About this item

Kid Millions is a musician, composer and writer best known as the drummer and founder of Brooklyn's experimental rock behemoth Oneida. For the last twenty years, Millions has been at the forefront of the NYC experimental music community collaborating with artists as varied as Laurie Anderson, Yo La Tengo, Boredoms, So Percussion and William Basinski. Enter his album-length conversation with the recordings of the unjustly obscure guitarist Harry Taussig, whose 1965 private-press album Fate Is Only Once was reissued by Tompkins Square in 2006. This strange gem was followed by two new Taussig recordings - Fate Is Only Twice(2012) and The Diamond of Lost Alphabets (2014). Tompkins Square proposed that Millions take this raw material and fashion something completely new. Millions took the material up to Kingston NY and through working with his engineer Matthew Cullen emerged with an album of rare beauty in keeping with the spirit of Taussig's work while suggesting directions previously unexplored in his oeuvre. To create this new work, Millions and Cullen overdubbed guitars, drums and organs onto the original tracks and sent the material into other damaged psychedelic dimensions only hinted at in the original works. Millions writes in the liner notes, "[Taussig is] not slavishly attended to technique but we also don't feel any boundaries to his expression. One of his classic tunes is subtitled "Fantasia in A" and in a way this term is a perfect label for his entire oeuvre. A fantasia is an improvisation that touches on many themes and styles. Some of his songs are very tight and tidy and I was drawn to some of them. But I also wanted to stretch these moments of loose revelation and turn a spotlight on Taussig's generous search." We're left with a kind of revelation - a so-called "remix" album which can actually stand on its own and illuminate both artists' work.