Q&A with an avant-garde Swiss army knife

I first encountered Mike Patton in the same way probably a lot of you did: in high school. As the newly-minted floppy-faced lead singer of Faith No More, he tossed Big Hair Rock a curveball with his erratic stage presence and undeniable voice. He also unwittingly helped give birth to compound genres like “Funk Metal” and “Rap Rock” after gumming up the MTV airwaves with the band’s mega hit “Epic.”

That was way back in 1989, right before the grunge cloud began raining down on pop culture and shoved Big Hair Rock aside for Big Hate Myself Rock. FNM got weirder, thanks to the growing influence of Patton’s long-running side project called Mr. Bungle. Working with pioneer saxophonist/composer John Zorn, Mr. Bungle unleashed a steady stream of multi-hyphenated music that bent genres into pretzels and got geeks (like me) worked up into a lather. Taking bits of ska, jazz, metal, doo wop and every other type of music imaginable (Balinese monkey chant, anyone?) they stirred a riveting stew, but eventually Mr. Bungle seemed to crash under its own weight.

If you’ve been keeping score since then, Patton’s managed to set up camp in his own little experimental territory. He’s now one of rock music’s most wildly creative, intelligently sinister and most well-respected composers lurking in the avant-garde shadows. From redefining death metal with Fantomas, to putting on a hip hop cabaret with Dan The Automator in the forms of Lovage and Handsome Boy Modeling School, to lending his elastic pipes to Bjork's all-a cappella “Medulla” project and even writing a chamber orchestra piece with Zorn, Patton never seems short of things to do. His output has been consistent not only in its frequency, but in its randomness.

His latest spate of releases comes in the forms of a beat-juggling turntable collaboration with Brooklyn DJ crew the X-Ecutioners (also known as the X-Men) in February, and, most recently, a mile-a-minute tribute to cartoon music (and to the month of April) with Fantomas, released, you guessed it, in April (Both on his label Ipecac Recordings). Before taking off for a Fantomas tour, Patton took some time to chat with Indie Study about his influences, the art of collaboration and his love affair with the turntable.

Independent Study: How did John Zorn come into your life and how did you guys start collaborating?

Mike Patton: I approached him with the idea of working together on one of the first Mr. Bungle recordings. I was a fan of him before that and had some of his records and thought, well this guy could bring something to the table and we'd never made a record before, so we were infinitely insecure about what to do in a studio and how to handle it.

IS: So that was the first time you guys had ever been in a studio to do anything?

MP: Yeah, exactly.

IS: He's a pretty big name to get for your first studio recording and it seemed like it would be kind of intimidating

MP: I guess I didn't know better (laughs). If I admire someone's music I'll walk up to 'em and tell 'em. That's basically how it started. I went to a show of his and cornered him and said “Listen to this, I think you might like it and I'd love for you to work with us.” And he got right back to me and it kind of went from there and we've been close friends ever since.

IS: I bring him up is because your new record is probably the closest or most realized version of some element of his, along the lines of Naked City. It's so complete for me. You stretch out quite a bit on it. How was it putting this together as far as the collaboration with the X-Ecutioners, and how did that start and how did you end up composing?

MP: Uh... let's see here... (laughs) You were telling me that you liked the record and I was scrambling trying to figure out which one you were talking about (laughs).

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