DT, MI,” the Flint water crisis cri de cœur that provided the debut with its most searing two-minute stretch. But the band’s willingness to indulge every impulse also leads them to wild new territory. “Slow” and “Diamond Stuff,” the two songs fronted by bassist Cameron Picton (who also led “Near DT, MI”) are among the best in the black midi catalog. The former’s manic prog-jazz pounding imagines a surprisingly fruitful middle ground between Swans and Steely Dan. The latter is eerie and spacious, transfixing without rising above a whisper.
在 black midi 如此精心打造的框架下，《Cavalcade》失去了一点《Schlagenheim》的紧迫感——没有什么比 “Near DT, MI” 中面临溺水危机的哭诉能为首张专辑带来如此焦灼的两分钟时间。“Slow” 以及 “Diamond Stuff” 这两首由贝斯手 Cameron Picton（也同是 “Near DT, MI” 的主唱）主唱的歌曲，也都会是这张唱片中最好的作品之一。前者狂躁的前卫爵士乐冲击，幻想于一个位于 Swans 和 Steely Dan 之间极富成效的中间地带徘徊；后这是阴森而宽敞的，在仅限于耳语的情况下令人着迷。
There’s an aesthetic developing among jazz-schooled and internet-fried musicians like Louis Cole or DOMi and JD Beck, propagated on YouTube and social media more so than on proper albums, which has brought youthful new verve to wonky old virtuosity by acknowledging that there’s something a little funny about being able to play so ridiculously well. Whether intentionally or not, black midi have always had a bit of this quality—something like a joyous Are you fucking kidding me? was an appropriate reaction to those early live videos—and they bring it closer to the surface on Cavalcade. It’s there in that queasy-beautiful final cadence, and in the wink of the chord progression that underpins the verses of “Ascending Forth,” the closing song, which ascends by a fourth whenever Greep hits the titular phrase. It’s there in “Slow” and “Hogwash and Balderdash,” both of which feature variations on the same musical gag: in the middle of an intensely technical passage, the band suddenly drops out, leaving a single instrument to jitter nakedly for one measure or less before everyone barrels back in. More than any particular rock artist, it reminds me of Carl Stalling, the brilliant house composer for Looney Tunes.
像 Louis Cole、DOMi 和 JD Beck 这样的爵士乐派兼网络音乐家正在形成一种新式美学——他们音乐在 YouTube 和社交媒体上的传播比在实际专辑中传播的效果要好得多，他们也承认能够有如此精妙的技艺，同时能为古怪的老式技艺引入了年轻的新活力是件趣味横生的事。无论是有意为之还是无意之举，black midi 乐队一直都有这样的特质——对于那些早期的现场视频，他们的反应是“你他妈是在开玩笑吗？”——而如今在《Cavalcade》中，它们将这一特质展现的淋漓尽致。它存在于那个令人难以言说的反胃美丽尾声中，也存在于支撑 “Ascending Forth” 这首结束曲的和弦闪烁时—— Greep 每弹出一个四度上行标题乐句。在 “Slow” 和 “Hogwash and Balderdash” 中也有相似的感觉，这两首曲子的特点是在同一个音乐片段上的变化：在一个技术性很强的段落中，乐队和声突然退回幕后，让单独一个乐器赤裸地在场上颤动一小节或更少，然后大家再重新一齐投入演出。与其余任何特定的摇滚艺术家相比，他们让我想起了 Looney Tunes 的杰出室内作曲家 Carl Stalling。
When Cavalcade is at its most antic and cerebral, the “rock” part of the black midi equation becomes almost ancillary, like they could just as easily be exploring the same regions if they were free improvisers or composers for orchestra. The music’s relentless complexity, insularity, and high drama can be challenging even for a listener predisposed toward those qualities. The band seems to understand this, and they are more willing to meet you in the middle than you might think. Again and again, as a given song teeters toward lunacy, they return to primal call-and-response: one, two; a bang, then a crash; the rumble of a power chord followed by the wail of a sax. These moments are consistently among the album’s most satisfying, perhaps because of the relief they provide from an otherwise overwhelming procession of big ideas. They repeat a few times, you bang your head and catch your bearings, then the cavalcade continues.
当《Cavalcade》正处在其最滑稽和脑洞大开的状态时，这张唱片中的“摇滚”部分几乎成了附属品，就像他们是自由的即兴演奏家还是管弦乐乐队作曲家一样，他们在这里可以很容易地探索达到相似的领域。音乐的复杂性、封闭性和高度戏剧性，即使对于那些已倾向于这些特质的听众而言也是一种挑战。black midi 乐队似乎明白这一点，他们比你想象的更愿意在曲目中心地带满足你。一次又一次地，当某首歌曲向着愈加疯狂的方向偏摇时，他们便又回应了原初的呼唤：一、二；一声巨响、一声猛击；强音和弦的雷鸣、萨克斯的哀鸣。这些时刻一直是专辑中最令人满足的瞬间，也许正因他们已从压倒性的主流队伍中脱身。他们回旋反复了数次，你敲敲自己的脑壳，重新回到前行的方向，随后骑兵队继续踏上征程。
*译者注释：Hieronymous Bosch 是一位十五至十六世纪的荷兰画家。他多数的画作多在借恶魔、半人半兽甚至是机械的形象以描绘罪恶与人类道德的沉沦。他的画作极其复杂，具高度的原创性、想象力，并大量使用各式的象征符号，其中有些作品在他的时代中也非常晦涩难解。Bosch 被认为是20世纪的超现实主义的启发者之一。
