Atata opens with mysterious, flute-like harmonics from the violin, and gentle droplets of chord from the piano. The music seems to drift along: a slow stream of meandering fragments, not exactly disconnected, but not with any real forward momentum.

Then, an invisible hook seems to reach in and draw out something melodic, before this greater sense of definition dissolves again into bits.

Slowly the bits gain greater clarity, a sense of harmony emerges, and the shapes become more assertive. Some vehement attacks arrive, giving an indication of darker passages that lie ahead. There are many more alternations between the mistier textures and the more angular statements. The floating quality is challenged by insistent, somewhat obsessive stretches.

Unlike many of Chris’s predominantly calm and reflective pieces, the peace in Atata seems to bear hints of the macabre; buried tensions and blood visible amongst the tranquility – a tranquility that is both sparse and lush at the same time. There’s a narrative quality, though it’s the listener who needs to supply the story.

Gradually, almost imperceptibly, the density builds, developing the sense of urgency and foreboding. A more marked crescendo arrives, notable simply because this is a feature absent from many recent pieces, where little in the way of dramatic material enters the calm or empty soundscapes. Yet, this brief propulsiveness and turbulence is short lived, and subsides into territory that is once again peaceful, if marked by the convulsions that sprang out.

Atata is constructed from a palette containing all 12 notes of the chromatic scale, in two groups of six (hexachords). The music moves between the two hexachords but they never combine.

Atata is one continuous piece of music lasting 57 minutes. The division into five sections is entirely for practical purposes, for both performers and listeners, and does not imply any underlying structural point in the piece.

Written and produced digitally in Cornwall, England by Chris Fitkin using a Vienna Symphonic Library Violin and Bösendorfer Piano.