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.
