Bike For Three! - More Heart Than Brains

Life comes, life goes. In between, there's the search for love. Bike For Three!, a collaboration between the experimental rapper Buck 65 and Belgian electronic producer Joëlle Phuong Minh Lê, tells the tale of soul searching in a really new way. The duo collaborated from overseas and never met, effectively creating an odd, incredibly intriguing album about love. The music itself doesn't carry the album - but I don't think that's really the focus. The focus is the vast feeling of solidarity in every individual search for a soul mate - something carried out beautifully.

More Heart Than Brains certainly feels like the story of a life-long battle. Especially with the album being sandwiched between the tracks "Beginning" and "Ending". Featuring a birth, a growth, peak, decline, and death, Buck 65 and Minh Lê have birthed an album simple in its essence and gorgeous in its simplicity.

Buck 65's unique, cutting voice talks over expansive, magnifying electronic riffs. Lacking many sorts of comforting melodies or hooks, that craving gets replaced with an attachment to the story. The key songs mark important points in the search for love. Like the track, "Can't Feel The Love (Anymore)". Dwelling on how the loneliness forces you to miss out raising kids, Buck 65 says, "What happened to me that I'm so afraid to drown? Afraid of the dark. Afraid of letting people down. To take care of myself. My parents taught me how. But they probably never imagined me alone like I am now." Or the track "One More Time Forever", a kind of goodbye, that reads, "Keeping our guards up, wearing our masks. Making art the war being waged and taking part. Seeing the stars fall and the sound of a breaking heart like..."

Also be sure to listen to "Nightdriving", "Always I will Miss You. Always You." and "First Embrace". If you're searching for something to compare this to, think of a subversive type of MIA meets Figurine (of The Postal Service fame) with a less melodic Why? on top. But the sound, driven by how unique both Minh Lê and Buck 65 are, is something different that you need to listen to to grasp. A sort of avant garde hip-hop. No surprise it was released on Anticon. Focusing on experimental rap, Anticon also claims Buck 65 solo and Why?.

The album tells a great story that I think captures the loneliness of life beautifully. However, some of the tracks really aren't good. And some tracks, like "MC Space", seem out of place. But, then again, love's not always grand. Or rational.

Check their myspace out here.