Revenge of the Intellect

Milo, So The Flies Don’t Come (2015)

 

First impressions are everything. The title of this record? Dope. Works equally well for a hardcore release. Something by a group whose name has to do with mutilation or bodily decay. So The Flies Don’t Come is the sophomore effort of laid-back rhymesmith Milo, who now works primarily under the R.A.P. Ferreira moniker. This one is a highly (and refreshingly) coherent body of ciphers executed with studied insouciance.

 

Ferreira’s raps are internally taught but retain a rhetorical ambivalence and academic jadedness that gives his work a detached character. For all his aloofness, Ferreira still has the power to transmit an emotional narrative. See ‘Re: Animist,’ where Kenny Segal’s reservedness as a producer is the only thing that comes between Ferreira and trap music. Or ‘Going No Place,’ where Ferreira’s rhetorical fury is displayed against a minimalist canvas of looping chamber strings, hardly detectable cymbal hits, vinyl static, and a tactically punctual handbell.

 

It’s impossible to discuss this release without giving due consideration to Segal’s production. The subtlety is impressive. He’s got a mature sensibility. Less is more with Segal, such that every fixture of the sonic landscape has definite presence. And each song works both solitarily and as a piece of a greater whole. Pick any two songs and they’ll probably line up. The album can be reorganized in a number of ways and it still makes sense. That’s got to do with Segal’s style, which is deliberately organic, and Ferreira’s self-aware lyrical command.

 

‘Souvenir’ lurches with slacker swagger. Ferreira’s bars are brainy and ambling. Segal avails himself of what sounds like a warped sample of 70’s jazz guitar chords and orchestral jabs layered over by hummed synth-vocal notes. This is the exemplary track on this record. Hemlock’s verses provide an unsolicited response to Ferreira’s half-baked samurai references. If you’re a philosophy buff, you’ll appreciate Ferreira’s intermittent nods to Eastern thought and Nietzschean cynicism throughout.

 

The jagged syncopation and synth pattern on ‘True Nen’ provides another interesting musical backdrop for Ferreira and kindred spirit Open Mike Eagle, whose performance on this track, though brief, overshadows Ferreira’s. I felt an impulse to switch on Eagle’s 2020 Anime, Trauma and Divorce but exercised discretion. The next track, ‘Napping Under The Echo Tree,’ is the most conspicuously spoken word piece on the record. The verses seem socio-spiritually enlightened. But the song is, like, a hypertrophied drag. Man. Perhaps in a different setting this one would find a more appreciative audience. I imagine it looks good on paper.

 

The record closes with a voluble homage to Ferreira’s musical sensei, Busdriver. This is Ferreira at his best. Form and function are one. The congruity has a profound effect. The material objective organizes this track. Within the guideposts of an obvious logic (an ‘Ode’) Ferreira is able to concentrate word and meaning into a common force that, while typically abstract, reaches the listener in unobstructed fashion. More of that is happening on recent releases. I’ll zone out to this some other time. Roll on, Yoshimitsu. -Josey