I've just realised I've been listening to Black Milk's new Synth or Soul album for the entire day. I've had my breakfast to it, I've walked into town and done my shopping to it and now I'm going to cook my dinner to it, (yes that's right my life revolves around food.) But what I can conclude from time spent that this is a feel good album with the daily intake of beats one needs in ones life. Compliments to the chef.
Synth or Soul is the first instrumental installment of Milk's visual art and sound series called Fuzz, Freqs & Colours aka FFC, which is a collab project with artist Upendo "Pen" Taylor. Check out Upendo's work and like a true art historian, you'll understand how important music is to art and vice versa. This album is unhurried and hand crafted like a Lindt bunny and when Milk humbly released this into the world it received a speedy response with the selling out of the limited edition LP's.
Milk's managed to create a whole ecosystem out of twelve tracks with a huge diversity of sounds and carefully chosen samples. Each track is different from the next but they still manage to blend seamlessly without having to skip a track or adjust volume. A treat for the ears is what I'd call it. You can tell Milk makes music to endure and trigger different senses of the mind and I'd love to hear some vocals coated on top in the near future. It's almost as if Milk and Dilla have done a back to back album by way of some spiritual black hole in the atmosphere. The presence of Dilla in this album is undeniable and a beautiful way of Milk paying homage and making it his own.
The track names given also seem incredibly fitting when you put your mind to it. Each song is like a different fragment of Milk's mind and takes on its own character and vibe. Track one named Computer Ugly Ugly starts off with some seedy sounding keys which ease you into some kind of synthville city, and track two starts with sounds reminiscent of a Parisian street at night. What I'm saying is beauty is in the eye of it's beholder so these songs are yours to interpret. If this album was a place, it'd be somewhere sunny with urban connotations. Where afros were expected and men wore floral print as a standard. The air would smell like ginger beer and women would get freaky. Every now and then though, you'd seem some synthin' robots go by with sythin' sexy robot women just to funk things up a bit. Synth city bitch.
