Out on December 8 is Geocidal, the debut record from tētēma. The duo are a collaboration between Australian composer Anthony Pateras and Mike Patton, frontman of the back-in-action Faith No More and co-founder of Ipecac Recordings, who are putting the album out. It’s had a long and far-flung origin, dating back to when the pair first met in 2009 and was recorded, with help from Australia Council for the Arts, between a convent in rural France, Paris and a two-day stint in San Francisco, for Patton to lay down his vocals. Says Pateras: "We had the craziest 48 hours together, and somewhere between Patton’s appalling Australian accent piss-takes some magic happened […] The interesting thing about the record is that every element is recorded in a different country, and this gives the sound a displaced, almost vaporous intensity. I moved country twice during its genesis as well… the whole geocidal thing is about coming from no place, re-birthing, watching the place you are from be altered beyond recognition that you have nothing to do with it anymore."
Judging from ‘Tenz’, which you can stream above, the album promises to be an intriguing affair. It opens with the lumbering rhythmical heft that immediately brings to mind Cut Hands, before Patton’s incantatory vocals surface and we skirt through jazzy touches and gentle inflections of contrabass recorder (one of many orchestral instruments that feature on the album) and synth, culminating in a full-on, howled assault.
