Artist: Milo
Album: Milo Takes Baths
Release Date: 19/2/2012
Nerd- rap prodigy takes chillwave producer's beats as a beautifully passive backdrop to his dpressive, witty and socially deconstructive rhymes
Forget Asher Roth. Forget Chilly Gonzalez. There's a strange irony in the fact that neither of the two names most frequently dropped when the horrible genre title of "nerdcore" is uttered know anywhere near as much about being a nerd as kooky bandcamp champion Milo does. "Milo Takes Baths" is his second mixtape to be released for free via bandcamp (following last year's deeply personal "I Wish My Brother Rob Was Here"), and it's a well- crafted and meditative fusion of self- deprecating honesty, sometimes hilariously sharp wit and a dismissal of universal social convention.
Opener "The Confrontation At Khazad- Dum" sets the thematical standard for what to expect from the rest of the tape. Chillwave/ IDM producer Baths' glitchy, trippy but beautiful melody is matched with defeatist lines like "I don't have a hip- hop career, I have a hobby." "The Ballad of Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy" sees him get even less self- confident, and dabbling lyrical in themes of loss as he intones "I've got these ugly hands so it's impossible to give back rubs/ Since Rob passed it's been hard not to be scared of flash floods".
The nerdyness factor reaches its height on "Lester Freamon toe- taps the Blues", in which Milo simultaneously references Greek playwright Euripedes and Kurt Vonnegut before going on to assert that he's a "slave to all my insecurities." Best of all though is "Prince Abakaliki of Nigeria needs your help", which is a hilarious tale of having an e- girlfriend over a wondrous flurry of hyperactive synths, with the wonderful lead refrain of "I cried in my room on the night my girlfriend wouldn't show me nudes."
In many ways and essences, Milo isn't a hip- hop artist. He's fully aware of the stereotype which befalls him and his peers, but he goes so far in desecrating that and distancing himself from ever being lumped in with that stereotype that he really is an outsider. And there is much of the beauty in his persona in that; he knows he's an outsider, and he wants to be too. In which case, although sometimes ineffectual and monotonous, "Milo Takes Baths" is everything Milo wants it to be. To him, at least, that's all that matters.
Key Tracks: "Prince Abakaliki of Nigeria needs your help" "Hall 2 with Will's singing untouched" "The Confrontation at Khazad- Dum"
7/10
Download "Milo Takes Baths" for free from his bandcamp page here:
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