120

Robert Millis has released 120 (ETUDE 018) on the Etude Records label in Canada, in a handsome digipack decorated with four intriguing colour photographs (my preference has been for the back cover, as shown in pic above). Here, the Climax Golden Twin from Seattle combines field recordings from his exotic Eastern travels with subtle and delicate music of the most pristine and unobtrusive beauty. Jim Haynes writes that he apparently cannot come to grips with the “logic of the album” which he admits “may seem absurd from afar”; yet I value that absurdity, and to me the highly artistic combinations of Millis have all the surreal logic of a beautiful dream. The opening minute of the final track, ‘charcoal twins’, is particularly delirious, but the second track contains a superb mix of night-time insect chirps and gentle celestial droning which will simply send you to Heaven, ascending to the light on a pink cloud. -Ed Pinsent (The sound projector)

He went through a period putting “Robert” on his releases, but I never heard anyone call him that to his face. ”Rob”, “Millis”, “Milner”, I’ll accept “Fucking Millis” (especially as his favorite retort is “Yeah, fuck you”), and only his wife can call him “Robbie-O”. But what’s with “R”? His new CD has “R Millis” on the cover, and if you have lived in Seattle for some time and like experimental music, you will know him as the non-bearded half of Climax Golden Twins that got fired from Wall of Sound when Jeffery and Michael took over. Anyhow, he played a show in San Francisco recently and a tiny run CDR to sell at the show. Apparently no took the bait, but his host Jim Haynes offered to sell the leftovers through his web site and they took off like hot cakes. It also got the notice of a CGT fan from Portugal who quickly jumped on the chance to issue this material on CD. Recently relocated to Toronto, Canada, Etude Records has released some excellent CDs of improvised music by Ferran Fages and Agustí Martínez. ”120” is a bit of a contrast from those, but also an excellent release. While Rob has mostly been rocking out with AFCGT, it seems he was also privately satisfying his need for some of those other elements CGT was known for but which don’t play out in AFCGT. By this I mean things like collages with old 78s and field recordings, and pretty drones. It this way, the new CD “120″ is similar to the Twins releases like “Dream Cut Short in Mysterious Clouds”, “Lovely”, and the locations disc. It is hard to pin down exactly what all the sources used here, but there is a great clip of a 78 dealer on the telephone at the beginning of the disc disparaging the 78’s of the 1940’s when Perry Como was reigning. While Rob’s excellent skill in capturing sound and editing are in evidence here, the bulk of the disc is beautifully rich drones of sound. Over the weekend Kurt of Sparkle Girl / Soccer Mom Ebonics was in the shop and was raving about how wonderful the disc is and how he had been listening to it all day. And it has already gotten a lot of play in our home as well in the short time we’ve had it. So, if you are looking for an outstanding disc of experimental music to pick up, this should be on the top of your list. And if you want some lo-fi garbage, well Etude is also planning a release of early recordings by Climax Golden Twins this year…. (http://blog.dissonantplane.com/)

Robert Millis, he of Climax Golden Twins fame, is a man, for all his musical activity, with very few solo records to his credit. So, when Millis finally issued a new one, it's fitting that the disc seems to integrate every side of the Seattle resident's musical efforts, from old Victrola 78s to field recordings from around the world to tonal sound sculpture. But it's not simply the eclecticism of this disc that's interesting; its appeal lies equally in its transitions, the ways that Millis moves between disparate (and at times, not so disparate) sound sources over the course of the disc's forty-five minutes. 120, one might suppose, is like a trip through Millis' brain, touching on musical memories (including the Climax Golden Twins aesthetic), the sounds coming through an open window, his own compositions, and the shimmering ambience that fills the spaces in between.

The combination of conversational snippets, the sounds of falling rain, acoustic guitar, and a beautifully layered drone could quickly grow tiresome if handled in a way that magnified the oddity of the amalgamation, but rather than try to capitalize on the zaniness of an unpredictable sonic menagerie, Millis takes a more meditative approach. There's a degree of a stream-of-consciousness vibe to 120, but the album feels, for the most part, quite purposeful. Each track on the disc, from the six-minute "(Charcoal Twins)" to the twenty-minute "(All Balled Up)," finds Millis crafting his creations with care, meshing the sounds in such a way that, unexpected or not, transitions feel natural, and rather than some eccentric mash-up, 120 takes on a more poetic feel.

This album is, in a sense, despite its inclusion of some unquestionably non-Western sounds, quintessentially American music, or at least the music of what America dreams herself to be: at times beautifully pastoral, at others hectic, even chaotic, 120 is, at its heart, a music of coming together. The old melting pot metaphor is as questionable here as it is in the case of the U.S.A., for these voices, like those of millions of immigrants, aren't lost within the sound of a greater whole. Instead, they're valuable in their own right, each distinct in its timbre, a vista on an alluring musical voyage that, despite the shifts in scenery, follows a deceptively straight, and impressively constructed, route. -Adam Strohm (Fakejazz)

Robert Millis is member of Climax Golden Twins, collector of 78rpm records and maker of fieldrecordings. What's considered his first solo-album Leaf Music, Drunks, Distant Drums was a collection of the latter, made in South-East Asia.

These also are the three main ingredients of what comprises his second solo-cd. 120 opens with bits and pieces of 78rpm records from distant times that melt together with recordings from distant places (for most of the readers of this musiczine anyway). It's all woven together in a beautiful musical roadtrip with organic drones and imaginative soundscapes. I'm not very familiar with Climax Golden Twins but I think the more ambient and cinematic parts are coming from that place. Musical disciplines seemingly far apart sometimes find eachother on common grounds, like the 'insect electronica' and calmly bowed ambience in 2 (All Balled Up). 0 (Suspended) is more pastoral in nature, where dreamy strings swarm through an ominous glass organ drone, with a result that I'd like to describe roughly as Niblock meets Pärt. Thus the four movements go through various moods, flowing naturally into eachother until the lonely countryblues of (Charcoal Twins).

Recorded sounds are usually used to confirm whether a memory is true or not, to separate fact from fiction. On 120 they serve primarily to make up a fantasy world. A memory of something that doesn't necessarily exist. This originally was released as a very limited run of cdr's, Etude now released it as a 'real' cd (limited to 1,000 copies), so here's your second chance to grab this wonderful artifact.-Martijn Busink (http://www.musiquemachine.com)

Wer nach ROBERT MILLIS fragt, stößt, neben dem Animist Orchestra und The Phonographers Union, hauptsächlich auf Climax Golden Twin, sein Duo mit Jeffrey Taylor, und Releases auf Fire Breathing Turtle und Anomalous Records. Solo ist der Klangsammler und nostalgische Konservator bisher nur mit seinen Fieldrecordingmitbringseln aus Nepal, Kambodscha und Thailand in Erscheinung getreten, mit Leaf Music Drunks Distant Drums: Recordings from SE Asia (2004) etwa oder Harmika Yab-Yum: Folk Sounds From Nepal (2005). Jetzt bringt er auf 120 (ETUDE018) eine seltsam mixadelische Melange aus Fundstücken als Globetrotter und Hüter eines Tonarchives, verwoben mit Gitarrendrones und dem Schwebklang einer Glasharmonika - ganz deutlich bei ‚0 (suspended)‘ mit seinem Traumweltthrill - Suspense pur. Es ist da etwas Geistesverwandtes mit David Toop, Philipp Jeck oder Rick Potts mit im Spiel. Aber Millis setzt seine Samples gezielt surreal ein wie bei der pianodurchloopten, dann von Feuerwerk durchknatterten, plötzlich von Regentropfen beklatschten und schließlich dröhnminimalistischen Bricolage ‚(40s is not good)‘. Oder er säumt mit dem absurden Wortwechsel mit jemandem, der nicht vom Affen abstammt, sondern aus Georgia, die minimalistische Gitarrenträumerei ‚(charcoal twins)‘. Den breitesten Raum nimmt ‚2 (all balled up)‘ ein - Grillen und Frösche weben einen Vorhang, hinter dem ein Gamelanorchester albert, gefolgt von umsirrten und fein umdröhnten Wortwechseln, Schritten, Klingklang. Ein Zug scheint durchs Bild zu fahren, aber da rumpelt und lärmt noch mehr, bis sich das Ambiente wieder (glas)-harmonisch - oder wie meditativ umdröhnt von Orgelpfeifen - klärt. Dann lappt Brandung an die Traumgestade zu einem ganz langsamen Pulsschlag, dunkel wie angeschlagene Kontrabasssaiten bis zum allmählichen Fadeout. Das ist so geheimnis- wie stimmungsvoll und ganz der Stoff, aus dem die Träume sind.-Rigobert Dittmann (Bad Alchemy)

‘120′ is a rare solo release (his second actually), originally released in a limited edition CDR, but now on Etude Records as a real CD. Somewhere in ‘2 (All Balled Up)’, there is a railway sound, and chirping birds, followed by a lengthy passage of ambient sounds. Elsewhere he uses his beloved 78rpm records of spoken word and music. Everytime I heard this, I had to think of the KLF’s ‘Chill Out’. The same ‘easy’ approach of combining sounds and textures to create nice moody and atmospheric music. The various passages are a bit lengthier than with ‘Chill Out’, but it has that same great quality. Ah, and devoid of any rhythm here. That is a distinct difference. Its hard to say what
is all at use here, instrument wise, but besides old vinyl and shortwaves, it seems to me mostly computer processing, along the lines of say Stephan Mathieu. Microsound hand in hand with turntablism of a gentle kind. A fine work here. (FdW) (Vital Weekly)

Since the mid-’90s, Robert Millis has maintained a quiet and versatile presence in American underground music. As a performer, he has delved into areas ranging from the blistering noise rock of AFCGT to the acoustic guitar improvisations of the Messenger Girls Trio. Also, as demonstrated by his compilations of ultra-rare 78 rpm records under the banner Victrola Favorites and by his global field-recording expeditions with Sublime Frequencies, Millis seems to be in constant search of the most obscure sounds he can lay his hands on. Of all his musical endeavors, however, Millis is perhaps most well known as a member of the Seattle outfit Climax Golden Twins, a group that explores the kind of oddball, genre-bending style established by the Sun City Girls. (Incidentally, the two groups have formed various musical connections over the years.) All things considered, the rare emergence of a Robert Millis solo album is a tantalizing prospect and, thankfully, 120 does not disappoint.

Beginning with the crackling of old vinyl, a quirky piano sample, and the voice of a grumpy record store clerk, 120 immediately creates an oddly nostalgic mood that is reminiscent of some of Millis’ previous work. In particular, this opening sound collage would not be out of place on the Climax Golden Twins’ excellent Highly Bred and Sweetly Tempered, an album that saw the group taking a detour from their more erratic tendencies in favor of a personal and intimate sound characterized by gentle acoustic melodies and dusty vocal samples. In many ways, 120 is similar in mood and content to Highly Bred and Sweetly Tempered, while adopting a more abstract, and less song-based, approach.

Averaging out at about 11 minutes each, the album’s four tracks allow Millis to fully explore the possibilities of his established methods. The aforementioned vinyl samples merge with familiar and exotic field recordings, squelching radio frequencies, and simple acoustic guitar patterns. However, what sets 120 apart the most from Millis’ earlier material is the use of sustained electronic drones and textures. Dominating much of the soundscape, these textures give the album an ambient-like quality, albeit with a fluctuating mood that is rarely heard within the genre. Over the course of a single track, various tones will meld and rise with shimmering beauty, only to be met with a looming dissonance that hints at something terrible just around the corner.

Overall, Millis’ fragmentary combination of seemingly incongruent sound sources gives 120 a sort of dream-like logic, creating a world that is as comedic as it is unsettling, as pastoral as it is surreal. Taken together, these elements lend themselves to a unique and deeply immersive listen. While it may lack the kind of instant gratification found in some of his earlier projects, 120 is still a great addition, or introduction, to Millis’ body of work. -Stephen Bezan (http://www.tinymixtapes.com)

Robert Millis is one half of the redoubtable Climax Golden Twins.Long considered the little brothers of the Sun City Girls, due to a shared interest in ethnic art forms and old audio formats, I've always found the Twins to be the more interesting and consistent group,as they've all the humour of Sun City Girls with none of the smart-arse conceptual joking. The CGTs are slightly arch, but generally sincere, without being earnest. This approach informs 120, a collage piece from Millis's archives which cuts field recordings and music sourced from 78s with some of the most gorgeously otherwordly drones heard since Andrew Chalk or Loren Chase.
120 progresses slowly like an abstract travelogue, from the opening section, which plays out one side of a phone conversation between a record dealer and a prospective costumer, through to passages which juxtapose the audio of nature with beautiful stretches of shimmer and shudder, comedic episodes on man's evolution, looping pianos and clattering Asian orchestras from the turn of the century, and tight edits that jolt the listener between sections as though you're being jostled to an fro on a trans-contiental train ride. It close with "(Charcoal Twins)", a threnody for parched guitars and levitating drones. As with everything Millis touches, 120 combines the enthusiastic eyes and ears of a master researcher with an equivalent, highly advanced grasp of sonority. The result is poetic without pretension, and exceptionally rich and engaging- Jon Dale (Signal To Noise)

Another gifted creator who freely fantazises and makes exciting combinations with his field recordings is Rob Millis. Taking a break from the Climax Golden Twins art project, here is 120 for Etude Records, a collection of four long pieces who starting point may include audio tapes brought back from his frequent travels to Easterly climes. He’s released at least one CD before of such material, but it was mostly straight documentary of wildlife, urban noise, or local music. 120 is far more intriguing in its imaginative reach, as Millis presents us with recordings of such puzzling origin that it’s impossible to identify what could be causing these sounds (and quite futile to try). He combines these headscratchers with seamless edits and cross-fades, to bring in samples from his beloved and extensive collection of exotics and weird 78rpm recordings, and sometimes musical drones and minimal compositions of such pallid beauty that he succeeds in achieving the same hallucinatory dream-states as Bouhalassa strives for.
However where the French composer works through a unique process of editing which I can only liken to melting, sounds just seems to slide into each other like dollops of soft, tasty ice cream. All of 120 is a contrivance, but through his artifice Millis ends up honestly exposing many of the hidden faces of the world. In that regard, the peeling paint on the wall appears to be revealing another interesting surface underneath that of the recognizable human face.

With a printed quote from The Waste Land, and a sumptuous photograph of well-worn books lying in disarray alongside stacks of dusty shellac and vinyl, Millis hints at enormous archives of information as he opens another chapter in the encyclopedia of his mind. –ED PINSET (The Sound Projector/magazine)

	Robert Millis "120" Date: February 2009 Ref: Etude018 mp3: Fragment from 1(40s is not good)[fragment] Price: 15$ usa/can; 12€ eur/world
About 120
Robert Millis: a Climax Golden Twin, a collector '78s resulting in the impeccable Victrola Favorites book & compilation, purveyor of searing avant-scum-noise-rock in AFCGT, a world traveler in search of esoterica for Sublime Frequencies…Despite his many activities, Millis' recorded output has almost entirely been by way of collaboration, making this gem of a solo album all the more special. This is closer related to the collage work that Millis has contributed to the Climax Golden Twins, bridging all of those aforementioned interests in a polyglot of psychedelic smear pocked with snippets of conversation, poetic extracts from his collection of '78s, and a judicious amount of vinyl crackling. An album such as this would easily be confused for the hermetic revelations that Philip Jeck extracts from his rough shod vinyl and turntables; but Millis seems to counterpoint the crackle and the clean with more drama than Jeck, almost positing the crackle like a punch line in a joke that breaks through one of Millis' blissed out shimmers constructed from loops and drones from guitar, bells, and glass harmonica, where haunted melodies from times long gone whisper through the mix. The logic of the album may seem absurd from afar; but the internal logic is peculiarly sensible, as if Millis were tapping into some stream of consciousness that subcutaneously connects all of these intermingling sounds…very highly recommended no matter how you slice it. ----Jim Haynes (Coelacanth, Helen Scarsdale Agency, 23Five, etc) in his Aquarius Records review of the extremely limited CDR version of 120, December 2008
Reviews 120
Robert Millis has released 120 (ETUDE 018) on the Etude Records label in Canada, in a handsome digipack decorated with four intriguing colour photographs (my preference has been for the back cover, as shown in pic above). Here, the Climax Golden Twin from Seattle combines field recordings from his exotic Eastern travels with subtle and delicate music of the most pristine and unobtrusive beauty. Jim Haynes writes that he apparently cannot come to grips with the “logic of the album” which he admits “may seem absurd from afar”; yet I value that absurdity, and to me the highly artistic combinations of Millis have all the surreal logic of a beautiful dream. The opening minute of the final track, ‘charcoal twins’, is particularly delirious, but the second track contains a superb mix of night-time insect chirps and gentle celestial droning which will simply send you to Heaven, ascending to the light on a pink cloud. -Ed Pinsent (The sound projector) He went through a period putting “Robert” on his releases, but I never heard anyone call him that to his face. ”Rob”, “Millis”, “Milner”, I’ll accept “Fucking Millis” (especially as his favorite retort is “Yeah, fuck you”), and only his wife can call him “Robbie-O”. But what’s with “R”? His new CD has “R Millis” on the cover, and if you have lived in Seattle for some time and like experimental music, you will know him as the non-bearded half of Climax Golden Twins that got fired from Wall of Sound when Jeffery and Michael took over. Anyhow, he played a show in San Francisco recently and a tiny run CDR to sell at the show. Apparently no took the bait, but his host Jim Haynes offered to sell the leftovers through his web site and they took off like hot cakes. It also got the notice of a CGT fan from Portugal who quickly jumped on the chance to issue this material on CD. Recently relocated to Toronto, Canada, Etude Records has released some excellent CDs of improvised music by Ferran Fages and Agustí Martínez. ”120” is a bit of a contrast from those, but also an excellent release. While Rob has mostly been rocking out with AFCGT, it seems he was also privately satisfying his need for some of those other elements CGT was known for but which don’t play out in AFCGT. By this I mean things like collages with old 78s and field recordings, and pretty drones. It this way, the new CD “120″ is similar to the Twins releases like “Dream Cut Short in Mysterious Clouds”, “Lovely”, and the locations disc. It is hard to pin down exactly what all the sources used here, but there is a great clip of a 78 dealer on the telephone at the beginning of the disc disparaging the 78’s of the 1940’s when Perry Como was reigning. While Rob’s excellent skill in capturing sound and editing are in evidence here, the bulk of the disc is beautifully rich drones of sound. Over the weekend Kurt of Sparkle Girl / Soccer Mom Ebonics was in the shop and was raving about how wonderful the disc is and how he had been listening to it all day. And it has already gotten a lot of play in our home as well in the short time we’ve had it. So, if you are looking for an outstanding disc of experimental music to pick up, this should be on the top of your list. And if you want some lo-fi garbage, well Etude is also planning a release of early recordings by Climax Golden Twins this year…. (http://blog.dissonantplane.com/) Robert Millis, he of Climax Golden Twins fame, is a man, for all his musical activity, with very few solo records to his credit. So, when Millis finally issued a new one, it's fitting that the disc seems to integrate every side of the Seattle resident's musical efforts, from old Victrola 78s to field recordings from around the world to tonal sound sculpture. But it's not simply the eclecticism of this disc that's interesting; its appeal lies equally in its transitions, the ways that Millis moves between disparate (and at times, not so disparate) sound sources over the course of the disc's forty-five minutes. 120, one might suppose, is like a trip through Millis' brain, touching on musical memories (including the Climax Golden Twins aesthetic), the sounds coming through an open window, his own compositions, and the shimmering ambience that fills the spaces in between. The combination of conversational snippets, the sounds of falling rain, acoustic guitar, and a beautifully layered drone could quickly grow tiresome if handled in a way that magnified the oddity of the amalgamation, but rather than try to capitalize on the zaniness of an unpredictable sonic menagerie, Millis takes a more meditative approach. There's a degree of a stream-of-consciousness vibe to 120, but the album feels, for the most part, quite purposeful. Each track on the disc, from the six-minute "(Charcoal Twins)" to the twenty-minute "(All Balled Up)," finds Millis crafting his creations with care, meshing the sounds in such a way that, unexpected or not, transitions feel natural, and rather than some eccentric mash-up, 120 takes on a more poetic feel. This album is, in a sense, despite its inclusion of some unquestionably non-Western sounds, quintessentially American music, or at least the music of what America dreams herself to be: at times beautifully pastoral, at others hectic, even chaotic, 120 is, at its heart, a music of coming together. The old melting pot metaphor is as questionable here as it is in the case of the U.S.A., for these voices, like those of millions of immigrants, aren't lost within the sound of a greater whole. Instead, they're valuable in their own right, each distinct in its timbre, a vista on an alluring musical voyage that, despite the shifts in scenery, follows a deceptively straight, and impressively constructed, route. -Adam Strohm (Fakejazz) Robert Millis is member of Climax Golden Twins, collector of 78rpm records and maker of fieldrecordings. What's considered his first solo-album Leaf Music, Drunks, Distant Drums was a collection of the latter, made in South-East Asia. These also are the three main ingredients of what comprises his second solo-cd. 120 opens with bits and pieces of 78rpm records from distant times that melt together with recordings from distant places (for most of the readers of this musiczine anyway). It's all woven together in a beautiful musical roadtrip with organic drones and imaginative soundscapes. I'm not very familiar with Climax Golden Twins but I think the more ambient and cinematic parts are coming from that place. Musical disciplines seemingly far apart sometimes find eachother on common grounds, like the 'insect electronica' and calmly bowed ambience in 2 (All Balled Up). 0 (Suspended) is more pastoral in nature, where dreamy strings swarm through an ominous glass organ drone, with a result that I'd like to describe roughly as Niblock meets Pärt. Thus the four movements go through various moods, flowing naturally into eachother until the lonely countryblues of (Charcoal Twins). Recorded sounds are usually used to confirm whether a memory is true or not, to separate fact from fiction. On 120 they serve primarily to make up a fantasy world. A memory of something that doesn't necessarily exist. This originally was released as a very limited run of cdr's, Etude now released it as a 'real' cd (limited to 1,000 copies), so here's your second chance to grab this wonderful artifact.-Martijn Busink (http://www.musiquemachine.com) Wer nach ROBERT MILLIS fragt, stößt, neben dem Animist Orchestra und The Phonographers Union, hauptsächlich auf Climax Golden Twin, sein Duo mit Jeffrey Taylor, und Releases auf Fire Breathing Turtle und Anomalous Records. Solo ist der Klangsammler und nostalgische Konservator bisher nur mit seinen Fieldrecordingmitbringseln aus Nepal, Kambodscha und Thailand in Erscheinung getreten, mit Leaf Music Drunks Distant Drums: Recordings from SE Asia (2004) etwa oder Harmika Yab-Yum: Folk Sounds From Nepal (2005). Jetzt bringt er auf 120 (ETUDE018) eine seltsam mixadelische Melange aus Fundstücken als Globetrotter und Hüter eines Tonarchives, verwoben mit Gitarrendrones und dem Schwebklang einer Glasharmonika - ganz deutlich bei ‚0 (suspended)‘ mit seinem Traumweltthrill - Suspense pur. Es ist da etwas Geistesverwandtes mit David Toop, Philipp Jeck oder Rick Potts mit im Spiel. Aber Millis setzt seine Samples gezielt surreal ein wie bei der pianodurchloopten, dann von Feuerwerk durchknatterten, plötzlich von Regentropfen beklatschten und schließlich dröhnminimalistischen Bricolage ‚(40s is not good)‘. Oder er säumt mit dem absurden Wortwechsel mit jemandem, der nicht vom Affen abstammt, sondern aus Georgia, die minimalistische Gitarrenträumerei ‚(charcoal twins)‘. Den breitesten Raum nimmt ‚2 (all balled up)‘ ein - Grillen und Frösche weben einen Vorhang, hinter dem ein Gamelanorchester albert, gefolgt von umsirrten und fein umdröhnten Wortwechseln, Schritten, Klingklang. Ein Zug scheint durchs Bild zu fahren, aber da rumpelt und lärmt noch mehr, bis sich das Ambiente wieder (glas)-harmonisch - oder wie meditativ umdröhnt von Orgelpfeifen - klärt. Dann lappt Brandung an die Traumgestade zu einem ganz langsamen Pulsschlag, dunkel wie angeschlagene Kontrabasssaiten bis zum allmählichen Fadeout. Das ist so geheimnis- wie stimmungsvoll und ganz der Stoff, aus dem die Träume sind.-Rigobert Dittmann (Bad Alchemy) ‘120′ is a rare solo release (his second actually), originally released in a limited edition CDR, but now on Etude Records as a real CD. Somewhere in ‘2 (All Balled Up)’, there is a railway sound, and chirping birds, followed by a lengthy passage of ambient sounds. Elsewhere he uses his beloved 78rpm records of spoken word and music. Everytime I heard this, I had to think of the KLF’s ‘Chill Out’. The same ‘easy’ approach of combining sounds and textures to create nice moody and atmospheric music. The various passages are a bit lengthier than with ‘Chill Out’, but it has that same great quality. Ah, and devoid of any rhythm here. That is a distinct difference. Its hard to say what is all at use here, instrument wise, but besides old vinyl and shortwaves, it seems to me mostly computer processing, along the lines of say Stephan Mathieu. Microsound hand in hand with turntablism of a gentle kind. A fine work here. (FdW) (Vital Weekly) Since the mid-’90s, Robert Millis has maintained a quiet and versatile presence in American underground music. As a performer, he has delved into areas ranging from the blistering noise rock of AFCGT to the acoustic guitar improvisations of the Messenger Girls Trio. Also, as demonstrated by his compilations of ultra-rare 78 rpm records under the banner Victrola Favorites and by his global field-recording expeditions with Sublime Frequencies, Millis seems to be in constant search of the most obscure sounds he can lay his hands on. Of all his musical endeavors, however, Millis is perhaps most well known as a member of the Seattle outfit Climax Golden Twins, a group that explores the kind of oddball, genre-bending style established by the Sun City Girls. (Incidentally, the two groups have formed various musical connections over the years.) All things considered, the rare emergence of a Robert Millis solo album is a tantalizing prospect and, thankfully, 120 does not disappoint. Beginning with the crackling of old vinyl, a quirky piano sample, and the voice of a grumpy record store clerk, 120 immediately creates an oddly nostalgic mood that is reminiscent of some of Millis’ previous work. In particular, this opening sound collage would not be out of place on the Climax Golden Twins’ excellent Highly Bred and Sweetly Tempered, an album that saw the group taking a detour from their more erratic tendencies in favor of a personal and intimate sound characterized by gentle acoustic melodies and dusty vocal samples. In many ways, 120 is similar in mood and content to Highly Bred and Sweetly Tempered, while adopting a more abstract, and less song-based, approach. Averaging out at about 11 minutes each, the album’s four tracks allow Millis to fully explore the possibilities of his established methods. The aforementioned vinyl samples merge with familiar and exotic field recordings, squelching radio frequencies, and simple acoustic guitar patterns. However, what sets 120 apart the most from Millis’ earlier material is the use of sustained electronic drones and textures. Dominating much of the soundscape, these textures give the album an ambient-like quality, albeit with a fluctuating mood that is rarely heard within the genre. Over the course of a single track, various tones will meld and rise with shimmering beauty, only to be met with a looming dissonance that hints at something terrible just around the corner. Overall, Millis’ fragmentary combination of seemingly incongruent sound sources gives 120 a sort of dream-like logic, creating a world that is as comedic as it is unsettling, as pastoral as it is surreal. Taken together, these elements lend themselves to a unique and deeply immersive listen. While it may lack the kind of instant gratification found in some of his earlier projects, 120 is still a great addition, or introduction, to Millis’ body of work. -Stephen Bezan (http://www.tinymixtapes.com) Robert Millis is one half of the redoubtable Climax Golden Twins.Long considered the little brothers of the Sun City Girls, due to a shared interest in ethnic art forms and old audio formats, I've always found the Twins to be the more interesting and consistent group,as they've all the humour of Sun City Girls with none of the smart-arse conceptual joking. The CGTs are slightly arch, but generally sincere, without being earnest. This approach informs 120, a collage piece from Millis's archives which cuts field recordings and music sourced from 78s with some of the most gorgeously otherwordly drones heard since Andrew Chalk or Loren Chase. 120 progresses slowly like an abstract travelogue, from the opening section, which plays out one side of a phone conversation between a record dealer and a prospective costumer, through to passages which juxtapose the audio of nature with beautiful stretches of shimmer and shudder, comedic episodes on man's evolution, looping pianos and clattering Asian orchestras from the turn of the century, and tight edits that jolt the listener between sections as though you're being jostled to an fro on a trans-contiental train ride. It close with "(Charcoal Twins)", a threnody for parched guitars and levitating drones. As with everything Millis touches, 120 combines the enthusiastic eyes and ears of a master researcher with an equivalent, highly advanced grasp of sonority. The result is poetic without pretension, and exceptionally rich and engaging- Jon Dale (Signal To Noise) Another gifted creator who freely fantazises and makes exciting combinations with his field recordings is Rob Millis. Taking a break from the Climax Golden Twins art project, here is 120 for Etude Records, a collection of four long pieces who starting point may include audio tapes brought back from his frequent travels to Easterly climes. He’s released at least one CD before of such material, but it was mostly straight documentary of wildlife, urban noise, or local music. 120 is far more intriguing in its imaginative reach, as Millis presents us with recordings of such puzzling origin that it’s impossible to identify what could be causing these sounds (and quite futile to try). He combines these headscratchers with seamless edits and cross-fades, to bring in samples from his beloved and extensive collection of exotics and weird 78rpm recordings, and sometimes musical drones and minimal compositions of such pallid beauty that he succeeds in achieving the same hallucinatory dream-states as Bouhalassa strives for. However where the French composer works through a unique process of editing which I can only liken to melting, sounds just seems to slide into each other like dollops of soft, tasty ice cream. All of 120 is a contrivance, but through his artifice Millis ends up honestly exposing many of the hidden faces of the world. In that regard, the peeling paint on the wall appears to be revealing another interesting surface underneath that of the recognizable human face. With a printed quote from The Waste Land, and a sumptuous photograph of well-worn books lying in disarray alongside stacks of dusty shellac and vinyl, Millis hints at enormous archives of information as he opens another chapter in the encyclopedia of his mind. –ED PINSET (The Sound Projector/magazine)