FANTOMAS - March 2005

Originally published in: Chord Magazine

Random thoughts: In celebration of Faith No More's recent reformation and killer set at the Download Festival, here's one of my all-time favorite articles--an interview with Mike Patton about Fantomas. Truth is, I was on cloud nine talking to Patton, but, like all of my "heroes," he was genuine and easy to talk to.

Fantomas
The mad genius strikes again

By Jason Schreurs

Fantomas leader Mike Patton has been in some great bands over the years. Need a list? Okay, Faith No More, Mr. Bungle, Tomahawk, collaborations with The Dillinger Escape Plan, John Zorn, Merzbow, not to mention a variety of solo projects. But none of these could possibly be as entertaining as Fantomas, featuring King Buzzo (Melvins), Dave Lombardo (Slayer), and Trevor Dunn (ex-Mr. Bungle). Stretching the ever-extendable boundaries of Patton’s overactive imagination must be a bundle of fun.
“It’s…,” pauses Patton, “ya, I would say that Fantomas is pretty fun. It’s also very disciplined, but I think the fun in it, for me, is watching these guys pull this stuff off. Writing something that is acrobatic, and insane, and full of twists and turns, and watching them pull it off, is very satisfying. Also knowing whatever I write, these guys can rise to the challenge and spit it right back at me; that is rewarding and makes me feel invincible. It makes me want to write a concerto or something for them.”
A fourth Fantomas album, Suspended Animation, on Patton’s own Ipecac imprint, is the latest entry in a sonic journal of the truly weird. Of course, the man has worked with some jaw-dropping musicians, but he must just look around at Fantomas rehearsals, astounded, and think, “This is the drummer for Slayer and the guitar player from Melvins!”
“I still have those moments, yeah,” admits Patton. “Especially on stage sometimes. The way we set up, I face directly across the stage at Dave [Lombardo], so I get to ooh and aaah at him…”
The myth surrounding Patton and his handpicked Fantomas crew is he is a slave-driver, constantly challenging them to the brink. Judging by their chaotic fury, in all of its experimental, strange glory, the demented ringleader image certainly fits. But Patton is quick to laugh off any dictator-like scenarios.
“Put it this way, I’ve got the Angel of Death on drums. Who’s going to slave-drive that guy? We’re talking about a guy who sold his soul to the devil. How can I compete with that?”
The truth is Patton did mastermind this bizarre group, and albums like 2001’s Director’s Cut (an homage to film) and last year’s Delirium Cordia {a 74-minute, one-song nightmare) were written entirely by him, so it’s pretty obvious who’s in control here.
“The only reason people might paint that portrait is because it’s my music and I know the way it should sound and…,” Patton pauses again, “I don’t have to crack any whips, really. I just explain to them what I want and we hammer it out.”
Make no mistake; this is not easy stuff to play. Even with perhaps the most loose-limbed drummer around (Lombardo), an amazing guitar player (Buzzo), and a workhorse bassist (Dunn), things can get a little complicated.
“Unfortunately, there’s no easy way of learning it. The only way we end up getting it down is by going over and over and over, through repetition in the rehearsal room. And we all make little cheat notes and have our own little tricks that we play in our minds to actually remember this stuff. It’s a real pain in the ass to play. Not that it’s technically difficult, but more-so it’s hard to remember what’s coming next.”
Themed around the wacky month of April, Suspended Animation also expresses an outright fascination with cartoons and children’s playthings. Samples of possessed toys and warped Saturday morning sound-effects are intermingled with Patton’s genius hardcore herky-jerk. If Barney the Dinosaur, Bugs Bunny, and Elmo got in league with Satan for some death metal action, this is what they would sound like.
For such a bizarre choice of sounds, packaging for this release was going to be a difficult task. The solution? None other than Japanese pop art icon Yoshitomo Nara.
“I contacted [Nara] and told him what kind of a record I was going to make,” begins Patton. “I had no idea if he knew me from… Eddie Vedder, or anybody else. I just kind of wrote him out of the blue and said, ‘I think your artwork would be great for this record and I would love if you would create some original stuff for it. Whatever you want.’”
“And he wrote me back saying it sounded great. I sent him some of our records and he loved them. He gave me 30 drawings,” he marvels, “most of which are original to use on this thing. So I was overwhelmed. I thought I would get two or three.”
Patton took the Nara originals and worked them into a calendar for April, the month with the silliest holidays (“That Sucks Day,” believe it or not, is April 15). A limited-edition of the CD is a full-on calendar, ready to hang on the wall. One last thing though, how is Ipecac going to afford to ship those things out?
“Ya,” chuckles Patton wildly, “don’t ask!”

______________________________

NOTE - And another piece from the same interview for Caustic Truths Magazine.

Fantomas
Mike Patton invents another genre: Kiddie-core

By Jason Schreurs

I wish Mike Patton could witness my kids’ reaction when I crank up the latest Fantomas CD, Suspended Animation. I think he’d get a kick out of seeing them do this weird sort of interpretative dance while they make bizarre faces; perhaps the ideal reaction to Patton’s latest creation, a truly strange ode to cartoons and the wacky month of April. I’ll explain what this all means in a bit, but first Patton’s reaction to putting joy into the lives of slightly off-kilter children.
“Oh man, see,” laughs Patton, “these are the people I want to play for! Fuck all of these middle-aged hipsters; these are the real fans, man!”
For those living on planet Zyborg, Patton is the guy who once fronted Faith No More and Mr. Bungle, and now Tomahawk and Fantomas, as well as constantly creating solo CDs around his chronically experimental vocal chords. So with all of the musical genres Patton has invented (and often destroyed in the process), he must have ventured into the territory of children’s music before, right?
“Well, I sort of flirted with some elements like that,” he explains. “Mr. Bungle did a lot of fooling around with that kind of a thing, but I’ve never explored it deeply like I did on this record. I never incorporated it into a musical language, so to speak.”
Suspended Animation, a 30-track theme album on Patton’s own Ipecac Records, is built around each day in the month of April, extravagantly packaged and artistically rendered by Japanese pop art icon Yoshitomo Nara.
The songs are a sonic maelstrom of sampled kids playthings, like scrambled messages from the toy graveyard, egged on by the drumming insanity of Slayer’s Dave Lombardo, bass-work of Trevor Dunn (longtime Patton collaborator in Mr. Bungle), and King Buzzo, guitar god from The Melvins. Basically, the songs on this CD are like a gruesomely entertaining version of what parents have to listen to on a day-to-day basis.
“Dave [Lombardo] said that too, at a certain point when we were recording,” laughs Patton. “Because he’s the kind of guy that wakes up early, deals with his kids, and then he’d come out and rehearse for eight hours, or something ridiculous like that, and he’d say, ‘Jesus, I can’t escape! This is the soundtrack to my life. Every morning, now it’s in my rehearsal!’”
“It was driving him nuts,” says Patton with a demented cackle.
The new album was actually recorded during the same session as Fantomas’ last CD, Delirium Corda, a single, 74-minute track of challenging darkness and precision. With that particular piece of Fantomas weirdness being so moody and intense, it must have been nice to blow off some steam with the decidedly more wacky and way out there Suspended Animation.
“Well, it didn’t really work out like that,” laments Patton. “In fact, I think we recorded the cartoony, fun Suspended Animation stuff first. So it’s like we ate our dessert before the main meal.”
Back to the kiddies. I’ve gotta thank Patton, again, for doing one that the kids can enjoy. In fact, they adore it. They literally freak out when they hear any of the 30 tracks on Suspended Animation. And my kids don’t often like dad’s music, so it’s nice to be able to put on a CD and say, “Here’s one for you, kids. Go for it!”
“Very good,” says Patton with a sparkle. “I was telling the guys that maybe this time instead of playing sweaty, stinky rock clubs we should play daycare centres and comedy clubs [laughs]… Detention halls!”
Then Patton lets out a bellow: “Grown-ups suck! That’s the theme of this record.”

For more info, go to www.myspace.com/fantomasband

NOMEANSNO - May 2004

Originally published in: Monday Magazine

Album: The People's Choice (Ipecac)

Random thoughts: One of my all-time favourite bands, this was a thrill and a half. And Tom Holliston was a really genuine, funny guy.

The Beginning of the End (as such)?
Not if Nomeansno can help it

By Jason Schreurs

Like countless fanatics around the world, I dread the day Nomeansno calls it quits. But, more than 25 years is a damn long life span for any band, so the unavoidable question arises: Is the end near?
“Well, I don’t know, would you ask the same question to John Lee Hooker?” quips guitarist Tom Holliston. “A big mistake for bands is to announce to the world, ‘Oh, we’re breaking up!’ It’s just so brazen in the first place and it’s also really silly. Nobody has to break up, ever. Maybe you stop doing stuff for awhile and just have an option open. But why would anybody just get rid of their options?”
Despite keeping the porch light burning, the masters of prog-punk (the middle ground between The Ramones and Yes) are slowing down. Touring relentlessly around the world, and juggling the band with family life has taken its toll on Holliston and brothers John and Rob Wright (who formed the band here in Victoria in the late ‘70s). So much so that their last of many jaunts to Europe had them contemplating early retirement options.
“On that tour everybody was sort of only half-joking, asking each other how much money we had in our pension funds and what we were going to do if we were looking for steady work,” chuckles Holliston.
And while Holliston believes the band is “going to take a break for awhile” after a tour through Western Canada (including a stop here Saturday night), another handful in Europe this year, and a new studio album, he says interest in the band has never been more fervent.
Remember those fanatics I was talking about earlier? They aren’t letting up, and they’re getting younger and hipper by the day. “None of us keep up with our fans. None of us at all make any effort whatsoever to keep up on what’s new in music,” says Holliston. “Basically, it doesn’t mean shit because five percent of what’s released in a year is good and 95 percent is crap. It’s a waste of time trying to keep up. Like somebody comes along and puts out a good record and then by the end of the week there’s 50 other bands just like them. Case in point is bands like The Hellacopters and The Hives and The Strokes, and then there’s suddenly thousands of pieces of spaghetti that are being thrown at the wall. I mean, who wants to keep track of that?”
Not even their fans, it seems, who are too busy delving through the massive Nomeansno back catalog (currently being re-released through Southern Records in Europe as well as select titles in North America by Mike Patton’s label, Ipecac). Those who follow the band just can’t get enough of their dark, twisted, sarcastic, socially relevant… uh, party rock?
“The band goes out to play as well as possible, to have fun and to rock, and get out some of the kinks that are the result of sitting in a van for a long period of time everyday, driving,” explains Holliston. “I don’t think we protest any more than anybody else. Everybody out there is kicking and screaming against something and so are we. I don’t think the message of Nomeansno, if there is a message, is any more important than just… sometimes things aren’t very good. I mean, we don’t have a solution and neither do you.”
So, do they consider themselves a political band? Well, definitely not in the traditional punk rock protest song sense.
“Anybody can walk on the stage and say clear-cutting is bad or Bush is an asshole. Ya?” he says, making it sound like “Duh?” “But do you really want to be in a room with a whole bunch of people who feel exactly like you do? Do you really want to pat yourself on the back and say, ‘Boy, I really preached to the converted really loudly and strongly tonight.’ So, who cares? You haven’t done anything.”
Okay, they’re getting on in years and they’re slowing things down a little, but the best thing about Nomeansno is their undying ability to push themselves forward with their patented sound and poke fun at themselves at the same time.
Case in point is their latest release, a greatest hits set entitled The People’s Choice, adorned with some band room graffiti from a 1994 show in Austria. “Give it up Grand-dads. How fucken old are Nomeansno?” it says. Ten years later, they’re that much older.
“Ya, I know,” Holliston says, giving a belly laugh, “that makes it even funnier!”

For more info, go to: www.nomeanswhatever.com