Milk Cult was designed as a studio-only project by the founding members of the band Steel Pole Bathtub.  This 1994 album, in my opinion, is quite underappreciated.  It utilizes collaborations with Mike Patton and Billy Gould of Faith No More, Blake Schwarzenbach of Jawbreaker, Lars Fox and Bruce Boyd of Grotus, and most of Neurosis to build some really interesting grooves. Those varied musical voices create a collection of tracks whose style changes with each song without losing its way in developing a sound for itself.

One personal favorite, and the subject of the title of this blog post, utilizes quotes from the 1985 novel by Don DeLillo, White Noise.  The novel itself is a story about a college professor who is overly concerned about the inevitability of death.  The track itself, “Urine, the Money,” utilizes a boxy-sounding analog drum loop overlayed with a dirty fuzz electric guitar and wah-guitar.  On top of that is a sampled vocal “California deserves whatever it gets. Californians invented the concept of life-style. This alone warrants their doom.”  The medium-tempo groove takes us, like many tracks on this album, on an expansive, ear-candy-filled trip.  

The whole album refuses to be boxed into a specific genre. Elements of rock, jazz, hip-hop, metal, surf rock, and 90s industrial keep you guessing where this quite palatable mix will go next.  The one thing it does stick to is its masterful use of sampled audio to create interesting textures to go along with the grooves that continue to reveal details even after multiple listens.

Most of my blog posts include a review from other websites like AllMusic, but with this one, the album is more obscure and, as mentioned earlier, underappreciated. There really isn’t much out there in the way of reviews.

I think I got a bit lucky when I found this album shortly after I began working in a record store back in the mid-90s. It has continued to stay in the listening rotation simply because of its depth in interesting textures and great grooves. Good stuff!