Subliminal Cherry - Inside The Earth There Is Milk

Released: September 22

Hazy, dreamy, surreal, strange, and comfortable all at the same time, Inside the Earth There is Milk takes the idea of blending pop motifs into an experimental format into new and weird territory. The album realistically contains seven fully-fleshed out tracks sandwiched between a short intro and outro, both of with have the same name as the album. I found these both to be rather poignant as bookending devices, primarily because of the incredibly sparse nature of both. They are almost entirely comprised of vocals, with just the slightest amount of guitar giving a bit of backing. But the soft and almost cavernous sounding presentation of the vocals opens up some vague feeling of a very abstract spirituality. Is this a call to something, or simply a device to invoke intrigue? Regardless, the introductory piece leads beautifully into the next track, “Fading In Front of Me,” which surprisingly feels like my favorite track here. It features those same breathy vocals in a massive space as the synth chords playing during giving this feeling of racing towards something while staying still. It’s a rather conflicted and somewhat despondent sounding track that is somehow quite intriguing and emotive. 

For much of the middle of the album, we get a diverse collection of ambient and abstract tracks containing a variety of aural phenomena. “Egypt Point” stands out as one of the noisiest additions with a soft bed of ambient sound on top of which small explosions, distorted and mangled motifs, and shuddering synths play atop of. It has an internal logic, it just refuses to show it to you or anyone else. “Another Sun,” comes across as the synthesis of the second and third tracks, being definitively ambient in nature but giving space to this member icing bit of distorted synth melody that feels like the bright rays of the sun peeking from behind a cloud momentarily to give you a burst of warmth. And that is kind of the whole theme of this album. It lulls and prods at the right moments, giving you soft comfort and harsh pokes in alternating and concurrent fashion.