Mike Patton - part I

Singing Italian pop songs from the '50s with an orchestra is just the latest unexpected left-turn from the American singer, who has stretched his amazing vocal skills over rock, metal, avant-garde, hip-hop, R&B, alt-rock, jazz, Native American music and everything in between... often in the space of one song.

His list of musical credits is so big that even dragging this Patton-apalooza out over two weeks wouldn't be enough, but we'll see how we go. Here's the first five in our series on Patton projects.

Fantomas

AS featured before in our Supergroups series, Fantomas comprises Patton, Slayer drummer Dave Lombardo, Melvins guitarist Buzz Osborne and Mr Bungle bassist Trevor Dunn. Experimental metal is about the best description for their sound, although "avant-garde metal" or "dada-metal" have also been used to describe their unique sound and approach to music. Their self-titled debut soundtracks a comic book, with the tracks listed by page numbers and comprising sound-effect montages, passages of trash metal and Patton creating disturbing rhythms and sounds with his incredibly flexible vocal chords. The Director's Cut followed and is their best known album in Australia (it cracked the ARIA top 20 in 2001) and features covers of movie themes, including a brutal take on The Godfather and excellent interpretations of Cape Fear, Rosemary's Baby, Charade and The Omen. The other albums are Delirium Cordia (a jarring yet fascinating 74-minute soundscape about surgery) and Suspended Animation (a combination of cartoon sound effects, chaotic metal and a calendar for the month of April - go figure). With such concepts and confounding sounds, Fantomas have well earnt their reputation as one of the most inventive and original metal bands on the planet.

Solo

MONDO Cane is the latest project Patton has released under his own name, but like his whole career, it's markedly different from his previous solo works. His unconventional debut Adult Themes For Voice (1996) is an insane cut-and-paste collection of vocal noises and found percussion that Patton recorded in hotel rooms while touring with his best-known band Faith No More. The follow-up Pranzo Oltranzista (1997) is similar but with added instrumentation from frequent collaborator John Zorn, William Winant (Mr Bungle) and Marc Ribot (Tom Waits). In 2008, Patton recorded the soundtrack to short film A Perfect Place, which is a far more orchestrated and condensed affair (even though the soundtrack runs 10 minutes longer than the film because Patton "got carried away"). He also did the soundtrack to Crank 2, an energetic mash-up of Patton-esque sounds that perfectly suits the film's hyperactive nature (and Patton's).

Tomahawk

ANOTHER Supergroup we've featured before, Tomahawk started as one of Patton's more conventional projects and comprised guitarist Duane Denison (The Jesus Lizard), drummer John Stanier (Helmet, Battles) and bassist Kevin Rutmanis (Melvins). Their self-titled debut is a disturbing alt-rock concept album about a serial killer who creepily implores you to "hitch a ride" with him on 101 North. The record is a masterpiece of wirey riffs and dark grooves that features a suitably malevolent turn from Patton, who lurches from growl to scream to whisper, lacing each voice with a hint of menace. The follow-up Mit Gas is almost as good, with the album rolling between the group's growing eccentricities, swinging between electro beats, hard rock barrages, bird sounds, and atmospheric passages, with clanging rocker Rape This Day a highlight. Their third album (and last to date) Anonymous was a complete left-turn and features arrangements of Native American songs collected by Denison. The impressive album is full of intricate percussive rhythms, evocative chants, and well-placed guitars with highlights including the war-like Ghost Song and the industrial-edged Red Fox.

Lovage

THIS collaboration between producer Dan The Automator (Handsome Boy Modelling School, Gorillaz), Patton and Elysian Fields singer Jennifer Charles resulted in the hilariously sultry (and awesomely titled) hard-to-find record Music To Make Love To Your Old Lady By. Featuring Kid Koala on the turntables, the album combines '50s and '60s love-song samples with trip-hop beats while Patton croons and Charles seduces. It's beautiful music despite its tongue-in-cheek qualities, particularly Book Of The Month, Anger Management, Pit Stop, To Catch A Thief and Stroker Ace. In between, there are some strange spoken interludes and a few choice instrumentals, but the best bits are when Charles and Patton are lusting and thrusting their voices together.

Mondo Cane

DISCARDING his occasional discordance and keeping his signature sampling to a minimum, Patton's Italian pop-orchestra project puts his singing and crooning front and centre amid a series of sweetly arranged strings. Working with a 40-piece orchestra, a choir and a band, the multi-lingual Patton comes off as a bona-fide Italian as he digs into his deep bag of vocal stylings - moving effortlessly through boom, falsetto and whisper in Deep Down, soaring in Ore D'Amore, barking like a ringleader in the circusy Che Notte!, and injecting the necessary passion, longing, power and emotion into every cinematic moment. Patton's one concession to his challenging metal/genre-hopping past is the savage scream-and-gallop of Urlo Negro, which is quickly followed by Scalinatella, which sounds like a peaceful walk through the side streets of Rome on a summer's day.