MIKE PATTON
Fantomas are possibly the sickest sounding band to ever grace the Big Day Out. The likes of Slipknot, Marilyn Manson and Rammstein have nothing on the twisted terror and genre-destroying sound of the supergroup lead by Mike Patton – former Faith No More singer and man behind many musical projects like the musical carnage of Tomahawk and the wonky pop of Peeping Tom where he collaborated with artists like Norah Jones and Massive Attack.
And just for something different, Fantomas are coming to the Big Day Out to play the entirety of their 2001 album The Director’s Cut, which consists of covers of soundtracks to movies like The Godfather, Cape Fear and Henry: Portrait Of A Serial Killer.
The band, also made up of guitarist Buzz Osborne (the Melvins), bass player Trevor Dunn (Mr Bungle) and drummer Dale Crover (also from the Melvins who sits in for usual sticksman Dave Lombardo of Slayer), have not played together since 2006.
However, they reconvened last month when Patton and Osborne were co-curating the All Tomorrow’s Parties festival in Britain, where bands play their classic albums from start to finish.
The organisers of the shows insisted one of Patton’s projects also play.
“So it was like, ‘Okay, what one would you like?’ and Fantomas is what they chose. I’d never done anything like that before, played one record top to bottom, so I thought it was a cool thematic train of thought,” says Patton from Los Angeles where he has been working on the
soundtrack to action film Crank 2 and is also co-founder of record label Ipecac, a community he describes as a “nice little home for musical misfits”.
“And The Director’s Cut is some of our more user-friendly material so it works well in a live environment.”
Still, the album is not for the faint-hearted and the band’s renditions of music to movies like The Omen (which is given an operatic death-metal remix) are twisted beyond belief and sometimes beyond recognition.
And Patton admits some of the music, like the frenzied and scary One Step Beyond, is difficult to play live and they had to go back and re-learn them.
“Here we were in the rehearsal room listening to the CD we made,” he laughs. “So if we don’t concentrate then [One Step Beyond] turns into a heinous train wreck. [Fantomas] is a tough project in general and that’s just the nature of it but because of the way I constructed the tunes, it’s not something you can have a few beers before the show, go up there, close your eyes and jam. It’s music that is really dense and all about the little details.”
Patton always has multiple projects on the go – a new Fantomas album, “that’s still in my head at the moment”, is due sometime this year and will be entirely electronic – and he has a manic work ethic to match his equally crazed music.
“I’m just here to do as much as I can before I kick the bucket. The best way to explain it is it’s not really work to me. It’s a combination of things: work, vacation, torture, and it’s a mistress and a life.”
