monte booker Beautifully Bridges ‘noise’ and ‘meaning’ on Long-Overdue Debut

monte booker has been a driving force in pushing the needle on modern-day music production. Embodying an ethereal sonic elasticity, the super-producer, by our definition at least, gracefully plows through any preconceived genre constraints, deeming no terrain out of reach.

booker joined Smino‘s Zero Fatigue collective back in 2013, along with Ravyn Lenae, working closely with both artists on their early-career studio work. Around the same time, he joined Soulection Radio and released a studio EP for their White Label series in October of 2015.

In a long-overdue (though highly intentional) move, the behind-the-scenes force is finally, formally moving into the driver’s seat for his first-ever solo studio album. Entitled noise (meaning), the project’s 14 songs shape an aurally vast and amorphous soundscape, ultimately coalescing in booker’s personal definition of “what noise means” to him.

The 30-year-old has carved out a lane of his own in today’s oversaturated scene, bringing a refreshing and new sound that can best be described as a tapestry of different textures; this project is the epitome of that atmospheric world he’s now able to build, using his work with other artists as the groundwork. Ambient electro loops and abstract synths are layered atop trap-py 808s and bits of a late-night conversation, culminating in a sparse, soulful soundscape. It’s somehow sleek yet raw at the same time. And it makes perfect sense – sort of in a Dijon-sounding kind of way at some points throughout the immersive 31-minute-long LP.

Watching Smino and booker grow in tandem has been a privilege; the duo has delivered some of their best and bounciest work as a unit, with booker bolstering Smi’s lyrical fluidity and playfulness from a production standpoint. booker was behind most of the rapper’s 2017 debut blkswn, and continued to contribute to the rest of Smino’s studio albums: 2018’s NOIR, 2022’s Luv 4 Rent, and, most recently, last year’s Maybe In Nirvana. The credits speak for themselves, and the album’s “lights” marks a particular high point.

Lenae also hops on the project, contributing her dreamy vocals to the second-to-last song, “awake.” Seeing booker reconnect with the artists he quietly helped shape is magical. Mereba, Young Pink, chlothegod, reggie, VITA, Nami, and Planet Giza are also featured throughout.

An unsung hero no more – though we may have been secretly hoping we could gatekeep him as a solo artist for just a bit longer…

 

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Check out our “First Listen” to the album above, and stream noise (meaning) out everywhere now.

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