Most people know Mike Patton as the lead singer from Faith No More. Some people know Mike Patton as the lead singer from Mr. Bungle, Tomahawk or Fantômas. But almost nobody thinks about the experimental/noise artist when mentioning the name Mike Patton. Well, i do, and this because Patton has released some experimental material that i find very good.
At 16, Patton already sang death metal with Bungle. At 20 he was the lead singer for Faith No More. And at 22 he already played shows live with the great John Zorn. I believe that says a lot. And hence he has done these things so early, it became aparent that he was bound to release at least one bizzare material, if not many. And so it was. Aparently, during some tour with Faith No More he recorded and mixed a whole album in hotel rooms, using 4 track cassette deck. All the experimental sounds you hear on this CD are made from just voice and microphone. The album doesn't contain traditional songs as such, it plays as a continuous piece, and hence there are no obvious highlights. We dont have melodicity here, we only have brutal and harsh noise, that may be disturbing for lots of people.
However, there are many songs on this album that i find really great, and i`m going to try and describe them, even if it may seem a little streched to rescribe every song you have on a noise album. My personal favorite would have to be Raped on a Bed of Sand. What do we have here ? Patton using his voice to sound imitate a seagull's cry. And knowing the name of the song, it's easy to imagine what can happen in it. Penumonia With Complications is almost like an anti-tobacco advertisment, with Patton coughing his lungs out, of course everything really distorted. Red Mouth, Black Orgasm is a song in which Patton just screams for almost half a minute. I cannot reproduce what he is screaming, but you can guess.
Violence is amazing. In this song we just have silence/noise/silence/noise. And while the silence part is like any silence part in any song you might know, the noise part is Patton screaming as loud as he can, and doing all the weird screwed up sounds with his voice, as if he would be playing a noise cover of Ma Meeshka Mow Skwoz. The One Armed Vs. 9 Killers is not a common noise song, for it has somewhat of a rhythm. Still, this doesnt make me think about the title, and sounds more like a loud enginee.
We also have 3 different versions of Robot Sex, the best having to be Neon, in which Patton does a lot of sounds that would appear on future Fantômas recordings. Inconsolable Widows In Search Of Distraction is a really creepy track, in which Mike makes some sounds as if he was an old woman crying/laughing, you can't really tell.
The 4 Guinea Pigs are interesting, and i like most the last one. There Patton is screaming as if he would be the guinea pig and somebody would try to eat him.
Screams of the Asteroid and Catheter sounds exactly like the title tells us. Just dont play Catheter really loud, it's gonna get really disturbing. Wuxiapian is another personal favorite. It starts really rhythmic and then it just gets creepy and slient, only to have a loud and fast ending. Wuxiapian is a type of japanese western of i remember correctly, but i`m not really sure on that.
Anyhow, in 1996 when this came out, on John Zorn's label (surprising, isn't it ? ) Tzadik, it was something that probably not even Mr. Bungle fans had expected. And we will see what happened next, in 1997 when Patton released his second solo album, by all means better than Adult Themes For Voice, which still gets 3.5/5
