Milo is from Milwaukee. He raps like a man on verge of a nervous breakdown and his allusions suggest that he’d catch the Almodovar reference. Milo named himself after a fictional character, which he says, “says a lot about my mental health and various barriers.” I assume he means the boy from The Phantom Tollbooth, but for all I know, it could be Milo of Milo & Otis fame.

Produced by Analog(ue) Tape Dispenser, Milo’s first single on Hellfyre Club is called “Post hoc ergo propter hoc (for Schopenhauer).” The first part is a Latin phrase that translates to “after this, therefore because of this.” In regular English, this usually is considered false cause or coincidental correlation. Schopenhauer was a German philosopher famous for claiming that people were driven by a continually satisfaction-seeking and never quenched will. So he basically anticipated the iPad-era of post-Capitalism.

Maybe this comes off as pretentious to you. Maybe you only want brick-bat Roc Marciano lyricism or Chief Keef mindlessness out of your music. But artists like Milo and Mike Eagle and Serengeti and Busdriver complete the picture. They remind you that rap is more than false dualities; it’s not all party music or the soundtrack to a pipe-bashing. Indie rock isn’t the only genre that has a valid claim on mental erosion or fear of the free-fall. Or as Milo describes the project — two EPs that drop on Hellfyre Club on New Year’s Day:

“I think what bums me out about most of the music I hear is how unabashedly vicious and cruel it is. which is an understandable response to a less-than-ideal existence but it seems like we’re at a point where no longer is excess, disparity or vice interesting. it will become (has become) the “cool” move to suddenly grasp out for responsibility, to be kind and funny, to try to make sense of a bleak, (probably) meaningless existence in a way that affirms duty/virtue. To grapple with suffering and not reduce it to trite sentimentalisms. Irony and sarcasm are powerful tools, but in an age of such the next development has to be an ardent genuineness. Or maybe I’ll kill myself. I’m undecided.

Things that happen at day // things that happen at night is a double-ep exploring duality and responsibility. it is unavoidably obtuse, overwhelmingly self-important and I am not sorry.”

Download:
MP3:  Milo – “Post hoc ergo propter hoc (for Schopenhauer)”

Tracklisting:
things that happen at day
1. sweet chin music (the fisher king’s anthem)
2. almost cut my hair (for Crosby)
3. folk-metaphysics
4. legends of the hidden temple
5. almond milk paradise

things that happen at night
1. a lazy coon’s obiter dictum
2. the Gus Haynes cribbage league (ft. Busdriver)
3. monologion
4. folk-metaphysics, 2nd ed.
5. post hoc ergo propter hoc (for Schopenhauer)