On January 12th, experimental music lost tour-de-force Matt Kwasniewski-Kelvin, best known as founding guitarist of black midi. Even in the face of so much daily carnage, the news took us to a dark place, not just because of the tragic nature of Kwasniewski-Kelvin’s passing, but because we’re intimately familiar with the struggle to maintain one’s mental health. It’s always an uphill battle.
It’s perhaps easier than ever to take stock of things and come away with the realization that the scales of balance and justice are historically skewed. The feeling that there might not be a way out or through feels more applicable now, less like an exaggeration. But it’s different for everyone, and we all deal with life’s challenges in our own ways. Though we are deeply pained by his absence, as is everyone else, we try our best to respect people’s personal choices.
If any of that resonates, just know you’re not alone. Yes, you’re probably sick of hearing it, and it would be remiss of us to instill some kind of false hope, other than assuring you there are still unpredictable, unknowable factors in life. Strange things happen. You never know when things will turn around or what steps you might take with a different perspective, and there is help if you want it.
Kwasniewski-Kelvin imbued schlagenheim with uncanny madness through shrieking, uncontainable sounds that brought more exploding machinery to mind than guitars, yet he was also a shrewd minimalist with keen sense of counter-point. In addition to bm’s early singles and debut, you can hear this evidenced by his work with Wu-Lu and Injury Reserve, which we’ve included below among these ten magic Matt moments that will stay with us forever. Rest in peace, legend.
10. black midi – live at First Unitarian Church, Philadelphia, PA 11.12.19
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9. Injury Reserve – “Knees”
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8. black midi – live at Chondro live Radio 6 Festival 2020
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7. Wu-Lu – “Take Stage”
6. black midi – live at Boiler Room London
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5. black midi – damo suzuki live at the windmill brixton with ‘sound carriers’…
4. Wu-Lu – “Road Trip”
3. black midi – live at KEX Hostel Iceland Airwaves 2018
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2. black midi – live at Hyundai Mercury Awards 2019
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1. black midi – live at Pitchfork Music Festival 2019
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