Kaada & Patton - Live (Ipecac)
3/5
By: Charlie Potter
Does Mike Patton really know what he is doing? Or does he just constantly find himself in these weird situations? What is going on here? How does a mad genius like Mike Patton end up making such aimless music?
The most irritating thing that you notice about this music is that it seems that neither Mike Patton nor Kaada seem to have bothered to make the tracks a cohesive whole. The art of making a cohesive track is a very abstract concept to my mind, because although there are many changes in style, pace, sound and every character of a musical phrase for a lot of the (Patton side project) Fantômas tracks as well as the Kaada pieces, there seems to be something perfect and finished about them (especially the Fantômas stuff), whereas here there doesn't seem to have been as much care gone into the temporal structure of the music, meaning the only focus is on the ideas. Is that enough?
Well, yes. If Mike Patton has proved one thing throughout his lifetime, it's that if all other music has an attribute, your music does not necessarily have to have the same attribute to have merit, so long as there is something in it's place, or more of something else. In the words of Sol Lewitt, "A work of art need only be interesting".
So what do we have instead? Quite simply, loads of ideas. A lot of them, although well produced, are quite raw ideas, more than most bands could ever hope to fit into one live show (which, let's not forget, is what this is). This is in a way no surprise from Kaada, who is well known in his home country of Norway as a film score composer, as his job is to create particular moods. Cohesiveness is not something that really goes with the job as the cohesive whole is provided for you by the film.
But Mike Patton has no such excuse, he has shown through his work with Mr. Bungle and Fantômas that he is more than capable of making not only cohesive music but beautifully crafted compositions. Yet he has now been responsible for an increasing amount of releases that not only aren't well crafted, but don't really have enough quality ideas in place of the cohesion.
One way of understanding Mr. Patton is to look at his earlier work and realise that Zappa is weaved into the fabric of his being. He will cite avant death metal bands until he's blue in the face, but to my knowledge there is no evidence of him ever admitting to stealing a small piece of music from the Zappa classic 'Weasels Ripped My Flesh'. Zappa loved just messing around and knocking stuff out, but he also occasionally proved that he could lovingly care for every nano second if he wanted to.
The release of this DVD is a little confusing considering the album was released years ago. This is taken from a one off performance, on quite an impressive stage set up, with quite an amazing band. The camera work is great, done in a sort of grainy black and white filmic way. It came out just before Christmas, so I can understand it a little more, although I would much rather find a good recording of a Melvins performance from earlier this year in my stocking. Also, I think that this is Mike Patton's best way of cashing in on his 'old member of Faith No More' status after that Peeping Tom album went tits up.
Mike Patton very definitely leads the way on the footage, which is not surprising considering his years of big stage experience. And as always, he says something satisfyingly stupid half way through upon introducing the band. I remember hearing how during one of the Tomahawk performances in Manchester, he stood beating his chest saying 'MAN!' before pointing out to the audience and having them say 'chester' before introducing Buzz Osborne as 'Original O.G.' and Buzz looking like he just wanted him to shut up and get on with the show. It's something I've come to expect from Mike Patton shows. I even look forward to it. This time, we're treated to the information that this is Kaada's world, and "we're just living in it".
Watch the trailer to 'Kaada / Patton Live' HERE.
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