Mike Patton: Maestro del Differente

May 16, 2025 RilalyLeave a comment

You want to get weird? I’m not talking about the weird music our aunts and uncles might chuckle at or say, “Hey, that’s kinda neat-o.” I’m talking about a strain so close to normal that they might be a little concerned about our mental health when they hear it. “If you think that’s quality music, then I’m probably going to have to edit my perception of you.” I’m talking about a definition of different carved out in a band called Mr. Bungle, then chiseled into with Fantômas, and ultimately destroyed and reconstructed in a project called Moonchild. If you don’t know who I’m talking about, let me introduce you to the outlandish innovations of a bizarre brainchild named Mike Patton. “Isn’t he a one-hit wonder?” a friend of mine asked, decades after Mike Patton became Mike Patton. “Isn’t he the “It’s it what is it?” guy?” I was so stunned that I couldn’t think up an appropriate term for cluelessness. Then, VH1 went ahead and confirmed his uninformed characterization, by listing the band Patton fronted, Faith No More as one of their one-hit wonders of the 80s. I knew most didn’t follow the career of Mike Patton as much as I had, but I was stunned to learn how even those with purported knowledge in the industry could dismiss him in such a manner. I had to adjust my idealistic vision of the world to reconcile it with the reality that if Billboard is your primary resource, Mike Patton and Faith No More were one-hit wonders. To those of us who live in the outer layer, seeking the sometimes freakishly different, “It’s it what is it?” or the single Epic, was only the beginning. Mike Patton discovered he had a talent at a young age, he could mimic bird calls. He found that he could also perform some odd vocal exercises on a flexi disc that his parents gave him. The idea that he could do that probably didn’t separate him much from the four-to-five billion on the planet at the time, and I only include that note to suggest that Mike Patton probably didn’t even know how talented he was at the time either. Yet, the young Mike Patton knew he loved music. He loved it so much that he and his buddies in school, including Trey Spruance and Trevor Dunn, decided to form a band they called Mr. Bungle. They were all around fifteen at the time, and anyone who listens to their early self-produced demos, Bowel of Chiley (1987) and The Raging Wrath of the Easter Bunny(1986) can hear how young and inexperienced they were. These demos were a chaotic blend of metal, funk, and juvenile humor. It’s so chaotic that it’s as difficult to categorize as it is to listen to, but suffice it to say whatever general definition we might have of traditional music, the music found on those demos is likely the opposite. While devoting himself to Mr. Bungle, and studying English literature at Humboldt State University, Patton worked at a local record store, immersing himself in everything from punk to classical. He obviously kept himself busy during this period, and we can only guess that he was probably as surprised as anyone else when, in 1988, a man named Jim Martin invited Patton to audition for the role of lead singer in Martin’s band Faith No More, after seeing Patton perform in a local gig as the lead singer of Mr. Bungle. Patton won the job after displaying his raw energy and his vocal range for the band. If this were one of those always disappointing biodocs, the moviemakers would depict Martin and the other members of Faith No More as being blown away by Patton’s audition, and they would say something like, “This is obviously the man to lead us into the 90s.” I understand that these movies are often constrained by formulas and time constraints, and they often take shortcuts just to get a point across. I was all prepared to dispel that movie trope by writing that while the members of the band, their management, and the execs thought his audition was great, they heard the demos, and they didn’t think his talent would translate to Faith No More’s furthered success. It turns out, they were so blown away by the talent he displayed in that audition that they did consider him the man to lead them into the 90s. After hearing Mr. Bungle’s early demos, firsthand, all I can say is that must’ve been one hell of an audition.

When he first “discovered” Patton, I imagine Martin returned to his FNM bandmates and said, “I found the guy!” and he handed them the demos. As musicians themselves, I imagine they heard Patton’s talent, but they couldn’t reconcile it with Faith No More’s sound and image, until he auditioned for them. Again, that must’ve been one hell of an audition to blow them away like that. When Patton joined FNM, the music for The Real Thing (1989) was 80-90% written, primarily by keyboardist Roddy Bottum, guitarist Jim Martin, bassist Billy Gould, and drummer Mike Bordin, but Patton wrote all of the lyrics for the original tracks on what happened to be Faith No More’s third album, often crafting those lyrics quickly to fit pre-existing music. Patton contributed vocal melodies and arrangements, that ended up shaping the songs’ final sound. Patton’s contributions transformed the album, and some suggest his input proved instrumental in this album’s eventual success. As popular as FNM’s The Real Thing proved, there’s evidence to suggest that at least some of Patton’s motivations for joining this Epic band was to expand and amplify his beloved Bungle’s reach. If we stop right here, we all have to thank Jim Martin for taking a chance on this nineteen-to-twenty-year-old singer, because at the time, Mr. Bungle was nothing more than a local act in Eureka, California. They had a couple of almost unlistenable self-produced demos to their name, but how many starving artists had that in late-80s California? How many of those same starving artists dreamed of Billboard Top 100 hits, stardom, and vast amounts of money to follow? Anyone who says this is what motivated Mike Patton doesn’t know his ethos or his outlook, yet he was quite proud of what he and his Bungle bros created, and he wanted us all to hear it. In a 1992 Kerrang! interview, Patton admitted he initially viewed Faith No More as a “means to an end,” hoping their success would open doors for Mr. Bungle. As evidence of that, Patton wore a Mr. Bungle T-shirt in the video for Epic, and he handed a Bungle demo to Faith No More’s label, which led to Warner Bros signing Mr. Bungle to a deal in 1989. Again, those of us who heard those demos, in their raw form, would have a tough time believing Warner Brothers would’ve signed Mr. Bungle if Patton didn’t have some standing as the frontman for Faith No More.

This isn’t to suggest that Mike Patton didn’t devote himself to Faith No More, as he devoted an overwhelming amount of his time and energy to the band during their recording and touring of The Real Thing and Angel Dust (1992). He wrote the lyrics and melodies for both albums, toured extensively (over 200 shows for The Real Thing alone), and handled media duties. Mr. Bungle, meanwhile, was more of a side project during this period. Their self-titled debut (1991) was recorded in gaps between Faith No More’s schedule, with Patton contributing vocals, lyrics, and some production alongside bandmates Trey Spruance and Trevor Dunn. In 1995, Mike Patton basically proved that a man could toggle between two bands and produce two great albums for each outfit. He played a pivotal role in both Faith No More’s King for a Day and Mr. Bungle’s Disco Volante. Patton wasn’t the first to play in two bands at once, by any means, but it wasn’t commonly done in this era. He stated that his daily routine consisted of recording King for a Day at Bearsville Studios, during the day, then driving down to record Disco Volante late into the night and repeating the same process the next day. “It was insane,” he told the Alternative Press in a 1996 interview. He admitted he barely slept while juggling both bands’ demands. Patton never claimed to be a trailblazer in this regard, but he’s acknowledged the strain. In a 2001 Kerrang! interview, he called 1995 “a blur,” saying Mr. Bungle was his “heart” while Faith No More paid the bills. If you haven’t heard him interviewed, this is Mike Patton. He is a humble man who often downplays moments the rest of us consider groundbreaking. King for a Day was another great FNM album, not as good as Angel Dust, but better than The Real Thing, in my humble estimation. Disco Volante was, and is, an incredible album that any serious artist would consider a career achievement, better than the self-titled disc but not as great as California. Most Bungle fans disagree on the latter. After spreading himself so thin in 1995, Patton went and got bored after Faith No More’s 1998 breakup, which the band “officially” stated was due to the fact that Faith No More had run its course creatively. Anyone who thinks that Patton would devote himself entirely to Mr. Bungle at this point just isn’t following along. He gets so bored that he ventures out and creates other artistic enterprises that take that definition of weird out to “Here, there be Dragons” locations on the map. He takes it to the ‘if you think Faith No More was outlandish in places, you should check out Mr. Bungle, and if you think Mr. Bungle stretches the boundaries of genre, you should check out a band he created called Fantômas.’ Fantômas became Patton’s new passion project while devoting an overwhelming amount of his time to what I consider the Mr. Bungle masterpiece 1999’s California. We write all of this, and we don’t even get to Patton’s role as the lead vocalist in the five albums of Tomahawk, and then there’s his varying roles in the bands Peeping Tom, Dead Cross, Lovage, and the killer role he played in one of The Dillinger Escape Plan’s albums. He has two proper solo albums, two works with Kaada, various film scores, and over 60 collaborative efforts, various ensembles, and guest appearances on other artists’ albums, including John Zorn and Björk. The overall brilliant catalog this “one-hit wonder” has amassed can be so overwhelming to the uninitiated that they may not even know where to start. 1989’s The Real Thing might, in fact, be the place to start, but I am so far past that starting point that I can’t even see it any more. That’s the problem with true fans of artists, they’ve listened to the artist for so long that they don’t know where to tell you where to start. Those who like Mike Patton, but don’t have an unusual, almost concerning adoration of him, tell me that Faith No More’s Angel Dust is probably the best starting point, as they say it’s probably the best, most mainstream album he took part in. If that’s the case, I would add Mr. Bungle’s California, Tomahawk Mit Gas, and Patton’s work with the X-Ecutioners as the second class of the Mike Patton beginner’s course. If you make it past that point, and you might not, I would submit Tomahawk’s Anonymous, Fantômas’s Suspended Animation, and Disco Volante as great second-level albums. A trend in Patton’s music I’ve noted, is the 2^nd album trend. The first albums are great, but they seem to set a template from which to explore the dynamic further, and Patton and his various crews seem to peak with the ideas germinating around in their heads concerning what more can be done with this band. He helps build on the base idea of that first album, and they usually create something of a creative peak with those second albums. Don’t get me wrong, I love the third albums, as in King for a Day, Suspended Animation and Anonymous, and as I wrote I think California is better than Disco Volante, but the second album peak seems to be a standard for most of Patton’s ventures. (Most true Bungle fans would say Disco Volante is superior to California.) I imagine those with some authority in the conventional music world might begrudgingly admit that they once considered Mike Patton one of the most talented singers in rock music. They probably all acknowledged that he possessed one of the most versatile and dynamic voices in modern music, characterized by an extraordinary vocal range, stylistic adaptability, and emotive depth. His voice spans six octaves, reportedly from E1 to E7, though some sources conservatively estimate around five octaves (approximately C2 to C7). This range allows him to seamlessly shift from guttural growls and primal screams to operatic falsettos and silky crooning, often within a single song. The experts who admitted all that might also add, “At some point, it didn’t matter how talented he was, because he wasted that incredible voice on music so abrasive that he basically alienated so many of us. In 1995, we all loved the underappreciated King for a Day, but when he hit us with Disco Volante, we shook our heads trying to figure out what he was doing. Most of us dismissed the initial Bungle album a one-off side project, then he doubled down with an even weirder album, and he topped it all off with an album we considered career suicide with the vocal experiments on Adult Themes for Voice (1996). That led us to dismiss him, because we realized he had no interest in becoming a marketable talent.” If you’ve read the writings of mainstream rock critics for as long as I have, you know that they have a difficult time understanding why someone would pick up a pencil and musical instrument and not try to do everything they could to sound like Springsteen, Dylan, or Joey Ramone. They don’t understand why someone would use vocal effects, as opposed to writing meaningful and important social commentary to help us reshape our world. We could excuse this with the idea that musical tastes are relative, but their blanket dismissal of anything different led me to start reading periodicals like Alternative Press and Decibel, who recognized what artists like Patton were trying to do. They praised Patton for his risk-taking, and they hailed his fearless innovation. As for the “marketable talent” comments we’ve heard, some fans and critics note that while he abandoned whatever mainstream potential awaited him, Mike Patton did develop a substantial cult following with each progression into the weird, strange, and just plain different. The next question any gifted artist must ask themselves soon after they discover they have a talent for something is what do I do with this? Patton, and Faith No More, could’ve followed up 1989’s The Real Thing with some version of The Real Thing Part Deux, and they could’ve gone onto develop a template, or a formula, in the ZZ Top, AC/DC vein. The mainstream music critics often eat up commodification of a brand as a cash grab. Mike Patton, and all of the musicians he chose to surround himself with in his numerous ventures, could’ve made a whole lot of money, enjoyed all the trappings of fame as rock stars. We can saw all we want about artistic integrity and all that, but it can’t be easy to turn away from the prospect of making truckloads of money. Contrary to what detractors say, money and fame can bring a us whole lot of happiness … if we love what we’re doing. If Mike Patton, and all of the musicians he chose to surround himself with in his numerous ventures, followed the formula of “building trust” with listeners, they would’ve been so bored and unsatisfied artistically. Patton obviously chose to use whatever gifts and talent he had to confound us and obliterate our boundaries in his pursuit of his version of artistic purity, and he chose projects and players who shared his philosophy. If the young Patton had a career path, or a place he “wanted to be in twenty years,” he obviously grew so bored with the “current” direction of his career so many times that he needed to do something decidedly different and out of his comfort zone so often that I don’t think he has any comfort zones left to destroy.

Faith No More: Sol Invictus

May 26, 2015July 18, 2015 RilalyLeave a comment

Three things that are consistent with just about every review of Faith No More’s (FNM) latest output Sol Invictus: It’s been 18 years since 1997’s album Album of the Year; the single Epic was their greatest hit; and the boys in the band were considered zany back in the day. The rock critics also make the leap from that latter point to suggest that that zaniness eventually created a rap/funk/rock movement that we’re all familiar with today. (Side note: Anthony Keidis, and the Red Hot Chili Peppers have hotly contested the idea that FNM created this movement.) Most of the critics also speak of the multitude of projects that the band members have been involved in since the 1997 album, and the fact that the album is named after a Roman Sun god. What is not stated in any of these reviews is that the very idea of an FNM reunion is emblematic of the dire straits of the music industry as a whole.

This isn’t to say Sol Invictus is a money grab, or at least it doesn’t sound like it was. Yet, the reunion is evidence of something that members of this band, Pavement, and to varying degrees Soundgarden, Blur, and The Verve, said would never happen. Or, if they never said “never”, they suggested it would be a cold day in hell before they even considered it. FNM fans would probably argue that the reunion was spawned by how well the members of the band got along together in their most recent European, reunion tour. If we conceded that point, and we have to to some degree, we could hit those same fans with the question: why did they get together for that tour in the first place?

In the eighteen years that have followed the dissolution of the FNM, lead singer Mike Patton was often asked about the possibility of them ever getting back together again, and on one occasion he said, and I paraphrase:

Every so often, a guy will approach me with a suitcase full of money and a plan for how the reunion of Faith No More will work. Maybe if they would offer us two suitcases we could talk.”

To be fair, Patton never hinted that there was animosity within the band, and he never said never, but he did leave the impression that it would be a cold day in hell. Those of us that pined for a reunion, and parsed Patton’s words for hope, read him speaking about fond memories, and a recognition that none of what he did after FNM would’ve been possible were it not for FNM. We read interviews in which he said he learned so much about the craft from those days, and that he was eternally grateful for the opportunity they gave him (my words). We also read him say that he had learned to put the past behind him, and that he felt that they had all reached a creative peak with one another on their last album, and we read lines that amounted to him hoping that no one would hold it against him, but that he was just not interested.

Unless, perhaps, the industry fell to such a level that no one could make money anymore? Unless the dire straits of the industry reached a point where wives were approaching the former band members with employment brochures from the local life insurance company? Hell may not have frozen over, as it did with the Eagles, but there is an apparent point where even the most stubborn artist can no longer laughingly reject that guy with one suitcase full of money.

It may seem like unnecessary cynicism to include such a point, and it may be sad to think that it reached that point for these gifted musicians, but there does come a point where pole dancing around the elephant in the room becomes so tedious that someone’s got to jam a thumb in it.

One, almost universal complaint of the album Sol Invictus, from these rock critics, is that it is not breathtakingly original. The track Sunny Side Up was singled out for the theme of criticism leveled at the album as an example of how FNM followed their soft-loud-soft formula a little too closely. Any fans of the lead singer Mike Patton know that the man has not followed a formula in many of his works, and that he has numerous artistic, and largely inaccessible albums in his catalog. My contention is that once you’ve established your bona fides as a risk-taking, boundary-breaking artist, you can go ahead and make more accessible albums. There is a trade-off, in other words, in which a true artist shows that he can nimbly cross borders without doing damage to his artistic core. And while Faith No More may be more accessible, and more formulaic, than many of Patton’s other projects, FNM’s definition of accessible and formulaic is far more creative and artistic than the many other, computer generated artists in the modern day lists of music.

The one track that some of these reviews list as a standout in originality, on the Sol Invictus album is: Matador. Consider me too well-versed on 80’s hair metal bands if you want, but I consider this song to be heavily influenced by the Warning and Rage for Order-era Queensryche albums. While this track may be original in the FNM catalog, it is not breathtakingly original as far as I’m concerned. I do understand that most people don’t have a thirty-year reference base, but one would expect someone from the world of rock critics to pick up on this one.

One decent excuse for wanting the material on Sol Invictus to be more original comes from Ms. Zoe Camp from Pitchfork.com:

There’s nothing necessarily wrong with a band repeating itself. But because Faith No More have such a long history, and their members are responsible for music in a staggering array of styles, it’s hard not to expect more, to wish that they might in some way top themselves, or at least change direction.”

Among the influences that Zoe Camp, and Adam Workman of The National, list for Faith No More (FNM) is Nirvana? Nirvana? How could anyone listen to any FNM song and think Nirvana? FNM actually came out before Nirvana is a point that I would make in this argument. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with Nirvana, of course, but comparing the two sounds is like comparing Neptune and Venus. They’re both planets, and their existence is influenced to varying degrees by the Sun, but the comparisons really end there. I realize that one of the members of FNM was friends with Kurt Cobain, but unless these critics are privy to information I don’t have, I don’t know how anyone could list Nirvana as an influence. One song Star A.D., was supposedly an homage to Cobain, but lead singer Mike Patton has denied even that. Perhaps these two reviewers were attempting to frame the era in which these two bands were popular, but other than that I don’t see a Nirvana influence in any FNM songs or albums.

Most FNM fans, aching for new material, were a little disappointed by the November 2014 single MF. For those unacquainted with the single, the full name of the single is the swear word. We feared that this was a hint of the material to come. The song itself is decent, but we feared that FNM was trying too hard to be racy, naughty, and that it was a cover for a lack of creative ingenuity in the manner that a stand up comedian with subpar material tries to tap into the audience’s preference for a tableau that is titillating and exciting through swears. Not only that, but there was the “act your age” element to it that led some of to believe that these fifty-something rockers were trying too hard to sound young.

When the Superhero track was released, some of us were relieved. Did it sort of plagiarize other material in FNM’s back catalog? Or, could it be stated that it was a Patton-influenced Tomahawk-like track? Whatever the case, it was an excellent re-introduction to the FNM sound.

Some of the reviews focus some of their space on Mike Patton’s lyrics. In my opinion, as I’ve stated in a number of music reviews, when you isolate most lyrics from the music, they are actually pretty mindless.

Lyrics,” as Patton has said many times, “simply fit the music. Lyrics, or vocals, at their best, should be used as nothing more than another instrument in a song. No more, no less.” (Paraphrase.)

If you are still a Mike Patton fan, at this point, you’re not one that demands that he fulfill some sort of unquenchable thirst for knowledge and philosophy you have in his lyrics. A fairly decent chunk of his output involves non-verbal, guttural sounds, and some of it is even in a foreign language. Some of the great lyricists in rock history have stated that they were surprised by the effect their lyrics had on people. The reason for this, we can only guess, is that it was not their intention to be thought-provoking, as much as it was to provide “cool” imagery in word collages made famous by William S. Burroughs, and later used by David Bowie.

Most lyricists are not trying to be philosophers, social commentators, or poets, and they’re not trying to write that college thesis that they never had the chance to write after dropping out of school to pursue the dream of being a musician. The import given to most rock lyrics occurs in the creative minds of rock critics mining the material for something they can expound upon. If I had the ear of a rock journalist for one minute this would be my plea, get over your obsession with lyrics, they mean far more to you than anyone else.

Chris Conaton of Pop Matters writes that:

Sol Invictus probably isn’t going to top Angel Dust or The Real Thing on most fans’ lists of favorite Faith No More albums, but it’s a step up from Album of the Year and holds its own with the strong but slightly bloated King for a Day, Fool for a Lifetime record. This is a solid comeback album that succeeds on its own terms. Namely, the whole band sounds engaged and enthusiastic to be working together, and that’s good for everyone that’s ever had a vested interest in Faith No More.”

The very idea that anyone that follows what “most FNM fans” think would consider The Real Thing for their top FNM albums’ list reveals that that person has no idea how most hard-core, longtime FNM fans think. Most of them don’t even mention The Real Thing on FNM discussion boards. Perhaps those that are just now learning of FNM, or those only familiar with FM radio’s version of FNM would consider that album for their top two. For most of us, however, The Real Thing put FNM on the map, and we’ve moved past it to such a degree that unless we’re bit by the retro bug, it is growing dust in our basement. Most true fans would surely agree that Sol Invictus is not going to cause anyone to forget Angel Dust, however, and the point about King for a Day, Fool for a Lifetime would probably lead to some debate, but Mr. Conaton’s greater point about Sol Invictus appearing to be more of a creative interest for the band, than a purely financial one appears to be a strong one.

Reading through the critical reviews of this album, and all album reviews, this reader gets the sense that most rock critics are less concerned with you actually buying the album, in question, than they are getting you to scroll up to see the writer that wrote the review. They use huge, lofty words to describe the band’s history, and they use flowery language to describe the intricacies of the music involved on the album. It is, of course, incumbent on them to prove some mastery of both in any album review, but some critics get so out of hand that it can appear a little self-indulgent at times. Sol Invictus is a hard rock album that will remind you why you fell in love with the artistic brilliance of Faith No More in the first place, and just about everything that Mike Patton has involved himself in over the past twenty-five years. The fact that the music therein will never cause the hardcore, longtime fan of FNM to forget Angel Dust; coupled with the fact that the lyrics will never cause you to forget Robert Frost should not deter you from purchasing an album that someone finally approached them with two suitcases (or the one that is now more valuable in the current climate of the music industry) shouldn’t deter you from purchasing what happens to be a damn good, hard rock album.

Secret Chiefs 3 Book of Horizons: Folio A

November 19, 2013December 13, 2023 RilalyLeave a comment

“This isn’t Westoxification, this isn’t Drupad — it’s not Ram Naryan, its ROCK!”—Trey Spruance

Anyone who attempts to review a Secret Chiefs 3 (SC3) album has their hands full. How does one describe such vast music in a short article, and keep it concise enough to maintain a reader’s attention? Is SC3 classical? No, but it does contain elements of classical music. These elements may not be recognizable to fans of Mozart, Bach, and Beethoven, but they do carry the same revolutionary spirit that followed those composers in their era. Will SC3 remind a listener of Arab, or Middle Eastern, music? Yes, but as the guitarist (and leader) of SC3, Trey Spruance, will tell you, if you played SC3 in any Middle Eastern country, “They would consider the music as foreign as your mother and father would.” Is the philosophy of SC3 based on Spruance’s interest in Persian philosophy? Yes but not directly, as Spurance stated:

“It solved a philosophical riddle that I had always needed to find an answer to, and Secret Chiefs is the musical expression, the exploration of those thoughts.”

Is the music similar to the type of music Ennio Morricone used in the soundtrack to The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly? Yes, but we cannot listen to SC3 without hearing the evolution, and personalized interpretations, of Morricone’s general ideas.

As Greg Prato, of AllMusic.com, writes, “(SC3) is a combination of Ennio Morricone movie scores, world music, experimental noise-rock, and heavy metal.”{1}

Blake Butler, of Allmusic.com, described SC3 as, “Indian/Asian-sounding melodies overlaid with wildly cavorting, techno rhythms and a tiny bit of metal, infused with a sense of mystery and paranoia from the thematic artwork based on number theory and assumedly Hindu belief systems.” He has also basically said that he didn’t think there would be much of a market for this kind of “skewed version of Indo/Pak music.”{2}

As with most artists, when Trey Spruance is confronted with anyone attempting to classify his creation, he finds such attempts limiting to the scope of SC3 music. He prefers to refer to SC3 as technologized music, that is contemporary Middle Eastern music, combined with a discernible western influence.

Spruance, as indicated by this War and Peace length explanation of the totality of his vision, has as much difficulty describing the music of SC3 as any reviewer, or blogger. He is either being sardonically complex, when describing his philosophical approach to music, or it is so infused by a multitude of influences that cannot be condensed to a simple chapter … of War and Peace. {3}

The History

For those unfamiliar with the band(s) Secret Chiefs 3, they arose out of the ashes of the late great Mr. Bungle. They are, basically, Mr. Bungle without lead singer Mike Patton. They are, largely, the work of Mr. Bungle’s guitarist and keyboardist Trey Spruance with the assistance of two other Chiefs, formerly of Mr. Bungle, bassist Trevor Dunn and drummer Danny Heifetz.

The reports of the Mr. Bungle’s demise have it that Mike Patton could no longer deal with the work ethic of some of the members (see Spruance) of the band. The reason we can specify Spruance, in our interpretation of these relatively vague Patton complaints, is that Patton worked with Dunn and Heifetz soon after Bungle’s breakup. On that charge, history has vindicated Patton, judging by the number of bands, and the total number of projects Patton has involved himself in in the intervening years, versus those of Spruance.

Spruance, for his part, has argued that while he considers most of Patton’s post-Bungle works interesting, quality works, he thinks some of them sound rushed, and that they probably could’ve been perfected with time. Thus, it could be said that, at the very least, Spruance’s approach to music is more methodical and patient than Patton’s. One has to hope that the breakup of one of the best American bands wasn’t as simple as that, and that doesn’t appear to be the case with Spruance, as he stated that Patton was an egomaniac who wanted everything done his way:

“Patton’s subsequent resentment towards me is a fairly predictable outcome. You don’t stand up to him and stay off his (dung)-list. A bummer, yeah, but it’s essentially a self-protecting reflex action – something I don’t really feel a need to hold against him too much. He has his way. It won’t change.”

That having been said, it appears as though time does, indeed, heal all wounds, as Mike Patton is the vocalist on one of the best tracks of Book of Souls: Folio A: La Chanson de Jacky. This song marks the first time that Patton and Spruance have worked on a released track together since Mr. Bungle’s demise in 2004. It is a cover song of a 1965 Euro song that has a feel –or to use an old, hippie adjective– a vibe that would have fit in quite nicely on Patton’s Mondo Cane.

The wait

Those who loved the SC3 album The Book of Souls: Book of Horizons later learned that it was the first of a trilogy that we assumed would be available later that same year, or soon thereafter. Patient fans soon began to think that they may not live long enough to see the completion of that trilogy, started in 2004. It appears as though that day has finally arrived, as Folio A is the first part of a two part release that will be followed by the release of Folio B, which Spruance declared to be soon to follow. Longtime fans hope that soon to follow does not amount to another ten years.

“Time scales don’t really apply to Secret Chiefs 3,” Trey Spruance.

Between the two Book of Soul albums, SC3 fans have been treated to a greatest hits album, Path of Most Resistance, a couple EPs, a brilliant soundtrack for a movie-never-made called Le Mani Destre Recise Degli Ultimi Uomini, and an interpretation of John Zorn work’s Xaphan Book 2—The Book of Angels Volume 9. The latter work put to rest any speculation that Zorn and Spruance were still feuding over The Weird Little Boy session. Spruance claimed there was never a feud between the two of them, but that he didn’t care for Zorn’s free form jazz, and that he simply preferred to work in tighter arrangements. This begs the question, had Spruance never heard Zorn’s work, or his style of production, before this project? (Note: Zorn produced Mr. Bungle’s 1991 self-titled debut.) Weird Little Boy was released in 1998, and it is exactly what Spruance complains about: free form, unfocused, and nonsense, music that is John Zorn (and jazz in general) at his worst, in this author’s relatively informed opinion.

The Music and Philosophy of Book of Souls: Folio A

For those familiar with prior Chiefs’ seven releases, Folio A has the vibe that was originally unearthed in most of the songs on the landmark, Mr. Bungle release California. Spruance, of course, states that the artistic impulses behind SC3’s music began years before Mr. Bungle, but those who are used to reading artists describe their productions, know that very few artists will allow a simple description to go by without, at least, attempting to add some form of complication to it. If the impulses began before Mr. Bungle, it’s safe to say that they saw greater maturity, and probable fruition, during Mr. Bungle, particularly the California sessions.

Longtime listeners hate to admit that they enjoy the familiar sounds on an otherwise complicated barrage of music hitting you over the head, but there are times when a listener needs some sort of familiarity as an introduction to the music. SC3’s version of the Theme from Halloween, titled Personae: Halloween is such an intro for uninformed listeners, and those having a little trouble digesting the complicated Folio A album may want to consider listening to this song as an intro. All of the SC3 songs on the Foilo A album have the IndoPak/Euro feel to them, with an ever present Ennio Morricone feel attached.

There are six short tracks on Folio A that provide elaborate radio station identifier sounds, but it’s the other seven that will probably form the base of long time listening for any fan.

Trey’s careful, methodical approach takes what could be discerned as chaos on first listen, but the music eventually grows on you, until the careful structure comes out on repeated listens. Folio A has a base sound, in other words, but each song depends on the varying approaches brought by each sub-band within the band. As Spruance describes:

“UR is sort of a rock version of Western tonality, and Traditionalists is more of a cinematic, soundtrack thing, whereas FORMS harks back to an earlier age of Western music, sort of a late romantic era being played by automated machines, band organ, that kind of thing.

“Ishraqiyn is more the quasi-Pythagorean tonalities, referring to the more Eastern tonal system. Holy Vehm is sort of crushing those things together in a violent collision, and Electromagnetic Azoth is actually the center of the whole thing, distributing all the different tonal systems and sometimes coming out seemingly chaotically, but it’s actually very structured. Electromagnetic Azoth is the band that takes the seed motifs and distributes them to the different bands. So the different band’s tonal approaches are used to reinterpret each motif.”

Seven different bands (six sub-bands), seven different ideas, and seven different approaches to seven different songs, (Ishraqiyn and UR each have two songs on the latest LP) for a unified whole. This could lead to chaos, but as described earlier, Spruance has carefully, and methodically, worked them into a structured umbrella.

Spruance described this approach to Progsphere as such:

“There might be one motif, or ‘theme’ for each of these (songs), a philosophical concept that gets tossed around in the music. It gets redistributed around, think of it like filters or a prism; how a prism reflects different colors, but takes in one force of light that gets refracted, it’s like that. Scattering the lights into different modalities, that’s the best way I could describe it.{4}

In an attempt to describe how he approaches the instruments that he plays throughout all of the SC3 albums, Trey said:

“I’m not really an instrumentalist. I’m more of a composer, so that wasn’t going to be fulfilling to me (to simply play, and progress, with the guitar). So I started studying the musical systems of antiquity to try to understand what made them tick and what they were invoking.”

I don’t know if I’m alone with such concerns, but in the last couple of years I’ve found it relatively depressing to learn how little some of my favorite artists had to do some of their best works. With some artists, it’s obvious how little they had to do with the work that happens to carry their name, but there were others that I always believed had near-dictatorial control of their projects. I found it relatively depressing to learn that some of them came into the studio at the 11th hour and wrote some lyrics, and put some cherries atop the pie. I could list names here, but that isn’t what this is about. It’s more about celebrating the standards set up by those few micromanagers who say that if my name is going to be on it, I’m going to micromanage this thing to death, until it reaches my definition of artistic truth. Spruance, Patton, and John Zorn (other than most of his over 20 Book of Angels projects) appear to be these types of artists.

“I feel like I have to take on all of the burden myself; micromanage everything. If you’re going to be putting in a million hours into making this record, if your heart’s not into it, then it’s not going to have any power to it.”

As I said, it’s difficult to review this music. As with most other music, a reviewer can say that when one listens to this music I’m reviewing, they’ll hear a dash of artist A, a mixture of artists B and C, and a heavy dose of artist D. A listener just can’t do that with the Secret Chiefs 3, if their frame of reference is largely western rock. I suppose if one grew up on Morricone, Persian, Arab, and other Middle Eastern music, they could say that it’s derivative, but I would find that surprising. Trey has said that his audience is all over the map, logistically, and demographically, but I have a hard time believing that young westerners, who prize rebellion from parental concerns for their musical identity, will find much appealing in SC3’s music. I’m guessing that the majority of Sc3’s demographic is composed of forty-somethings who are tired of all the typical music out there. For it’s not music that will tick off anyone’s parents, but it may cause them to worry about their child’s mental stability after the kid closes the door and cranks it.

{1} http://www.allmusic.com/album/second-grand-constitution-and-bylaws-hurqalya-armarillo-mw0001016363

{2} http://www.allmusic.com/album/book-m-mw0000591048

{3} http://www.markprindle.com/spruance-i.htm

{4}http://www.prog-sphere.com/interviews/an-interview-with-trey-spruance-of-secret-chiefs-3/#sthash.7E1f9dF5.dpuf