Rock inherited the hallowed institution of the drum solo from jazz and never quite got it right. Whereas jazz percussion can offer some of the form's most expressive and challenging music, the rock drum solo never extends beyond an excuse for the rest of the band to catch a smoke, drink a fifth of Jack and point out some front-row muff to a flunkie for an all-access. Consequently, the arena-rock staple is usually comparable in artistry to a temper tantrum; and while there have been some great drummers in the annals of rock, the art of rock drumming has languished in a state of arrested development.

The percussive archaeology of Binary System, however, is neither rock nor jazz, but a rumble in the deep strata underlying both. From the Epicenter is an aptly-titled work of violent beauty. The band is a binary system of percussion and piano, a duo capable of creating a geologic music that seems to threaten the ground beneath our feet. The album-- featuring Mission of Burma guitarist Roger C. Miller on various pianos and sometime Morphine and Concussion Ensemble drummer Larry Dersch on percussion-- manages to sound simultaneously primitive and futuristic. The music partakes of the deep time of seismic events and continental drift, as well as the cinematic careen of modernity. In 53 minutes, a world had emerged from the molten sea and the sky has already fallen down upon us.

Miller's piano seems to resist melody at every turn, instead resorting to toy piano and prepared piano (a la John Cage's Sonatas and Interludes) for color. At times, it recalls the savagely percussive piano of McCoy Tyner in Coltrane's mid-sixties quartet, circa Birdland. Miller plays piano like a pinball machine, coaxing grace and fluidity from the edge of breakdown. Dersch's nimble and resourceful drumming surges in the willful resistance of anything resembling ordinary time. Under the direction of Dersch's punctuated catastrophe, the music slips in and out of odd time signatures, lapses into syncopation and thins out to the faintest approximation of rhythm-- sometimes nothing more than a rattling of the sticks.

From the Epicenter thrives on relentless instability, like the geology it aspires to reproduce: forging the illusion of solid rock where there's nothing but the gnash and tangle of continents underfoot. Yet the listener isn't permitted the reliability of permanent earthquake; the rumble often gives way to the most serenely lovely lines of piano coasting over the drums like a warm front, the prospect of gathering storm.

The sound is too awfully inhuman to pass as jazz and too willfully anonymous to pose as rock. More often than not, the effect is classical, like Stravinsky without strings. From the Epicenter is one of those rare works of contemporary instrumental music that unfolds without the threat of growing too cerebral. There's something irresistibly primal about the whole album, an earthquake in the gut. Once in a while, you almost forget it's music.

-Brent S. Sirota