190n120: 30 Years of Music with Adam Johnson...Episode Five: "One of the advantages of being disorganized is that one is always having surprising discoveries"

181. Tomahawk - Mit Gas (2003)

Some find Mike Patton's interpretive method of making music garish, but not me. I've come to see him in the same light as David Bowie or Frank Zappa, albeit lacking in the technical knowledge department. But, try as they may or might, no one quite sounds like Mike Patton.

Yes, he can make scary mouth noises; and yes, he speaks Italian. He loves reminding us. But what really makes Patton such a vital force in music is his flagrant dismissal of convention.
For one, he never learned how to sing. "Never have and probably never will," he says. "I learned what I could do with my voice on stages and because of the people that I was around...I was figuring it out on the fly. And I feel like I still am." I understand this doesn't make him the Tesla of rock singers or anything, but some things just make you feel good, and Mike Patton makes me feel good. There has always been a capricious quality to Patton's vocal expulsions, both sensical and non; a wink before the steam comes exploding out the ears.

Everyone has that spark, or many sparks - little bright, white-hot moments of excitement peppered throughout their day that scorches a spot in their memory. Tomahawk, Fantomas, and the Moonchild ensemble all owe their place on this list to Mike Hayes. One day in 2007 I showed up to work at Jimmy John's lamenting my having worn out my CD copy of Faith No More's Angel Dust. Mike Hayes in turn handed me Mit Gas, Tomahawk, Mr. Bungle's California, and Fantomas' The Director's Cut.
I listened to the second Tomahawk album first, appropriately titled because 'boom', big time 'boom'. What makes Tomahawk albums so much fun to listen to is being an alternative hard rock fan who grew up in the 1990s. I have Faith No More, Helmet, the Jesus Lizard, and the Cows all under one moniker kicking out some jams just for the fuck of it and it is awesome.

As much of a fan as he is of flaunting his own talents, Mike Patton is a devout collaborator. Much of his success in these projects comes from the people he puts around himself, and I like to think he has the sense to understand that. Pushing and pulling, inspiring and being inspired. Set up the shot, sit back for support and give your man the signal, then it's 'lift off'.

A hell of a lot of the sensibilities I've appropriated into my own guitar style come from Duane Denison's a-tunal ho downs. He may often sit on the root note, but his fingers do a lot of dancing, especially in Tomahawk, stretching those digits with precise noise to avoid the barrels that gorilla John Stanier keeps throwing at him. Top it off with Patton's sparkler-with-legs samples and vocal effects and you've got yourself a good ol' time. And also a great artistic example: when in doubt, do it.

Recommended Listening: Rape This Day, Capt. Midnight, Aktion 13F14

180. Neurosis - Enemy of the Sun (1993)

"Heavy" means a lot of things these days, with plenty of recording artists to count as the penultimate. Sleep are heavy; so are the Melvins. But there is a bottom to the Melvins' heavy; think the Pit from Mortal Kombat II - a cold, hard splat after a looong fall. Electric Wizard's heavy weighs as much as Sleep's skunkiest second-hand; and Yob found the end of the universe, and it is as dense as it is awesome.

Neurosis are unique. Neurosis are a different kind of heavy - a bottomless heavy. Like Rodney Dangerfield, Neurosis have tapped into the true "heaviness" - humanity. Some cats may go on and on about 'Thor's hammer'-this and 'Blacker than black'-that, but nothing hits harder than reality. Neurosis have made a career of excavating Nietzsche's abyss, and the deepest crevice of them all still hasn't looked away.

They never falter nor fail, but Neurosis have made the same album differently for thirty years; and Enemy of the Sun is my favorite. Their sense of composition clicks with me like few other artists. As a guitarist, I have to admit an affinity for drop-D tuning. If you had keys to Six Flags and all day every day...wouldn't you? Exactly. There are more riffs within drop-D tuning than there are stars in the sky, and Steve Von Till knows every constellation and its powers, even the unnamed ones. Neurosis' melodies harken to the same ancient past as Cancer and Taurus, but carry with them that "heaviness" Dangerfield often lamented in his act. They rollick just as much as they slog. Like Cthulu, these songs could be called timeless.

What attracts me most to Neurosis is their devastating sense of rhythm. From bursting bombs to pumping hearts, everything goes '1 & 2 &'. It's the pulse of the world, and Neurosis have blown way past keeping time to dictating all their own. Scott Kelly and Jason Roeder, the true peg and hole of the group, can command chaos and make it swing, and nice and low, too. Cacophony has a pocket, just like anything manifested from the cocaine sponge James Brown kept locked inside his head.

My first digestion of Enemy of the Sun lasted the prescribed 61:41, but I noticed no passage of time after the first bob of my head. The film and spoken-word samples seamlessly wove the maelstrom of "Cold Ascending" to the pummeling blows of "Lexicon" and the title track.
Then, somewhere through Simon McIlroy's aeon waves of keyboards I noticed drums; but not just three toms, a snare and a kick...all the drums. After breathing on the 0:01, Scott and Steve swallowed all the air in the world and were blazing it back at the listener at thermonuclear levels. "Cleanse" is seventeen minutes of CPR delivered by Bruce Banner as he becomes madder and madder and madder.
Wagner used to get flack for multiplying so many of the same melody from so many of the same instrument, stacking them on top of one another like bricks in a shithouse; but his concerts pounded sternums, and Neurosis take evident pointers from Heir Wagner's example.
But unlike Wagner's singular ensemble, there are characters within the rhythms, individuals. Probably my favorite (and superlative) track on the whole album, "Cleanse" paints a holographic portrait of Neurosis as a band - upon first glance, they're seemingly unmoving, glacial; then a blink comes and the rock is coming down over your head, and it's too late.

Recommended Listening: Lost, The Time of the Beasts, Cleanse