Atonal II (Nahuatl name), also referred to as Atonaltzin (Nahuatl reverential form), Dzawindanda (Mixtec name), or Lord 6 Water, was a 15th-century ruler of the Mixtec kingdom of Coixtlahuaca.
In Nazi Germany, atonal music was attacked as "Bolshevik" and labeled as degenerate (Entartete Musik) along with other music produced by enemies of the Nazi regime.
While the EP retains most of the stylistic elements of debut Frigid Stars LP, some new sounds are introduced, notably on "W.", which features solo atonal piano played by David Grubbs (of Bastro, Squirrel Bait and Gastr del Sol).
Through the use of modulators with frequencies that are non-integer multiples of the carrier signal (i.e. non harmonic), atonal and tonal bell-like and percussive sounds can easily be created.
It is also devoid of the dissonance associated with most Corwood albums, with Jandek's piano playing being compared to Erik Satie and his speak/singing staying in a mellow timbre that never moves into his atonal wail.
Cyclic tonal progressions in the works of Romantic composers such as Gustav Mahler and Richard Wagner form a link with the cyclic pitch successions in the atonal music of Modernists such as Béla Bartók, Alexander Scriabin, Edgard Varèse, and the Second Viennese School (Arnold Schoenberg, Alban Berg, and Anton Webern).
Arnold Schoenberg and his pupil Anton Webern proposed a theory on the emancipation of the dissonance to help analyse the general trend and, in particular, their own atonal music.