Disco Volante

I have been away from this blog for a loooong time. Basically, I've been working full-time in a horrendous sandwich factory/bakery for 2 1/2 months (on a a zero-hour contract). I've been saving up money to help start pay rent and other living expenses for the second year of my masters. (I'm no longer getting any help from the very generous mum and dad bank.) I've saved up enough money to see me through the first couple of months without having to worry too much about money. Whilst I could get a lot of writing done to begin with, and I made quite a lot of progress with my novel, in the end I was left completely drained and didn't do any writing, or any reading, at all. All I had time for in the end was sleep (where I had nightmares about conveyor belts...). The horrors of being a responsible adult! And I'm experiencing this very late on in my mid-twenties! I've stopped working now, so I can get back to doin' what I love. I'll get back to writing my novel and reading books (I have a lot of interesting stuff on my bed-side table). I also want to get back to blogging a lot more. I will be going on a summer holiday in a lovely town near Barcelona for a week (in about five or six hours - without getting much sleep in my system!), so that will be put on hold for a little while. But what a lovely way to get back into blogging than with a lengthy post on Mr. Bungle's brilliant 1995 album Disco Volante! I intended it to be one of my usual punchy/brief posts, but it grew into a much longer piece. (Helped no doubt by track-by-track analysis!) By late September/early October I hope to finish my (first) novel Planet Zhelanie. By then, I will busy with my masters and with another full-time job (I think I'll go for an office job of some sort, not some horrendous mind-numbing menial thing), so I dunno if I'll have time to blog as much. Still, stick around my friend as I'm sure there will be a lot more silly-assed/half-baked writings to come! You seem to care about this stuff! That means the world to me! And I care more about these overgrown adolescent ventures more than anyone else! I never want to grow out of this shit!

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It is not very often that you find in the annals of recorded music a major record label releasing an album as ferociously experimental as Mr. Bungle's Disco Volante. The very same label that released this album, Warner Brothers, released Zappa's late 60s output as well as Beefheart's Trout Mask Replica. (When you read about Beefheart, it is often made out as if back then he was underground. Beefheart was a very popular phenomenon - most vaguely intellectual and vaguely middle-class people who lived at the time can remember him - and Trout Mask made it to 21 in the UK charts.) But back then the avant-garde was marketable. Mainstream publications wrote about avant-garde composers and the counter cultural youth were always sniffing around for the trippiest and most 'out there' thing.

Indeed, not coincidentally, as the global economic model in the late 70s changed and as industry as a whole become more marketised, the music industry was no exception. Even Zappa caved in, albeit in a very sarcastic and mean-spirited manner, by releasing goofy records which sounded vaguely commercial but snidely insulted commercialism. MTV came along and monopolised popular music. Before MTV, pop was a lot more multifarious. There were hundreds of record stations offering different varieties of music.  In the 70s, you could listen to avant-garde jazz, interesting contemporary composers, interesting prog-rock, world music, etc.. This was epitomised by Zappa, a tremendously popular rock star who was essentially an avant-garde composer. Even when punk came along - which, with the Sex Pistols, admittedly had commercial roots and it was a commercial movement - it led to interesting directions. It meant that many young people who were not musically literate and were listening to all this interesting stuff realised that they had in them to make interesting music.

Mr. Bungle were formed in 1985 whilst the band were in high school. They grew up in quite a bohemian town in Los Angeles called Eureka, though they were anything but bohemian. They were eccentric and alienated teenagers who would regularly get beaten up in school. (They named the group after a cheesy educational 1950s video about how to be a responsible and sanitised teenager. The clumsy 'Mr. Bungle' kid featured in the video is the antithesis of what a 1950s kid must follow. When I was a clumsy/weird teen and, sometimes ridiculed for being this weird specimen at school, when I first got into Bungle I could really identify with this. You can watch the video here.)  As with many teenagers/pre-teens who first get into music, and I no doubt count myself as being one of them, they became obsessed with heavy metal. They were steeped in bands like Sodom and Slayer. In fact, when they first formed they were a death metal band. When people get more serious about music and look around for different stuff, they discover new things. The young Bungle members discovered other varieties of pop music as well as jazz and avant-garde classical music. They correctly realised, and this at the time was a very radical, that hard metal and punk are not mutually exclusive from avant-garde classical and jazz. They realised that the more dissonant elements from those genres melded superbly well with the dissonance of metal. When Bungle guitarist Trey Spraunce first heard Stravinsky's Rite of Spring, he immediately made a connection with death metal and thought of the ways he could play metal with the unusual chords and harmonies deployed by Stravinsky. As a 15-year-old kid who had gone from hearing bands like Metallica to listening to composers like Stravinsky and jazz players like Miles Davis, Mr. Bungle were just the kind of thing that I was looking for.

Mr. Bungle soon became a post-modern genre-hopping band which acquired a niche local audience. At the time, they would sometimes vary from concert to concert. If they were confronted with a local punk audience, they would play punk. If they were confronted with a metal audience, they would play metal.  If they were confronted with some gentrified mums and dads, they would switch to something more palatable and play some lounge. Their aesthetic soon became to frenetically alternate from genre to genre within the same song in a matter of minutes or even seconds. South Francisco group Faith No More chanced across a Mr. Bungle demo and offered Mike Patton a chance to be their lead singer. Patton accepted. They recorded The Real Thing and their take on west coast funk-metal proved to be ridiculously popular. They sold millions of records worldwide. Their song 'Epic' became an MTV mega hit and received heavy rotation. FNM played stadiums around the world. Patton, a very handsome chap and very popular among the ladies, became an MTV pin-up. Although his behaviour was very erratic and he got up to some very unusual antics, this may just have been dismissed as irreverent 'rock 'n roll behaviour' and it was inconceivable back then that he would soon choose to stake out a wilfully obscure career in avant-garde music.

All this meant that Mike Patton's very experimental and very weird group Mr. Bungle landed a contract with Warner Brothers. The scene that was pioneering 'post-modern genre-hopping' the most was the New York downtown one. Its leading practitioner was, and still is, John Zorn. Zorn led his his iconic punk-jazz and-everything-else group Naked City at the time. Zorn was really one of the first people to fuse punk with free jazz. Bungle sought him out to produce their record and Zorn and Patton have gone on to collaborate extensively over the years. Zorn served as Patton and Bungle's mentor. The album had very novel ideas and there certainly was nothing like it at the time. (The closest thing to it was Zorn's Naked City group.) They used a lot of odd and distinctive chords called 'tritones.' Still, the material was culled from material they had largely played as teenagers. The lyrics, to put it politely, are juvenile. Whilst listening to 'The Girls of Porn' might well have been exceedingly fun as a teenager, it grates to listen to that track now. The emphasis on ska-funk means that big chunks of the album are pretty dull to revisit for me. At times the album can seem like one big frat party, albeit one played with astonishing musicianship and a keen desire to experiment. (As a result, Bungle managed to annex Zappa's fan base very quickly, though they have never professed any interest in his music.) For all of its creativity and its highly original arrangements, the album influenced some extremely rancid stuff. Nu-metal bands such Korn, Limp Bizkit and Slipknot mystifyingly cited Bungle and this album in particular as an influence (as well as FNM's more left-field outing Angel Dust, where Patton was a lot more involved with the song writing). All of the Mr. Bungle members would feel awkward when this was posed to them and they always insisted that they should not be held in any way responsible for that music.

But it was with their follow-up four years later, Disco Volante, where Bungle really came together. Without doubt it is one my favourite albums. And without doubt, it is my favourite album from the 1990s - in any genre and released either by a major or a small record label. All of the band's both high-brow and low-brow influences are thrown into the mix. All the members had developed their skills having played in a plethora of jazzy and avant projects. Whilst Bungle always had a lot of these influences even as teenagers in the 1980s, they now had the know-how of how to develop the genre-hopping approach into something a little more advanced and sophisticated.

It is clear from the beginning that the band is making no concessions. The opening track 'Everyone I knew From High School is Dead' is deliberately noisy and chaotic. It has a very basic riff that soon degenerates into noisy noodling and crashing cymbals. Patton in this album utilised avant-garde vocal techniques for the first time. Singers such as Yamataka Eye from The Boredoms get very shouty with it and it becomes tedious. But Patton usually uses it purposefully and creatively and he has an extremely versatile vocal range through which to create a whole range of effects. On this track there is a vocal chant which sounds like a crowd of people, but is buried well within the mix of the thundering bass and sludgy guitar.

The next track 'Chemical Marriage' is very influenced by Ennio Moriconne (as if it's taken from some strange sci-fi film that he'd scored), lounge and smooth jazz. It is also embellished with a lot of exotic arabic percussion. It is interspersed with Patton scat-singing. It becomes clear by this track that he won't sing in any normal way - and certainly not within the staid paramaters of verse-chorus-verse.

Though it is with the track 'Carry Stress in the Jaw' that the album really starts to kick in and when it starts to completely blow me away. It is essentially a fusion of free jazz and speed metal. Written by bassist Trevor Dunn, he starts playing a devilishly complex line with the sax player. The track moves onto some sinister synth sounds, a fast though quiet bass line and an equally fast though hushed percussion accompaniment. Patton starts singing in a creepy voice. His lyrics are drawn from an Edgar Allan Poe poem, which adds to the sense of horror and dread. A brief blast of loud metal is followed again by a similar passage. This is followed by a jazz passage where the sax stars improvising atonally. The whole band are very much playing in a jazz idiom, but Trey Spruance storms in with a speed metal riff. The rest of the band joins him and Mike Patton starts shrieking. This again degenerates into some pretty noisy metal as Patton gurgles. This is followed by a line of music played the guitar, drums and keys. In counterpoint to this, the bass and vocals start playing a separate line as Patton continues to recite the Poe poem. This is a convoluted and meandering line of music, which starts to gain more and more urgency, with Patton raising his voice as it develops. This leads to an exhilarating speed metal passage, with Patton raucously screaming. This is followed by the same free jazz, speed metal and 'sinister synth passages' in quick succession, with some virtuosic drum soloing to boot. By the time that's over, it's just four minutes of music and I'm completely blown away.

However, on the same track we have a separate song called 'Secret Song.' Apparently they wrote this song without Trevor Dunn being aware of it and always kept it secret from him. (Patton plays bass on it instead.) Well after the track had already been recorded, Dunn found it and wrote some lyrics as to how 'they've kicked me out of the band.' This plays in to the band's absurdist humour as well as their desire to simply indulge and arse around whilst playing this music. Patton sings the lyrics in a 'Grandpa Simpson' voice which is hilarious. The track is funky and has some surf-music elements. There is a Bond-theme aspect to the guitar-playing. The album title 'Disco Volante' actually references a car in a James Bond film.

And again, just after you thought the album couldn't possibly get any better we get 'Desert Search for Techno Allah.' The track fuses middle eastern music, techno AND metal. If that sounds incongruous,  believe me, it's simply incredible how all those elements are merged into the fold of a very coherent song. There is a middle eastern melody (written by Trey Spruance, who has researched Persian scales and harmonic principles extensively) as well as some arabic percussion. This is in addition to a techno groove. Soon a heavy metal guitar starts playing a chord a few times, creating plenty of feedback. By this point, there are a lot of overdubs and a lot of strands of music. Patton creates sundry unusual vocal effects which are mixed at different volumes and appear at different points in the song.

The next track 'Violenza Domestica' is another favourite. (How many am I allowed?!) This track reveals Patton's penchant for Italian pop and Ennio Moriconne. Patton sings (well, recites, croons, squeals, mutters, whispers and shouts...) the lyrics in Italian. Patton had married an Italian woman and had a house in Italy at this point. The track also features a lot of tango. There are some virtuosic classical cello and piano passages, which lend the track an added veneer of musical sophistication. These are all segued by loud blasts of metal. There are also some unusual percussive noises (such as breaking glass and rustling knives) which may have been influenced by Harry Partch.

'After School Special' is as close as the band get to a straight rock song in the album. You could put this on at a party and no one would storm out of the room. Like the opening track 'Everyone I Knew From High School is Dead,' the lyrics are written by Dunn. It is clear that at this point he still felt bitter about his alienating adolescent experiences and still had not quite managed to move on. (It happens to a lot of us. In many ways, I haven't and still brood about a lot of those experiences.)

The next track 'Phleghmatics' was driven by Trevor Dunn's desire to write a twelve-tone piece for a rock band. There is a serial line of music played by the guitar and sung by Patton. Dunn, meanwhile, plays a stuttering bass line and the drums do plenty of blast beats. This is followed by a slow brooding metal passage played as a backdrop to a serial line of music played by two wind instruments. Soon the metal backdrop stops the wind instruments continue to play the line of music unaccompanied. They soon simply start doing some free jazz shronks and shrieks. Then the metal backdrops returns, the wind instruments play the line of music again, the song gains urgency and is then resolved. The lyrics are about paranoia, insomnia, anxiety and depression. One of the other tracks is called 'The Bends' and, as with the Edgar Allan Poe lyric, there is a really dark streak running throughout the album - in both the lyrics and in the art work.

'Ma Meeshka Mow Skowz' revisits the carnival/circus music aspect found in their self-titled album. There is a very dramatic and a somewhat quasi-Bach line played by an organ that starts the song. A jazzy sax plays the main line of music, which is revisited again and again and mimicked by Patton. The bass and drums are especially frenetic and impatient. Patton maniacally sings in his own made-up language (hence the odd title). As ever, there are plenty of metal chords and Spruance features with some fine guitar soloing.

The track 'The Bends' sees the band exploring avant-garde musique concrete. The track is comprised by  of about six different segments and runs for about nine minutes. In these avant-garde sounds, we hear the influence of Varese, Stockhausen and Penderecki. As stated before,  there is a very dark, brooding and menacing quality running throughout the album and this track in particular.

The next track 'Backstrokin'' is a little more light-hearted and runs just about three minutes. There is a funky bass and and some jazzy keys. The title references Patton's obsessive proclivity for masturbation, which he has not kept secret from anyone. It also reminds us that Bungle have not lost their boyish and cheeky sense of humour. As the song ends, Patton mutters 'fartin,' pissin,' and strokin' my fucking dick.'

The song 'Platypus' is manic and frenetic and may be referencing Patton's interest in cartoon music (which he has touched on in several other projects and has basically derived from Zorn's own obsession with the genre). The song is by and large also a chance for Dunn to highlight his virtuosic bass playing. This track is especially jazzy and there is a section where the whole band starts improving in a jazzy fashion and it becomes increasingly chaotic and it all falls apart. The sax squawks and makes animal noises in a highly Zorn-esque way. The lyrics are all about the animal platypus, which Trevor Dunn developed a peculiar fascination for. There is a quasi-scientific/biological slant to the lyrics and there are times when Patton recites them as if he were a television presenter in a Attenborough-esque nature programme.

The final track 'Merry go Bye Bye' ends the album in an incredibly climactic and overpowering way. The lyrics, written by Spruance (he also wrote all of the music on this track), wistfully and nostalgically evokes people taking telescopes to find in the starry heavens relatives and friends who have passed away. The track starts very powerfully, in a mellow rock fashion. There is nothing that unusual about it until it abruptly moves onto death metal. This section is especially stimulating and Patton showcases his death metal growls. This is followed by some harsh white noise and other avant-garde electronic sounds. Then we get more death metal (!) followed by some ethereal electronic sounds. This is when Bungle bring the emotional element in, without being at all mawkish. They play some arresting chords, with undistorted guitar, and Patton powerfully and beautifully sings as 'to how I will come back to you.' This song ends the album and, after way over an hour of music, we have gone through a lot.

You would have thought that Bungle had wrapped things nicely and in a somewhat more compromised way. This would be expecting too much. There is a hidden track full of hideous noises. They are just arsing around in the studio and they are pissing themselves with laughter. (In the liner notes it is called 'Nothing' and is credited to drummer Danny Heifietz and wind player Theo Lengyel, referencing the fact that neither band member contributed to any of the song writing.) If any case were to be made that Mr. Bungle is nothing more than masturbatory self-indulgence, one could point to this track. But then, the group may not deny it either. By including these noises at the end, the band is subversively recognising the fact that they are pretty much free to do whatever they want on a major record label. They are pretty much telling a mainstream audience 'take this, this is what we do and what we are interested in - lump it or leave it.'

Four years later Mr. Bungle returned after another lengthy hiatus with California. That was a much poppier album where they brought their crazy genre-hopping and avant-garde approach into a more focused song-oriented format. It was another brilliant record. After a supporting tour, the band seems to have acrimoniously broken up in 2000. This disappointed a lot of hardcore fans who were hoping that Patton would focus more on Mr. Bungle after having more time on his hands following the break up of Faith No More in 1998. It seems that a rift developed between Trey Spruance and the rest of the members. The reunion of Faith No More in 2009 raised hopes for a Bungle reunion, but nothing seems to have happened. (Though Spruance and Patton seem to be in good terms after having played a Faith No More concert together in Chile.) Mr. Bungle is without doubt the best and most exciting project for every musician involved. Mike Patton, Trey Spruance and Trevor Dunn have done some brilliant stuff in all of their extensive and eclectic projects. But in Bungle their creative outlooks marry in a wonderful and synergetic way. Patton formed the extreme experimental metal band Fantomas where he has played  some frenetic Zorn/Naked City-derived stuff. This is in addition to collaborating with Zorn himself in a number of projects, most notably the occultist experimental metal band Moonchild. He has played more straight-ahead noise rock with Tomahawk. He has even ventured into synthetic pop music with Peeping Tom (in his own eccentric way, of course). He has done film music. Most recently, he hired an orchestra to perform some Italian pop oldies. The list goes on and on! Trevor Dunn is even busier, with hundreds of credits as side-man in a variety of records. He has become bassist of choice for John Zorn and has featured in most of his endless spate of releases (including the Moonchild group where his bass playing features prominently). He formed his own group Trevor Dunn's Trio-Convulsant, which plays jazz fused with heavy metal and power chords. He plays in a lot of New York jazz groups (where he moved from San Francisco a over a decade ago to ingratiate himself with the Downtown scene). He formed a rock group called Mad Love, citing his neglect of rock music in recent years. He also toured and recorded with the iconic post-punk/grunge/sludge metal group Melvins recently. I would say that Trey Spurance is the one who has had the most interesting career of the three. He has said that the crazy prolificacy of the avant-garde scene worries him and that he prefers to take time out to think through his music. He has said that avant-garde music has become to more market-oriented and that it turns too much attention to its eclectic nature and its careerist musicians instead of focusing on substance. His group Secret Chiefs 3 are an outlet for his interest in ancient Persian/Indian/middle eastern music. (As well as occasionally indulging in some death metal and west coast surf music.) He is a very well-read guy with a deep understanding of music theory and history. But as I said, these three creative individuals create their most earth-shattering stuff when performing together as Mr. Bungle.