Wednesday, 18 January 2012
Strange. Wonderful. And Wierd.Fantomas are perhaps one of the finest bands most people have never heard of. Their strange and wonderful combination of ambient
nose and jazz-thrash metal is about as commercial a prospect as cyanide pie. To me, however, and hopefully you, this music – largely
shorn of chorus, discernible structure, or lyrics, is a manna from an angry heaven. Filmed one New Years Eve, Mike Patton – the voice
of Faith No More, Mr Bungle, Tomahawk, Peeping Tom, and many others – leads this unholy quartet (with members of
Mr Bungle, Mudhoney, and Melvins in his racous orchestra) through the entirity of their unsurpassed 2001 masterpiece
"The Directors Cut". For many, this band were a bag of rubbish. But this album, 13 themes from classic cinema recast and
covered with a respectful irreverance, is one of the finest records I have ever heard.
The performance is immaculate and finely honed - it is, amongst all other things, a unit that cohesively glues together seemingly
disparate influences to form a whole that is much more than the sum of the parts. And, given that the album they are performing in full
explores the world of cinema, the visuals are bizarre. Taking a cue from the classic tricks of old, don't expect a fimmaculate Blu Ray
presentation of a show at your local enormodrome. This mixes footages from phones, cameras, and treated formats, combined with a
dded grain, distorted, and playfully applied visual tricks including blurred moments, ghosting, static cross fades, fake VHS
interference, painted on glowing red devil eyes, and anything else you can think of treating the visual images as moving palette of
experiments.
Then again, if you made it to the third paragraph of this review, you'll know Fantomas aren't exactly Linkin Park for the middleaged.
You should expect more than the usual run-of-the-mill singer-points-and-everyone-goes-whoo experience you will get with your latest
Madonna live DVD. Besides, it's not as if there is a giant robot about to emerge from backstage, or anything like that for your
delection. Just four men (one in a hat) with a cacophony of noise for you to experience. If anything, there is little music in the world that
requires such rapt attention, as tempos rise and fall, music becomes a form to used, abused, and left for dead. Opening with "The
Godfather", the set for me, peaks with the totally fucking bugnuts 2-minute race through Jerry Goldsmith's theme "The
Omen" - during which Satan Worship has eemed quite so appealing. The drummer is a frantic blur of limbs. Throughout
the 70 minutes, the band roar and dip and play ; in the truest sense of the word, play – with the music with a sense of amusement and
outlandish quirky whimsy with whistles, theremins, and grinding guitars wormed into an experience I can best described as the
musical equivalent of extreme sex. As Maybe it's something you had to be there for, or something you had to feel in your guit at an
insane volume in a crowded room. Fantomas are, like everything these musicians has been involved in, a labour of love, where music
is made more with the idea of the glory of the noise instead of any eye towards key issues. Who cares how many copies it
sells? Who cares about many tickets? As long as you don't have to do a day job as well, a musician can make music, for that is what
he does and where his instinct takes him – often at the cost and sacrifice of pension schemes, medical insurance, or an affluent life,
but with a richness far beyond that of any bank balance. A glorious continuation of the muse, and the music.
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