Q&A with an avant-garde Swiss army knife

For a spare time thing, “General Patton vs. The X-ecutioners” comes off mighty well. In the same vein as Mr. Bungle’s chopped up style twisting, Patton’s foray into turntable producing is a whopper of a sound feast. There are head-bobbing deep beats shoved right up against ’40s era ballroom jazz and kung-fu movie samples. Between the scrabbled bits of sounds there exists a dark universe held together by Patton’s bizarre vocal play and occasional croon.

IS: So what was the process of making this thing? It seems like it would be kind of a solitary collaboration.

MP: Well that was kind of the way I wanted to do it. it seemed like the most hassle-free approach to give us the best results. Getting all of the guys in a room with me and kind of directing them like a band, I realized might not work as well. I realized it would take much more time and I wouldn't have had all of the freedoms I had doing it this way.

IS: How different is that from working with Buzz (Osborne of The Melvins and Fantomas) and the other guys?

MP: It's completely different. They're a band, I get them in a room, I send them tapes, have them learn stuff, note-for-note, or noise-for-noise, and I get them in a room after they've had a chance to study it and get it under their belts and we hammer it out. I'm actually about to start that tomorrow.

IS: What are you guys doing?

MP: We're doing a tour for a new Fantomas record that's coming out in April.

“Suspended Animation” is a torrent of agitated quick-hit death metal mixed in with samples ripped right out of your favorite childhood cartoons. One listen and you’ll get sent back to sitting in front of the TV and feeling sorry for Droopy Dog. Only with Fantomas, Droopy Dog reaches out of the TV, grabs you by the neck and just keeps shaking.

IS: I was listening to the last Fantomas thing, “Delirium Cordia” (a giant 73-minute single composition), and I bring up Zorn again because you're taking sort of a similar path in a lot of ways because that reminded me a lot of his “Leng Tch'e” or “Grand Guignol” or those large pieces.

MP: Like "Elegy," yeah.

IS: Right. There's this combination that you and he share where there's a fascination with those little micro pieces like on this X-men record and then there are these really wide open creepy spaces like on “Delirium.” What is it about those two things that you love?

MP: Well, especially with Fantomas, i'm just trying to stretch out what the band can do. Figuring out, really on the job or on recordings, what I can or can't get away with. And it's really empowering to have musicians like that that can play anything. I realized a couple of records ago, wow, I'm gonna have to really bring something to the table cause these guys chew it up and spit it out they can really play anything and it's a great feeling to know that you have that sort of firepower behind you. Maybe even a few years ago, I knew we were going to have to make a very quiet, ambient wallpaper-style background record and then I thought, especially after a record of a bunch of really short pieces it seemed like a logical left turn. It makes a lot of sense to me. No two of our records are really going to sound too much alike and that is really an extension of the way I listen to music and the way I write. I'm fortunate to have guys like this behind me that an pull it off and bring it to life, y'know?

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