The Spirit of bmbmbm: black midi’s Breakup and Why the Future of Guitar Music Is Not the Guitar

The history of pop music is a history told in bookends. As the death of Kurt Cobain was seen as the beginning of the end of the grunge era, so was the breakup of the Beatles seen as the symbolic end of the swinging sixties. The most recent fin-de-siècle signpost came unceremoniously when, a few days ago, the present sense ‘is’ was tragically changed to the past tense ‘was’ on black midi’s Wikipedia page. This preceded by an equally unceremonious declaration of ‘no more black midi’ from Geordie Greep on Instagram Live, which, as with the Beatles, blindsided the rest of the band in what history will regard as a steaming cup of South London tea. black midi stimulated a frenzy of gig-going in 2018, one that will be looked back on as single-handedly making London the creme of the indie crop. And with their demise, it is impossible not to see this as a bookend for the scene—a scene that revitalised guitar music. A new wave of musicians who have left their guitars backstage is waiting in the wings. Get ready for electronic sounds to start shaking the floors of your favourite venue. 

About a month ago, I found myself in conversation with a rising manager in the London music scene. They took care of the management duties for two acts, one of which was a post-punk band that they began working with in 2019. In one way, however, this was something they were trying to change. “The era of six boys making post-punk music and making it big, even amongst a sizable cohort of indie kids, is over. Those last bands who made it big—your Shames, your Squids—emerged in 2019. Of course, that scene is still around, but there won’t be another wave like that again.” Though such a stark fact leaves me personally with uncomfortable feelings of irrelevancy, it's a difficult point to argue. 

In 2024, the greatest hype isn’t with guitar groups, but instead with indietronica and alternative dance. Although this comes in various forms, ranging from the indie sleaze revival of The Dare and Fcukers to the gothic-synth of The Itch to the techno-punk of Fat Dog, the uniting theme is that guitars take the backseat, where they appear at all. The aforementioned manager recognised this, encouraging their post-punk group to ditch their dual guitar set-up for retro samplers. In this way, that group is following the example of Yard Act, whose second album, Where’s My Utopia, saw the group dropping the crankwave label in favour of alternative dance, with a sound that remained jagged but firmly rooted in the dancefloor. Bands that have gone in the opposite direction, like the theatrical piano ballads favoured by Black Country, New Road, have faced dismissal by their earlier fans. It is no longer cool to make music for a one-person angst session; the one thousand-person ravedown is in. 

The simple explanation is that young audiences are on a furious quest in pursuit of fun. The consequences of COVID lockdowns cannot be understated, as the youth escape bedrooms and basements and flee to the club for good times. Last year, the Dare said in an interview with Office Magazine that he had chucked in guitar music, which he had performed under the name Turtlenecked, after seeing how dance producers were able to get the people moving. Where indie rock fails, the quick highs and decadent euphoria of the indie sleaze movement provide the kind of fun the youth are looking for. And since the indie scene in London is especially driven by where the most exciting live shows are, the fact that indie sleaze artists can convert their synth-powered sounds into adrenaline-inducing shows means it is those gigs where the kids are heading in droves. 

Back in 2018, the most exciting gigs came from black midi: black midi’s early shows with the Sonic BM series at the Windmill are the stuff of legend, so hyped that bootleg recordings were distributed amongst those unable to attend their shows, as if it were the 1980s. The poster for the first show remains proudly situated beside the stage at the Windmill, now a memorial monument. As bands like black midi have aged, the sense of fun that put guitar bands like this on the hype train has declined. Their breakup reflects the fact that the black midi fun factor has ebbed away, with Greep suggesting he no longer enjoys playing gigs with the band. The best parties are now fuelled by laptops and samplers rather than crashing guitars. 

If there is any exception that could be pointed to to disprove this thesis, it would be English Teacher, who have been nominated for a Mercury Prize and whose debut album, This Could Be Texas, rose to the top of the UK album chart amidst a flurry of reviews praising it as the future of British indie. But one review of their headlining gig at the Brixton Electric a few weeks ago ended with a telling—even chilling—sentiment: that English Teacher were the sea wall preventing British indie music from slipping into the landfill. Such a comment is a clear reference to the landfill indie that dominated the scene from the late naughties until the late 2010s, when each new British band seemed to be offered a more and more diluted version of the Strokes. Is it possible that the reason behind the English Teacher hype is a case of wishful thinking that the scene they appear at the fag-end of is still alive?

All trends in music are cyclical. This forecast on the state of guitar music will possibly be laughed at a couple of years down the line, just as Decca refused to sign the Beatles in 1961 because ‘guitar music is on the way out.’ And just as my conclusions rest on sand, this article should not be considered pessimistic. The indietronica and dance music that has started to become more and more popular in London’s indie music venues is some of the most refreshing electronic dance music in decades. The new wave of indietronica artists recognise that bands like black midi have primed a generation of youth for good times, chaos, and calamity. As such, they are pumping out the most refreshing electronic dance music since Fischerspooner. Through the ups and downs of rock popularity, indie musicians have remained loyal to the guitar. But a purist artist is a dead artist. If the guitar is no longer fit for fulfilling the fun quota, it is only right for musicians to unplug the amp and open a laptop. Where the guitar has floundered, the spirit of bmbmbm lives on.