PIVIXKI feels like an enormous joke has been played upon the listener. There’s something hilarious about this avant garde fusion. Even while you try to stroke your chin you find your fingers raised without your control in that awfully bogan, yet somehow fulfilling metal salute. It’s a furiously frenetic and frequently silly (albeit in a straight-faced earnest manner) collaboration between local pianist/composer Anthony Pateras and Agents of Abhorrence drummer Max Kohane. They sound exactly like the Necks would if they decided to kill their bass player, get tatts and listen to grindcore.
Except maybe the piano, which takes on an abstract, flowery, new music feel, with the exception of when Pateras pounds the bejesus out of it like all he owns are thumbs. At times they get a little earnest, playing with silence and time signatures, letting everything fall away before plinking and plonking nervously along, but the duo are at their best when working together and pounding you with an over the top percussion piano onslaught.
This is a really interesting work. It feels like it breathes some life into experimental music, primarily due to Kohane, his drum sound and his frequent desire to just pound away like he’s hammering away at a nail or (gasp) playing a 4/4 beat. For a change, it’s not about what they’re not doing, it’s actually about what they are playing. Like all Sabbatical releases it’s limited to 200 and is fascinating, frenetic, and really something unique. The duo fuses together effortlessly, constantly moving, not afraid to startle and get a little musical alongside their naughty beds of atonal discordance.
Bob Baker Fish
