#broken fall

Kid Millions is, of course, the long-time drummer for Oneida whose recent work has branched ever outward into transcendental psych, free-jazz and avant-garde classical. Bernstein, a New York based violinist, has stretched the boundaries of a variety of genres—everything from contemporary classical to noise rock. They’ve worked together for about half a decade, both live and in one other record on 577 (2017’s Tense Life), and it is perhaps worth noting that Broken Fall was the first music Kid Millions recorded after recovering from a serious auto accident. It’s not that it affected his playing, which is as ferocious and unbounded as ever—more that he seems closer to the ineffable than usual. There’s a headlong, right-over-the-edge quality to these compositions. All bets are off. All cautions are tossed to the side.

The other main difference from Tense Life comes in the vocals, which are, according to label notes, Bernstein’s poetry, though it’s hard to say what any of the words are or whether there are words at all. And yet, as album highlight “Dies Infaustus” gathers speed and mass and furious tumult, dodging sudden stabs of violent sound, Bernstein’s voice serves as a serene center. The whirlwind spins around her, throwing off clanks and rattles and honks and vibrating, dissonant clangor, and she rises untouched out of the chaos. It’s odd to infer the eternal out of so much friction and strife, but there it is anyway, arresting and spiritually inflamed.

The combination of dense, turbulent, conflicting sonics—not just the continuous roll and surge of drumming, but electronic squeals and amp-altered swathes of violin tones—and the sense of spiritual communion recall Milford Graves. He also finds the sublime in cacophony, transcendence in a sweaty trance of activity. It’s rare to hear two such fine, daring musicians go at it this hard, dive so deep into the mess and strain of physical music-making and come up so spiritual.