t’s the sonic influence of PiL that drives this debut release from John Frusciante and Joe Lally’s Ataxia project, a project that’s unsurprisingly much closer to the sound of recent Fugazi than anything Frusciante has been involved with ever before. All five songs are over six and half minutes and have a collaborative and improvised feel which conflates the looser side of Frusciante’s playing with exploratory drums and the bedrock of Lally. It’s, in a sentence, the push and pull of instruments stretched to the brink of discord and dub by vigorously combining freedom, release, structure and tension.

Starter “Dust” collects notes that seem to be dragged from every available inch of the guitar’s strings as trebly blasts of feedback and layers of guitar circle the central melody of the piece. Never descending into masturbatory behaviour counter- and sub-melodies trail away from the stability into exploratory prog territory. The dynamic, motivational groove of the bass rides unscathed through “Dust”, anchoring the fireworks and FX above while building a steady but unstoppable organic pressure. “Another” uses vocals that are either vague enough to be wordless or as just another sound to decorate the track without any concern for verse / chorus constraints. Voices are treated, reversed and chopped in an economical fashion through the mix without sounding contrived or intentionally “weird, man”. Frusciante briefly accompanies these falsetto sounds in the song’s final bars singing softly about confusion and blood. The lighter drums and friendlier bassline bang out a looser rhythm than the darker “Dust” as guitars jangle sparely, instead of bleeding and soaring through the track. This stripped sound is warmly sustained by John Carpenter style synth play.

At more than ten minutes “The Addition” is overlong and the albums only quality-control dip, despite some great damaged guitar squeaks and whooshes. It’s too lumbering for its extended length and some of the rhymes are far too predictable even for improvised material. Directly after it, though, “The Sides” leads in with a heavily reverbed Black Ark beat and a guitar melody straight from Keith Levene’s tab book, chasing its own tail through lulls, peaks and a post-Californication style picked solo. The busier drums belie the songs even pace giving it a straining tension, showing that while stickman Josh Klinghoffer is no Josh Freese, he’s bringing something worthwhile to the mix.

Automatic Writing ends with the chilly loss of “Montreal” (“I was looking for an answer / I would never find in you / Sold all my records / What a stupid thing to do”) which sounds remarkably like a lost God Machine track. Sounding spent (sung by Lally) and ending with the whine of swirling feedback, Ataxia give improvisation a set of nuts and jam sessions some teeth that bite for once, as well as four classics and a b-side.