tētēma

A challenging and aggressively adventurous collaboration between two genre-breaking artists, tētēma brings together the visions of composer Anthony Pateras and alternative rock veteran Mike Patton. Taking the restless experimentalism of the avant-garde and wedding it to the forceful punch of metal-influenced hard rock, tētēma's music is a churning assault of natural and synthetic sounds full of severe turns at sharp angles and inspired dissonance, with occasional pauses for curious but atmospheric passages. The duo made a strong impression with their 2014 debut, Geocidal, while 2020's Necroscape increased the emphasis on extreme dynamics and world music accents. Anthony Pateras is an Australian musician and composer who works in both acoustic and electronic formats and has performed his work with some of the world's leading modern classical ensembles and avant-garde musicians. Mike Patton is a member of such adventurous rock bands as Faith No More, Fantômas, Mr. Bungle, and Tomahawk, and has collaborated with artists as diverse as John Zorn, Dan the Automator, and Björk. Together, Pateras and Patton are tētēma, a project in which these renegade artists combine their bold musical visions. Pateras and Patton first met in 2009, and over the next several years, the two began exchanging ideas for a concept album based around what Patton called "the murder of place." Recording took place in Australia, Europe, and the United States, and included both orchestral and electric instruments, all presented without the use of sampling. The fruit of Pateras and Patton's collaboration appeared in the form of the first tētēma album, Geocidal, which was released by Patton's Ipecac Records in December 2014. Pateras and Patton were occupied with their many other projects for the next several years, though in 2017 tētēma made their live debut at Australia's Museum Of Old & New Art’s Festival of Music & Art, or MOFO FOMA. In 2020, a second album from tētēma appeared, Necroscape, which broadened the gap between the calm and chaotic elements of their music as well as putting additional emphasis on their world music influences without making their work any less intense.
© Mark Deming /TiVo