Forest Park Live, by Kid Millions and Sarah Bernstein

Forest Park Live

by Kid Millions and Sarah Bernstein

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	1.	Mirage 25:27 video
	2.	Pellucid 16:05 video

about

The violin throbs and twitches and shrieks, careening over a tumult of ecstatic drumming, cutting back to a trebly whistle tone, then surging forward. A voice emerges, vision-possessed, intoning “Pellucid …
Pellucid,” and then flitting out of the mix. “Mirage,” the first side of Sarah Bernstein and Kid Millions’ riveting new live album, blows up like a hurricane, whirling sounds, ideas, words and sensations into the
air. You can hear the two musicians shaping, sculpting, pushing the sound into towering edifices and mind-centering drones. Threads of terse, impressionistic poetry weave in and out of hearing, mantras for a full-body, full-mind variety of meditation.

Forest Park Live was recorded live in September 2021 at the Forest Park Bandshell on a brilliantly sunny early fall day on a bill with Oneida, the Jaimie Branch Trio and the Ava Mendoza/Gabby Fluke-Mogul duo. Kid Millions, who lives nearby, spotted the bandshell on a walk with his wife and began obsessing about the possibility of booking shows there. When both he and Sarah Bernstein won New York City Artist Corp grants, they decided to use the money to create a unique and adventurous musical experience, then document it with audio and video recording. This album, the duo’s fourth together and the first to be released on NYC-based Island House Recordings, tracks the minute-by-minute evolution of their performance. It is all live exactly as it happened—no edits, overdubs or post-production.

The album captures the chemistry between Bernstein and Colpitts, who come from very different musical disciplines but meet in an incendiary, rapturous middle. Kid Millions is best-known as the drummer for Oneida. He also plays solo percussion in his own Man Forever and has performed or recorded with Jim Sauter, Spiritualized, Royal Trux and Boredoms. Sarah Bernstein is a veteran of the New York music scene, working as a composer and performer in jazz, experimental pop, and noise music. She leads the improvising strings VEER Quartet, the avant-jazz Sarah Bernstein Quartet, and performs solo as Exolinger.

The two first crossed paths in 2013 sharing an experimental music bill, where Millions played in an improv trio with Stuart Popejoy and Mick Barr, and Bernstein opened with a solo set. Bernstein immediately recognized a kinship. “We share a love of free expression,” she said. “Kid's ecstatic drumming and full sound inspires me to explore tone and volume in new ways, and blast aggressively into the abyss.”

The pair first played together at JACK in Brooklyn in 2014 as part of the "Aural Dystopia"; series. “I found myself really inspired to push into areas that I’d never really thought of,” Millions remembers of that first show together. “Sarah is a great violinist but her vocals are really wild and amazing, too. We really elevated each other.” (You can view a video of that first show at youtu.be/gqQpz8LcsXM, youtu.be/zRW2cY5UoYo.)

Forest Park Live captures their thrilling interplay in two extended, roiling tracks. The two artists performed the set without rehearsal or much premeditation—Bernstein wrote down the words she’d use beforehand but everything else was improvised. They locked into an intense, intuitive collaboration that recalls the hallucinatory spiritual explorations of Milford Graves. Side B’s “Pellucid” is all explosive revelation, rolling with rumbling drum fills, seething with swooping, darting incantation of violin. Still when it has run its course, Bernstein intones, “Is it worth it?” And indeed, it is.

-Jennifer Kelly of Dusted Magazine

credits

released June 2, 2023

Recorded September 18, 2021 at the George Seuffert Sr. Bandshell, Queens, NY.

Sarah Bernstein: Violin, Voice, Electronics
Kid Millions: Drums
Recorded by H. Robert Escurel
Mixed by Tony Maimone
Mastered by Alan Douches
Cover art by Dan Schechter
Cassette design by Andrew McGranahan
with addition design by Ian Branch

All music by Kid Millions & Sarah Bernstein (BMI)
All rights reserved

Thanks to the NFYA, New York City Artist Corps & NY City Parks for making this live outdoor concert recording possible.

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Kid Millions & Sarah Bernstein Brooklyn, New York

The duo started playing together regularly in 2014. Their early performances were surprising, suggesting new avenues of spontaneous composition. They gradually developed an approach that utilizes an extreme range of dynamics and note density, from pin-drop violin pizzicato and cymbal scraping to powerful electronics, wild vocalizations, and unrelenting drum textures. ... more

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