Biography
Morgan Simpson did not learn to play the drums by tapping along to polite metronomes. He started hitting skins in church in Hertfordshire, a trial-by-fire environment where you do not play the charts—you drive the congregation through sheer physical momentum. By the time he linked up with Geordie Greep and Cameron Picton in London, his setup was stripped down to the bone. No double bass pedal, no massive array of cymbals. Just a snare, a kick, a rack, a floor tom, and a ride. That limitation forced him to find speed and complexity within a tight physical radius. With black midi, Simpson became the engine of the entire South London Windmill scene. He played with a hyper-articulate, polyrhythmic violence that felt like jazz-fusion run through a meat grinder. Producers like Dan Carey and Marta Salogni did not have to clean up his tracks in post-production. What you hear on those records is a drummer pushing his physical limits in real time, steering the band’s chaotic, screeching pivots without ever losing the pocket. When black midi abruptly imploded in 2024, it left everyone wondering where that rhythm engine goes next.
The Arc of Morgan Simpson
The pivots — what forced Morgan Simpson to reinvent.
The Windmill Basement Days
Before the studio albums, Simpson and black midi built their reputation on raw, undocumented live chaos at The Windmill in Brixton. Producer Dan Carey saw them, booked them immediately, and tracked their 2019 debut Schlagenheim almost entirely live to tape. Carey set up the band in a single room to capture the frantic, unpredictable telepathy between Simpson’s snare work and Greep’s scraping guitar. The resulting record is a masterclass in tension, defined by Simpson’s ability to drop from a furious math-rock gallop to absolute silence in a microsecond.
The Big Band Fusion Pivot
Following the departure of guitarist Matt Kwasniewski-Kelvin, the band pivoted from jagged post-punk toward maximalist, avant-prog theatricality on Cavalcade and Hellfire. For these sessions, Simpson had to anchor a massive, rotating cast of session players including brass sections and keyboards. Working with producer John ‘Spud’ Murphy, Simpson adjusted his style to navigate complex, rapidly shifting time signatures that felt closer to Broadway showtunes or Zappa arrangements. His drumming on tracks like ‘John L’ became more orchestral, utilizing hyper-fast fills and dramatic dynamic shifts to keep the sprawling arrangements from collapsing under their own weight.
Influences
- Tony Williams — Simpson has repeatedly cited the Miles Davis Quintet drummer as his ultimate blueprint for speed and independence. You can hear this influence in Simpson’s ride cymbal technique and his aggressive, forward-leaning swing on black midi tracks like ‘Chondromalacia Patella’. He plays on top of the beat, driving the band forward just like Williams did.
- Dennis Chambers — Chambers’ work with Parliament-Funkadelic and John Scofield directly shaped Simpson’s blend of heavy funk pocket and complex fusion chops. Simpson specifically pointed to Chambers in interviews as a key influence on his bass drum control and ghost-note articulation. That muscular, locked-in groove underneath the avant-garde noise is pure Chambers.
- Chris Dave — The hip-hop and neo-soul drummer’s choppy, broken-beat style heavily informed Simpson’s approach to time-keeping. You hear this in the dry, deadened snare tones and stuttering, off-kilter fills on ‘Speedway’. It is the sound of a human mimicking a MPC sampler with perfect precision.
- Dave Grohl — Simpson grew up on rock bands like Queens of the Stone Age and has singled out Grohl’s drumming on Songs for the Deaf for its sheer physical power. That hard-hitting, heavy-handed rock dynamic is what prevents Simpson’s jazzier tendencies from sounding too polite. He hits the cymbals like they owe him money.
- Billy Cobham — The Mahavishnu Orchestra drummer’s explosive, open-handed drumming style is all over black midi’s most intense moments. Simpson’s ability to execute blistering, machine-gun fills across the toms while maintaining a steady pulse comes straight out of the Cobham playbook. It is athletic, high-stamina drumming that refuses to sit quietly in the mix.
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