Anthony Pateras, Sean Baxter, David Brown - Ataxia

Anthony Pateras: prepared piano
Sean Baxter: drums
David Brown: prepared guitar

Prepared piano, percussion and prepared guitar combine to formulate an impulse-based meta-instrument on this startling debut from Melbourne trio Pateras/Baxter/Brown. Consisting of composer/pianist Anthony Pateras, percussionist Sean Baxter and electroacoustic composer/guitarist David Brown, Ataxia (meaning the loss of muscular co-ordination) explores a distinctive sound world where timbres rebound and melt within an elastic performative framework.

Dynamically oscillating between delicacy & brutality, Ataxia contains everything from textural assault to contemplative explorations of space. On “Bulbous”, the trio create a constant, jerky stream of barely recognizable sounds. In “St/Chi”, silence is sliced by explosive microsonic gestures, eventually creating an acoustic mutant licking at the speaker cones. On the closing track “Hexadactlyly”, the listeners face is slammed against the piano strings, thrown into percussive chaos before sinking back into an ambiguous oubliette of spacial dialogue.

With the overall language falling somewhere between the structural integrity of Feldman and Xenakis, the texutral gymnastics of Hecker and Merzbow, and the dynamic fluidity of AMM and Polweschel, Ataxia will appeal to dot-heads, patch-monkeys and improv junkies alike.

2004 ATAXIA