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“Spreading Terror”: Review of Fantômas, Suspended Animation (Ipecac, 2005) Fantômas was the name of a series of early 20th Century pulp crime novels by Pierre Souvestre and Marcel Allain. Admired by several generations of the avant-garde, Fantômas portrayed crimes with a grotesque poetry all its own, a poetry which spurned both realism and reality in favor of gratuitous, unbelievable murders. Mike Patton, the vocalist and composer behind the band Fantômas, is the most recent artist to take up something of Souvestre and Allain’s violent legacy – this time in the world of music. Since his beginnings in the experimental rock outfit Mr. Bungle, Patton has built a reputation on consistently pushing the limits of what is acceptable in nearly every genre, from rock to heavy metal to noise to so-called contemporary classical. His recent works have included a collaboration with notorious noisemonger Masami Akita (better known as Merzbow), a series of distorted recordings of his own voice manipulated in a 4-Track tape recorder called Adult Themes for Voice, and an instrumental piece inspired by F. T. Marinetti’s classic Futurist Cookbook. Fantômas, one of Patton’s side projects, has released five albums on Patton’s Ipecac label since its beginnings in 1999: the self-titled Fantômas, the horror movie themed The Director’s Cut, a joint project with Melvins Big Band called Millenium Monsterworks, the sprawling ambient Delirium Cordia, and, now, the multi genre romp Suspended Animation. At first glance, Suspended Animation might seem like a concept album: each of the thirty tracks is named after a made-up holiday in April 2005, the month it was released. April 17th is “National Cheeseball Day”, April 13th is “That Sucks Day” and April 3rd is “Don’t Go To Work Unless It’s Fun Day.” Suspended Animation’s biting humor comes through on these track titles, with their screwball parody of the arbitrariness of the Hallmark Holiday. In terms of packaging, Suspended Animation could be an item stocked by a Japanese import shop or Sanrio store. Its layout imitates the self-consciously cute Hello Kitty esthetic: the cover is a mosaic of cartoons with a pink flower-shaped sticker in the middle. Instead of a jewel case, the first pressing of the CD includes a spiral-bound illustrated mini calendar designed by Japanese artist Yoshitomo Nara. Each high-gloss page of the calendar, which corresponds to one of the tracks on Suspended Animation, features Nara’s colored pencil drawings. These drawings are, however, a far cry from the typical innocent Sanrio character – Nara’s subjects of choice are angsty cartoon pre-teens which are almost always crying, pouting, swearing, or pounding their fists in despair. The tension between cartoon art and over-the-top drama in the Nara sketches is a perfect metaphor for the music on Suspended Animation. From the opening of the very first track, we are bombarded with an incommensurable mix of goofy Looney Tunes laughs and metal power chords. But what could have easily been a simple gimmick is manipulated by Fantômas into an entire compositional strategy. One of the startling things about Suspended Animation is how it manages to sustain itself without any recourse to the “classical” rules of development, like repetitions, progressions, variations, or reprises. We never hear anything resembling the same melody twice. The whole album builds into a kind of rapid-fire succession of clichés which avoid coming off as hackneyed because they are pieced together in such a startling way. Patton has never had any qualms about alienating his listeners. And Suspended Animation is no exception: it pulls the rug out from under us whenever we – heaven forbid – start to get comfortable As soon as Suspended Animation settles into a pattern, it immediately veers off on a completely unpredictable tangent. Beats and styles are relentlessly used and discarded. The histrionic heavy metal is never allowed to reach its climax. A cheesy lounge interlude leads into a snippet of screaming hardcore, a Melt-Banana-esque riff is punctuated by the sound of Road Runner’s sprinting feet. Through this cut-up technique, Fantômas achieves an effect much closer to a cinematic montage than to what is usually thought of as musical composition. Suspended Animation plays like Léger’s Mechanical Ballet spliced with a Bugs Bunny cartoon and a Nine Inch Nails music video. Yet despite its conceptual baggage, Suspended Animation is an album that tries, most of all, to be playful. 4/16, “Rekindle Your Romantic Self Day”, is a charming tribal number with the sound of children playing in the background. 4/2, “National Peanut Butter Day”, starts out with a fuzzy melody which not be out of place on Sigur Rós. Suspended Animation is without a doubt more listenable than many of Patton’s other projects, like Adult Themes for Voice or the Merzbow collaboration, both of which are ear-splitting, hair-tearing journeys into insanity. Still, Suspended Animation is not music for the faint of heart: Patton was only half kidding when he made the Ipecac Records catchline “Making people sick since 1999.”
As with any important piece of music, Suspended Animation requires a period of acclimation to fully appreciate. It is frustrating, daring, flawed, and refuses to reveal its secrets after the first listen. Like the heroes of the avant-garde he is so fond of invoking, Patton places an enormous amount of faith in the transformative power of being “out there.” At a time when everything is decried as derivative, Suspended Animation presents itself as a manifesto for how to make the shock inspiring again.
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