Birdsongs of the Mesozoic 1980-1988
Keyboardist, composer, leader.
Three LPs on Ace of Hearts, OOP. One on Arf Arf, OOP.
Boston Globe (1985): “classical-punk-jazz-car-wreck music.”
“Dawn of the Cycads”, Cuneiform Records, 2010.
The entire Ace of Hearts catalog with Miller (1983-1987) plus live recordings.
Maximum Electric Piano 1983-1988
Solo Yamaha CP-70 electric piano with strings, a powerful looping device, preparations, devices, vocals.
Roger Miller: No Man is Hurting Me (LP) –
1986 Ace of Hearts, 1986. OOP.
Spin, Jan.1987:
“‘No Man’ is a thunderous rhythm fest. But Miller has the vision to turn those tones into music, instead of hollow android howlings.”
Roger Miller: Groping Hands (EP/12″ 45)
Ace of Hearts, 1987. OOP.
Times Union, Albany, NY (Apr.1987):
“A three-song tour de force that cleanly defies description.”
Roger Miller: The Big Industry (CD/LP)
Ace of Hearts, 1988. OOP
Digital version available HERE.
The title track is the ultimate expression of Miller’s “Maximum Electric Piano” work.The CD version of The Big Industry incorporates two songs from the Groping Hands EP not on the LP version.
N.Y.Times (1988):
“Mr. Miller is doing for the electric piano what Hendrix did for the guitar, creating a new vocabulary of electronic noises… Miller’s songs have jolts in all the right places.”
Roger Miller: Win! Instantly! (CD/LP/cass)
SST, 1989. OOP
Digital version will soon be available
More orchestrated than the minimalist/maximalist Big Industry.
LA Weekly (March 1988):
“Miller’s “Maximum Piano” shows strong evidence of a brain that will not die, a 21st-century mind trapped in a 20th-century body, an imagination on fast-forward. Miller’s white light/white heat 88s were like a cross between John Cale, Jimi Hendrix and John Cage.”
Also one song recorded live on LA radio: Taste Test No.1 (CD/LP/cass)
New Alliance, 1990.
Roger Miller:The Benevolent Disruptive Ray – solo piano (CD)
SST, 1996
The album had its moments, but not enough of them. – RCM.
Binary System: 1997-2002
Piano/prepared piano and drum duo. Highly composed yet also highly improvised. (Larry Dersch on drums, who is also in Miller’s current rock band Trinary System).
The Boston Globe. Feb. 2000: “A genre-shredding unit.”
Live at the Idea Room (CD)
SST 19… OOP
Musings, UK, June 2001:
“The outstanding Binary System… Their playing is dark, rhythmic and sometimes repetitive, Roger Miller attacking his piano interior with ceaseless inventiveness while Larry Dersch unhurriedly rolls out the beats.”
Binary System: From the Epicenter. (CD)
Atavistic, 1999.
Glyphs for the song titles used in cover art are by the artist.
Carbon 14, 2000:
“Structured compositions played with all the virtuosity required, and skin-of-your-teeth clink and clanking improvs that manage to be both wild and structured sounding at the same time! It’s a crunching steamroller of subtlety, a hard-rocking gamelan eschewing electric Marshall punch in favor of shadowed explorations of the piano’s inner mysterium! Bravo, Gentlemen!!”
Binary System: Invention Box (CD)
Atavistic Records, 2001. OOP
“The Muse is Alive in the World of Sounding.”
“allaboutjazz.com” 2002:
“For Binary System, rhythm and melody are so tightly intertwined that they become one.”
