So this thing is out, you guys got it yet? Reviews? Will be picking this up tomorrow…. meanwhile, here are the trailers:

There’s never enough Fantomas news for my liking. But finally we have some! That DVD Patton mentioned a while back has a release date.

Titled The Director’s Cut Live: A New Year’s Revolution, it is due out September 6 on Ipecac and will feature Dale Crover manning the sticks.

Hopefully this is only the first of many more Fantomas news posts. (one can dream).

According to Mike/Ipecac on FB: “In the process, coming soon!”

So lots of goss is making the rounds after the recent Faith No More shows in L.A. Mindbait has some insight in to the state of Fantomas as heard from ‘the Gerg’ Werkman and also rock photographer slash CoS writer @wanderlustingkh recently tweeted some interesting titbits as heard backstage from Mr Dave Lombardo:

“Fantomas isn’t tracked. Lovage is. Dave still has to do drums. Dave said the ‘electronic’ part of the next album is that he’ll play and Patton will dub over with an electronic drum kit… he said Patton’s working on the theme, I think a lot has been recorded from the other dudes… And there you have it folks – that’s your Fantomas scoop straight from the mouth of the world’s best drummer Dave Lombardo.”

Anyone else heard any new news?

In a recent interview with Metal Injection, Dave Lombardo was asked whether he would ever rejoin Fantomas. Not only did he say that it will happen, but that he has also been in recent email contact with Mike:

“(5.26) I just emailed Mike Patton and we are in constant contact, that door will never close. I had so much fun working within the Fantomas music and its something I’ll never ever want to close. I’m sure in the future because he did mention hey we need to work together again. We’re both busy with Faith No More and me with slayer and it’s been like that for a while, but i see it coming.”

This is great news for us dedicated Fantomas obsessees as things were looking a little dire there for a while!

Slayer are on the brink of an Australian tour, and for one special Sydney show will be performing Reign in Blood in it’s entirety.

http://www.metalinjection.net/tv/view/3538/dave-lombardo-of-slayer-interview-at-mayhem-fest-2009

In a recent interview at the Wormwood Chronicles, Dave Lombardo was asked about his current plans for working with Mike Patton:

“WC: Are you still involved with Mike Patton?

Lombardo: No, but that door has never completely shut. Me and Mike will work together in the future, I believe, if schedules permit. He’s great, I love his music, all of the stuff that we’ve done.

There’s always a chance.Right now, I’m focusing on trying to find a band that I could share my production experience with. Going to the studio with them and working with them in the same way producers have worked with me. I want to take my knowledge and apply it to bands that are up and coming.”

Is Fantomas officially over? My impression was that Terry Bozzio was a fill in while Dave was busy working with Slayer and that a Lombardo filled Fantomas would eventually take centre stage again.  But Lombardo not ruling out working with Patton again is a good sign. So what’s your opinion on this?

Thanks to FNM2.0 for the interview tip

04/05/09 – Saturday

Small Plastic Figurine

As it appears in the latest Drum (10th Feb issue):

“Fantomas nearly upstaged the main act with their renditions of ’70′s and ’80′s classic and cult movie theme songs, whilst dressed in white cricket uniforms, zinc smeared on cheeks. With a tight energy that took years of touring to hone, the band were amazingly precise on every note, especially drummer Dale Crover, whilst still giving frontman Mike Patton a chance to add his falsetto flairs and convulsing body movements to songs Der Golem and Cape Fear. They continued to play through through The Director’s Cut in random order, leaving the audience satisfied to the point where the main act could have been forgotten entirely.”

The rest is about Serj Tankian and his “band”. I’m not going to bother transcribing that as their show was less than average.

drummedia.com.au

Might want to turn yr sound down for this one…..

cape fear:

mike playin cricket:

the godfather:

Investigation Of A Citizen Above Suspicion:

Henry: Portrait Of A Serial Killer

Serj and Fantomas, The Tivoli, Brisbane @ Fasterlouder

“First up, as promised, Fantomas delivered the whole kit and caboodle, the full length, original version with no editing, director’s cut of their album The Director’s Cut. The boys come on stage donned in white cricketers get-up. I don’t know why. Front man, Mike Patton, complete with white glove mitts comes on stage and promptly leaps into a perfectly executed theme to The Godfather.

Patton moves with the music, acting as conductor to the band, changing the tempo, melody and even style of the song with just a twinkle of the eye or an expert swish of his arms. With drummer Dave Lombardo (of Slayer fame) missing from the band tonight, you can tell that Patton is more than ever keeping it together. And he does it well. He reveals his excitement when a pace change goes to plan, and skillfully hides a mishap by ad-libbing.

Besides this, Fantomas deliver an almost flawless set. The Serj Tankian fans are in awe, and everyone wants more. A crowd favourite is the haunting song, Rosemary’s Baby, adapted from the film’s theme song. Patton’s voice is truly amazing. In this song, he makes the simple words ‘la la la la’ sound deadly and then innocent and then creepy and then vacant. His screamo voice is also nothing to contend with. Using his whole body, he thrusts the words forward into his highly movable microphone, like he’s possessed and needs to get it out. It is a great sight to see such a musician in action.

The boys finish with the second song on the album, Der Golem, a tune from the 1920s German silent horror film. The crowd is astounded, and the die-hard fans are relieved that this song wasn’t glazed over. One guy, who obviously knows the album from back to front, says to his friend, “I was worried for a moment. I thought they’d forgotten this one, but no, they just pulled it out right at the end’. What a relief.”

Fantomas in the Age

“Mike Patton explains his band’s raucous take on old film scores, writes Jo Roberts.

MIKE Patton has lost track of how many times he’s been to Australia. Between his last visit here — in 2007 with one of his many creative vehicles, Peeping Tom — and his first visit — in 1989 as the then-21 year old singer of Faith No More — he’s probably collected more passport stamps here than Michael Franti (well, maybe).

Patton has toured here regularly with his other bands Mr Bungle, Tomahawk and Fantomas, but it is the latter that brings one of music’s great vocal acrobats back here this week for what promises to be a very special show: performing Fantomas’ most celebrated album, 2001′s The Director’s Cut, in full.

The Director’s Cut is what Patton calls “aggressive interpretations” of scores from films including The Godfather, Der Golem, Cape Fear, Rosemary’s Baby and Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me.

Most are unrecognisable from the originals: shorter and definitely much, much sharper.

“I think if you’re gonna do a cover of something you really, really respect you’re on dangerous ground and you gotta be respectful but you also gotta make it your own,” says Patton, a film buff whose interests extend to voicing video games, acting roles and score composition.

“You’ve gotta chew it up and spit it out and it’s gotta be something else, otherwise why cover it? Why ruin something that’s already perfect?”

The album had never been played in full until last year, when Patton and the Melvins were asked by All Tomorrow’s Parties founder Barry Hogan to co-curate ATP’s annual Nightmare Before Christmas event, held last month at Butlins Holiday camp at Minehead, in Britain. As part of the deal, Hogan insisted Fantomas play The Director’s Cut. “Thank god he chose that record because in the Fantomas scheme of things that’s one of our easiest to play,” says Patton.

One of the easiest, perhaps (a walk in the park compared to 2005′s Suspended Animation, for instance), but still a huge challenge, given Fantomas’ predilection for frenetic complexity.

“Yeah,” agrees Patton. “I’d say we’d played a little over half that material before in live sets, but there was a lot of stuff that we either hadn’t looked at in years or that we’d never played at all because it was either not playable live, or anything like the way we’d played it.

“We had to go back and learn it (they referred back to the CD in the rehearsal room) and I had to do a bit of sleight of hand on the arrangements; you have to make it work live.”"

Buzz talks to fasterlouder

” The Directors Cut is definitely my favourite Fantomas record, so yeah, I’m really looking forward to playing it live at the Big Day Out and hopefully scaring the shit out of some people,” Osborne laughed. “I’d also like to say that everybody is going to get paid and everybody is going to get laid. No, wait, I mean nobody’s going to get paid and maybe luckily a few people may get laid.”

http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,,24949621-5006024,00.html

“And, over on the Essential Stage as the sun goes down, there’s Fantomas leader Mike Patton, a man who follows no rules (career, musical or otherwise) but his own.

And what is Mike Patton‘s rule for the Big Day Out?

Concentrate, or you might end up with a can of fly spray directed at your ear.

“It doesn’t affect anything except your attitude,” says the amiably grumpy Patton about playing Fantomas’ album of film music, The Director’s Cut, in full in a festival setting.

If it wasn’t for the deliciously evil cackle he throws in, the guy could give Neil Young a shake in the curmudgeon stakes.

“I’m in a little bit more of a bad mood when I play these things,” he says, looking around the backstage area of the first BDO of the season in Auckland.

“It’s just not my scene. I’m not saying it’s worthless, but it’s less about music than a lot of other things.

“Let’s be honest, what we’re about to go and do is not music to pick up boys or girls on, or to get drunk with. It’s music you’ve gotta f—ing pay attention to, and if you don’t, it’s like having a mosquito in your ear for 45 minutes.

“I’m sure there’ll be a lot of people going ‘Whaaat?’ and running for the exits. But that makes you wanna do it even more.”

He laughs the evil laugh again. “