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Kid Millions a Percussion Obsessive Adds Even More Drums

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Kid Millions, the anchor of the band Oneida, is a mild-mannered 37-year-old by day.

He has built a career on percussive longevity, bashing away at his instrument for hours on end with fury and expert precision. For 13 years he has been the anchor of the Brooklyn band Oneida, whose songs mix hypnotic Minimalism with skull-rattling metal and tend to hit their pulsating stride only around the 15-minute mark.

So it makes sense that for his most personal project, Kid Millions a mild-mannered 37-year-old known to a very few by his given name, John Colpitts would choose a particularly brutal endurance test. Working under yet another pseudonym, Man Forever, he recorded a solo album by overdubbing himself dozens of times, resulting in a tidal wave of percussion. The untitled album was released this week by St. Ives Records; on Friday he will perform it at the Issue Project Room in Brooklyn with help from five other drummers.

The album, available on vinyl and as a digital download, could be a manifesto of Kid Millions style. But it came about almost by accident. In February he went to Miller Theater at Columbia University to hear a chamber arrangement of Metal Machine Music, Lou Reeds notoriously abrasive 1975 album, with strings and woodwinds recreating the overtones of Mr. Reeds electric guitar feedback. Amazed by the sound, he wondered whether something similar could be done on the drums.

As soon as I saw that performance, I thought, I know what Im going to do, he recalled recently over beer and sausages near Oneidas studio in Brooklyn. I wanted to explore the sound of a mass of carefully tuned drums in collision with each other.

While still in his seat at Miller he began to sketch a plan, and within a week he had completed the album. With help from Brian Chase of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, he tuned his drums in fourths to maximize their harmonic potential and recorded himself improvising rapid, rumbling patterns over and over again. With its flurry of notes, the album sounds something like free jazz and something like hummingbird feedback. (Besides all the drums, the only other instrument is an ominously noisy bass, played by Richard Hoffman.)

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