.: Mike Patton - Musician Profile :.

Michael Allan Patton (born January 27, 1968) is an American musician, best known as the lead singer of the band Faith No More from 1988 to 1998. He has also handled lead vocals for Mr. Bungle (which preceded his involvement with FNM), Tomahawk, Lovage, Fantômas, The Dillinger Escape Plan and Peeping Tom.

Patton is also known for utilizing a wide variety of vocal styles and techniques; as such, his performances include airy falsetto passages, Sinatra-esque lounge crooning, rapping, death metal grunts, Medieval-style chanting, an abrasive take on scat singing featuring various shrieks, screeches, and the occasional jostling of his Adam's apple while singing; as well as beatboxing and a variety of authentic-sounding vocal emulations of flowing water, a train, a computer voice, or other items. Critic Greg Prato writes, "Patton could very well be one of the most versatile and talented singers in rock music." His vocal techniques can also be witnessed in the 2007 first-person shooter, The Darkness.

He often produces side projects in collaboration with other musicians, such as John Zorn, Dan the Automator, The Melvins, The Dillinger Escape Plan, Melt-Banana, Sepultura, Merzbow, Kool Keith, The X-Ecutioners, Team Sleep, Björk, Subtle, Rahzel, Amon Tobin, Eyvind Kang, Lovage, and Kaada. He co-founded Ipecac Recordings with Greg Werckman in 1999, and has run the label since.

Patton is 5 feet 8 inches tall. His right hand is permanently numb from an on-stage incident during his third concert with Faith No More, where he accidentally cut himself on a broken bottle and severed the tendons and nerves in his hand. He can use his hand, but he has no feeling in it (much to the surprise of both Patton and his doctor, who told him the exact opposite would happen).

Early years

Mike grew up in Eureka, California, where he and his friends formed Mr. Bungle circa 1985. During the late 80s they recorded the cassette-only demos The Raging Wrath of the Easter Bunny, Goddammit I Love America, Bowel of Chiley and OU818 (featuring tracks that would appear on their first Warner Brothers album), and earned a small local following. Patton joined Faith No More in January of 1989 and filled the vocal void left by the unreliable and recently fired Chuck Mosley, who moved on to the band Cement. Faith No More's The Real Thing was released later the same year. The album reached the top ten on the charts thanks largely to MTV's heavy rotation of the Epic promo.

In the United States, Faith No More would never again match the commercial success of "The Real Thing" but their music continued to evolve into new and sometimes stranger areas of rock music. After three more studio albums (Angel Dust, King for a Day... Fool for a Lifetime, and Album of the Year) Faith No More officially disbanded in 1998.

Mr Bungle and beyond

During his time as a member of Faith No More, Patton continued to collaborate with Mr. Bungle. His success in mainstream rock and metal ultimately helped secure Mr. Bungle a record deal with Warner Bros. The band released a self-titled album (produced by John Zorn) in 1991, and the highly surreal Disco Volante in 1995. Their final album was California.

Patton's other projects have included two solo albums in the Composer Series on John Zorn's Tzadik label (Adult Themes for Voice in 1996 and Pranzo Oltranzista in 1997). He is a member of Hemophiliac where he does voice effects along with John Zorn on saxophone and Ikue Mori on laptop electronics. This group is billed as "improvisational music from the outer reaches of madness". He has also guested on Painkiller and Naked City recordings. He's appeared many times on other Tzadik releases with Zorn and others.

There have also been several projects over the years that have not seen an official release, although some live bootlegs do circulate. These projects include House of Discipline (with Bob Ostertag and Otomo Yoshihide), Moonraker (with Agata Ichirou of Melt-Banana, Buckethead and DJ Eddie Def), and Patton & Rahzel. Patton contributed vocals to the Team Sleep song Kool-Aid Party, but the song did not make it onto the final album. This is likely due in part to the unfinished album having been leaked very early onto the internet.

Recent and near future production

In 2007, Mike Patton played the voice of the eponymous possessive primeval force in the video game The Darkness. He worked alongside Kirk Acevedo, Lauren Ambrose and Dwight Schultz in playing the roles of the main characters in the gruesome and shocking story that follows Jackie Estacado's trip to hell and back twice in a search for revenge of the killing of the only person he ever cared about. Patton is known to be an avid video game player.

In February 2006, Mike Patton performed an operatic piece, composed by Eyvind Kang, at Teatro di Modena in Italy. Patton sang alongside vocalist Jessika Kinney, and was accompanied by the Modern Brass Ensemble, Bologna Chamber Choir, and Alberto Capelli and Walter Zanetti on electric and acoustic guitars. Of the experience, Patton remarked that it was extremely challenging to project the voice without a microphone.

In 2005, Patton signed on to compose the soundtrack for the upcoming independent movie Pinion, marking his debut scoring an American feature-length film. His other film work includes portraying two major characters in the Steve Balderson film Firecracker. He has also expressed his desire to compose for film director David Lynch.

Patton's long-gestating Peeping Tom album was released on May 30, 2006 on his own Ipecac label. The set was pieced together by swapping song files through the mail with collaborators like Norah Jones, Kool Keith and Massive Attack, Odd Nosdam, Jel, Doseone, Bebel Gilberto, Kid Koala, and Dub Trio.

"I don't listen to the radio, but if I did, this is what I'd want it to sound like," Patton says of the project. "This is my version of pop music. In a way, this is an exercise for me: taking all these things I've learned over the years and putting them into a pop format."

Recently, Patton has worked with Björk and the beat boxer Rahzel. He is often featured on new releases, and is regarded as extremely hard working. Faith No More keyboardist Roddy Bottum remarked about Patton "caffeine is the only drug he does", in reference to the Faith No More song Caffeine from the album Angel Dust, which Patton wrote while in the middle of a sleep-deprivation experiment.

During 2003 there were strong rumours circulating that INXS had offered Mike the opportunity to front their band.

source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Patton

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