I picked up the new Fantomas CD “Suspended Animation” on Friday. When I say “picked up”, I mean I bought it. Picking it up was indeed part of the purchasing process, but please also include taking it to the store counter and paying some money for it so it was mine into the words “picked up”… and that’s what I’m talking about.
Needless to say, Fantomas have outdone themselves once again. It’s not a traditional CD package – with this release, they made a really keen CD-sized calendar crammed full of really cool artwork and a theme song to go with each page. It is noisy, abstract, incredibly grating at times, and an incredibly, dare I say “beautiful” artistic endeavor altogether.
It is by no means music you’d put on in the background while doing chores or having Grandma over for lasagna.. the music on this CD, like most Fantomas music, is a bunch of puzzles for your ears to unlock. It requires you to sit down and focus on it from CD start to CD finish in order to get what is really going on and hear the song structure, otherwise it probably just sounds like a bunch of annoying crap. And for many of you out there, no matter how hard you listen it would still sound like a bunch of annoying crap.. and that’s fine. That just means there will be one less meathead crowding the club when I go see them play (ha ha!)
Speaking of, they’re playing one of my favorite venues, the Fine Line, on April 20, and you can bet your arse I’m going to be there watching my anti-guitar hero guitar hero, Fantomas (and Melvins) geetarist Buzz Ozborne play weird, simple, yet complicated, twisted things on his Les Paul like no one else can. While I’m on the topic of Buzz, it’s a little known fact that the title song on my band’s CD “There’s A Bee In Here” is a tribute to him. I wrote it with him in mind.. his name is Buzz, the CD title has the word “Bee” in it, the song contains a bunch of time signature twists and a slow Melvins-style sludgy section in the middle… I’ll let you do the rest of the math. Me = big fan of song title encryption. Now that this secret is out, just don’t go thinking I’m not afraid of bees. I almost wet my pants today thinking one was on my arm (even though it’s only April 9)
Anyways, I’m sure this will prove to be an amazing show. Watching them pull this stuff off live is incredibly intense – there’s lots of musical hiccups, burps, bleeps, farts, brick walls, and other things that require all 4 members to constantly watch each other to set themselves up for the next move, and it makes for an entertaining experience unlike any other. And what they’re playing is so weird sometimes that you’ll catch them doing weird things to their instruments to get the noises out of them. Case and point: where else would you ever see drummer Dave Lombardo of Slayer fame stand up and hold one of his cymbals in midair for 10 seconds of silence and then abruptly throw it flat on the floor in front of the band members to get it to go “ssLLURP!” Or singer Mike Patton making face noises into a zillion different microphones, one of which is mounted inside of a gas mask he holds over his face?
Good, wholesome family entertainment, I tells ya.
