We’re deeply honoured to welcome USA’s Midwife to Ramsgate on Friday 14th October.
One of our favourite songwriters of modern times, specialising in hauntingly minimal experimental pop. This will be utterly mesmerising…
“Songs that are short on words but heavy on feeling. Glazed in enough melancholy to make you sit in silence before you realise how long it’s been since you uttered a single word” – Beats Per Minute
Midwife is the moniker of multi-instrumentalist Madeline Johnston. She lives and works in San Miguel, New Mexico by way of Denver, Colorado, where she spent the better half of the past decade developing her experimental pop project. As a self taught guitarist and recording engineer, Midwife explores dark subject matter in her anthemic, soft-gaze hits. Self-described as “Heaven Metal” or emotive music about devastation – catharsis.
When 2020 began, Johnston had several national and international tours planned, but the pandemic shifted her focus back to recording, and back to her internal landscape. Midwife’s third full length record, Luminol, was written and produced during quarantine.
Luminol is a chemical used by forensic investigators to reveal trace amounts of blood left at a crime scene. When it reacts with blood, luminol emits a chemiluminescent blue glow that can be seen in a darkened room. In the same way this chemical reveals evidence at a scene, Midwife is interested in profound truth – turning trial and tribulation into sources of light.
Luminol navigates themes of incarceration, locus of control, clarity, self harm, confinement, agency, and truth-seeking, all erupting in a bioluminescent Rothko color-field of blue.
“Heavy and hypnotic. Barren dream-pop… nearly-wordless ruminations on the pain of loss” – Pitchfork
“Hazy, contemplative, slower-than-slowcore form of ambient indie rock” – Stereogum
