| Press Reviews
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- TO SAY THAT MiLkBabY IS NOT THE TYPICAL BAND,
IS TO SAY THE SEARS TOWER
IS NOT THE TYPICAL BUILDING - Chicago-Music-scene.com
- I like your songs. I think they are nice. -- BODHI Madison, WI age 5
- From the outermost fringes of the Trip-Hop world where the borders between it and improv jam-bands, ambient,trance and dub electricians and menacing industrialists overlap and begin to rub off on one another comes MiLkBabY ... a strange sort of world music for a new science fiction-esque post industrial world ... The Eternals, Qwel - now Milkbaby. Indie music has become a valuable export of the windy city.--- JustAddNoise.com
- challenging experimental, rock scientists -- Chicago Tribune
- My favorite MiLkBabY incarnation yet! I so dug you guys at Est Fest tonight: like Bjork meets Velvet Underground and something you've never heard before...I love it! I need a bottle!! -- Estrogen Fest
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Local trio MiLkBabY have just put out the fifth release of their ten-year career: BottLe, on Uvulittle. I'm enjoying this record a lot—a soundtrack for a scattered afternoon, chill-out music for people who wouldn't know "chilling out" if you shoved them in a meat locker. Part trance, part trip-hop, part sheer fingerpainting solipsism, its swirls and chants and burbles tease the pattern-making part of the brain. Find the logic—it's got to be in there somewhere. In the meantime, if you just can't focus, they'll make you feel good about not having to. --- Monica Kendrick, CHICAGO READER
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BottLe marks a significant turning point for MiLkBaby, the trippy Chicago-based progressive trio that plays fully improvised live shows. For one, it’s easily the most accessible album in the group's decade-long history. And it also marks the first collaboration between founding multi-instrumentalist Barry Bennett, bassist/guitarist Darren Shepherd and his singing girlfriend/accordion player Sophie Senard in the wake of the departure of Tracee Westmoreland and David Lee Smith — who changed continents in 2001. The result? More than 66 minutes of cacophonic, percussion-punctuated music that conjures mangled and bloody sonic images of vintage Peter Gabriel, beginning with the global paranoia of “Up on the Television” and extending to “Sneaky Stevie,” with its distorted guitars, hypnotic beats, fluttery vocals and electronic chaos that sound like the mix tape for a science experiment gone horribly awry. There's even some male death-metal grunts in "Bored." “Radiation Flowing” is a more subdued piece complete with atonal chanting and augmented by jarring and repeated sounds of breaking glass – a bottLe being smashed, perhaps? The 11-minute “More Than I Am” emerges as the album’s most haunting piece, with Senard’s mournful, digitized voice singing over a somber Gabriel-esque rhythm, “Tell the Moon” sounds like a bunch of sheep and goats being herded by stoned shepherds, and the 12-minute finale “Greater Than Two” (apparently a parent’s ode to a young daughter) is alternately bittersweet and terrifying. Former MiLkBabies Westmoreland and Smith make guest appearances here, but it is clear that Bennett is the one spinning this bottle and taking MiLkBaby in commendable new directions. You can’t help but clap your hands and shake your ass. -----Michael Popke, SEA OF TRANQUILITY
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This isn't music that you ignore, or play in the background at a dinner party. Thank God. This is music that you look at, touch and listen to. Yes Bertha, just like art. This isn't music for everybody. This is music that makes you feel alive, primal, fearless and vulnerable. -- Midwest URsine.com
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"...the music of Chicago's Milkbaby is nearly impossible to quantify. The duo of Barry Bennett and Darren Shepherd engage in a bizarre blur of electronics, percussion, brass, keyboards and guitars to create an odd record filled with both ambience and dissonance. ...it's clear Milkbaby possesses an uncanny ability to cast a sonic spell and hypnotize listeners. Each of these seven songs is utterly distinct. As a reference point, think King Crimson meets Dead Can Dance. But the best track, "Father's Son," borrows respectfully from early Peter Gabriel." --- Progression Magazine
- These talented folks have every right to wonder why they do not have a larger than national following... a great roller coaster ride. --- Jim Brenholts (author of "Tracks across the univierse: a chronology of ambient and electronic music") for Abmientvisions.com
- haunting, engaging, tribal experimentation. The musical equivalent to the most beautiful storm you've ever seen. 4 1/2 stars -- ADDreviews.com Sterling, VA
- MiLkBabY, sTRangE JuKeBoX: Live at Mother Fool's, holds sonic driftings that feast on tribal psychosis and futuristic rituals of organic trances, rare collusion and snakey grace. -- Maximum Ink
- Tribal percussion keeps clock while shamanic chants apostrophize friendly spirits, and sheets of disembodied tonality play footsie with dust particles...MiLkBabY mean to repave your mental landscape -- THE ISTHMUS Madsison, WI
- Void of both clasification and expectation...MiLkBabY operates as a model of synergy...the aural equivalent of a single muscle flexing -- StaticMultimedia.com
- ambitious, indefinable electronic music...mixes jazzy elements with organic-sounding techno, creating a hybrid that breathes warmth into a frequently chilly genre. -- THE ONION
- If you are a neophyte to the sounds of Son Ra Arkestra, or to the mood enhancement of Tangerine Dream, or the pulsing sound of drumming from King Sunny Ade or Ali FaToure, then you'll need to get ready for MiLkBabY...When you need to think and feel, MiLkBabY will be there for you with music that is thoughtful and evocative. -- REVUE magazine, cleveland, OH
- REVIEW OF MiLkBabY's live show by Brad Seiner, SR. Editor at ChicagoLocalBands.com... Unique, ominous, affirming, joyous, and involving. Those are the types of words a writer has to work with. Rarely will you see them in the same sentence (or fragment in this case). Never will you see them personified in a band -- Unless you see, MiLkBabY, like i did at Gunther Murphy's on Saturday July 29th. They have a sort of anti-song presence. Ther are no choruses, no verses, and no funny stage patter. They just create a symphonic, tribal community between them and the crowd. The three collaborators use electronic drums, keyboards, voice processors, congas, symbols, and a bunch of other gizmos that seem to have come from Brian Eno's basement. Tracee Westmorelan, Barry Bennett, and David Lee Smith are not going to stare at their shoes and wait for the crowd to tear themselves away from their conversations. They have written an entire soundtrack for a world that doesn't exist except in each of our third eyes.
So if you like things dark, trancendant, and full of love, check out their dates and leaave your preconceived notions of trip-hop, jazz, and tribal music at the door. They'll make you own your own world.
- the trippiest of trip hop - Chicago Reader
- primal, memorable and ominous - New City
- it calls to mind never visited places that are somehow still familar
- Centerstage Chicago
- best of the esoteric realm - Illinois Entertainer
- a weird wonderful mixture of world music - Chicago Daily Herald
- haunting - Chicago Tribune
- an aural scene setter of resonant, near hypnotic quality - New City
- MiLkBabY is creating some of moodiest, tribal music that I have heard! - Musician's Resource Page - St. Paul, MN
- fiendish percussion - Chicago Reader
- RUN out and give MiLkBabY a listen immediately! - Muscian's Resource Page -- St. Paul, MN
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