Pitchfork
09th July 2004, Pitchfork media
Rating: 7.1
Oscar Wilde advised against any enterprise requiring new clothes. I feel the same way about enterprises requiring serial numbers. So you’ll understand why I experienced a brief bout of ataxia (a loss of muscle control) when I received an unsolicited promo copy of Automatic Writing, clad in a yellow-and-black sleeve reminiscent of both crime-scene tape and biohazard packaging. My name and serial number were machine-printed on the CD amid a cluster of unambiguously menacing legal language. The upshot is that if I fileshare Ataxia’s music, a digital watermark encoded on the disc will be traced back to me, and Michael Powell will personally come to my house and shove jewel cases under my fingernails. So for the love of God, go buy it; don’t ask me to burn it for you. I’m locking it in the safe with my passport and unregistered firearm.
Ideas that sound terrible on paper, but work surprisingly well in praxis: Jim Jarmusch’s Coffee and Cigarettes; Mudhoney’s Mark Arm singing for the reunited MC5; mint-flavored lattes; Red Hot Chili Peppers guitarist John Frusciante jamming with Fugazi.
You heard me: Ataxia is a collaborative effort between Frusciante, Josh Klinghoffer, and Fugazi bassist Joe Lally. After Frusciante played two experimental electronic shows with Klinghoffer at The Knitting Factory in L.A., the two enlisted Lally as bassist for future performances. But instead of adding Lally to the existing music, the trio decided to strike out in a different direction and compose songs together. Ataxia’s debut is the product of these extemporaneous sessions, and it represents approximately half of the 90 minutes of music Ataxia recorded; the second will be released early next year.
Automatic Writing, comprised of five long movements, was recorded with little overdubbing or studio chicanery– just Frusciante on synthesizer, guitar, and vocals; Lally laying down deep waves of cyclical bass; Klinghoffer ranging confidently over eclectic but sturdy percussion. Consequently, the record sounds as organic and exploratory as one would expect. It opens with its most immediately memorable track, the nine-minute “Dust”. A slow-burning fuse of reiterative bass, supple drums, and the build-and-break ignitions of Frusciante’s sinuous and serpentine guitar squiggles, it’s also the most “Fugazi-sounding” song on the album, especially with Frusciante’s ragged and impassioned vocals groaning over the ample foundation. It would have fit pretty well on Red Medicine.
The trudging “Another” reprises the equation from “Dust” with new variables– the bassline reconfigures but maintains its lockstep pattern; Frusciante’s guitar cuts crisp melodic figures that neatly accrue instead of bleeding into one another. And though its skeletal arrangement, restrained vocal collage and keening synthesizer are less instantly engaging than “Dust”, they nonetheless serve as an effective counterpoint to “Dust”‘s aggressive stance. “The Sides” is a stroboscopic echo chamber of percussion, mobile bass, and prickly guitar– with its discernible vocal melody, it’s the closest thing to a pop song on Automatic Writing. The album closes with the epics “Addition” and “Montreal”. The former plows through the record’s most dense, difficult and abrasive sonic territory, while the latter’s busy guitar and haunting, enigmatic vocals evoke some of Shudder to Think’s spookier moments, elongated over 12 daunting minutes.
I wouldn’t recommend Ataxia to Red Hot Chili Peppers fans (many of whom probably identify more with Anthony Kiedis’s “Mongo, King of the Jungle” schtick than with Frusciante’s chops), but it will come as a happy surprise to Fugazi buffs who are dubious about how well this alliance will pan out. And I hate to say it, what with Fugazi’s staunchly straight-edge creed, but this is the sort of kaleidoscopic dinosaur-rock that the stoner set will just eat up. You can probably download some MP3s on the networks for a taste, but you didn’t hear it from me. It’s not going to be my fault when some poor, watermarked bastard gets dragged off to Guantanamo Bay.
—Brian Howe
