Australia, 1998

Considering the Eastern and electronic influences of the last Mr Bungle album, is The Secret Chiefs 3 simply Mr Bungle without a singer?
SC3 have several singers (Laura Allen, Trevor, myself, Kris Hendrickson), just not the one who is on everyone's minds! The emphasis in SC3 is admittedly less vocal than in some bands, but we are certainly not the noodly prog fireworks you might expect from something that was misleadingly characterized as "Mr. Bungle without the singer". The SC3 are more about making an impression with a strongly resonnant musical vibe. Our aim is to Entertain the audience with something interesting, not just showcase some "musicianny" talents to jeering Mr. Bungle fans! As far as the "Eastern" influence, the only song on Disco Volante with that was Desert Search for Techno Allah. SC3 are more about exploring a complex syncretism and turning it into something that the audence can experience as something extending beyond a number of obvious "influences".

If so, why not tour as Mr Bungle, without Mike Patton
Well, your point is well taken, but that would be a really rotten thing to do. There is a LOT of music left in Mr. Bungle, and SC3's music is sharply different than most of it. Even what I personally write for Mr. Bungle is diametrically opposed in many ways to my approach in SC3. For example, my contributions to Mr. Bungle are very elaborate and "expensive" in production terms, wheras part of the magic in the SC3 is that it is done with NO MONEY but sounds like a million $$$'s! Again, SC3 is'nt "Mr. Bungle without Mike Patton" any more than Mr. Bungle is "SC3 WITH Mike Patton".

You're playing some shows with Atari Teenage Riot, what's your impression of them?
I'll level with you. I really liked them at first. I saw Alec Empire perform as the Destroyer with Shizuo (who was and still is absolutely amazing). I liked it. Then Atari Teenage Riot came to our town (San Francisco) and my whole impression was shattered. I mean, I understand completely the idea of pitting yourself against the hear-nothing, do-nothing, say-nothing blissed out inanity of the German "love parade" hippie techno crowd. But after seeing ATR, I have concluded that they are just another slogan chanting rock band hoping to make it big the way, say, Rage Against The Machine has. Maybe this is just because I see more "revolution" in the content of the works themselves, as opposed to the TALK that comes out of it. It's my belief that everything from "noise" to Korean Pansori Opera will always offer more "subversive-ism" than things that are basically just Rock with a lot of righteous yelling and attitude. Besides that, being on a Major Label (Elekra/Warner) never went too well with "Smashing the State"! (Start the Riot, just don't knock over my DAT machine!) I don't know, I don't give a fuck one way or the other whether something is real PUNK or not. But I know when something THINKS it's "all that" but ai'nt!

Out of the band members, the only person I have met is Alec Empire, and he was a very nice and intelligent person when I spoke with him. That was before ATR toured America. I think he must be aware now of how idiotic this ATR thing seems to most people who have seen some real struggle in their lives, such as ghetto blacks in America, but the marketability of ATR's armchair "oppressed-smashes-invisible-oppressor" fantasies has proven irresistable. I hope he knocks it off soon, and helps take Digital Hardcore somewhere closer to it's ultimate potential. The way for example, Shizuo has!!

As Danny has said in a previous interview, Mr Bungle "let all the stallions out of the Funk Ranch" with its last album, how do you feel about your funk-rock past?
Live and Learn. Some of it holds up. Some of it is Total Bullshit.

Having been a member of Faith No More, how do you feel about its passing?
It's ABOUT TIME!!! Puffy deserves better!

What's the cheesiest CD or record you have in your collection?
Hmmm... probably the video of Courtney Love singing with Faith No More on Public Access TV in San Francisco in the mid-80's. Cheesy: in the very Deepest sense... !

Phil Franklin has come a long way from the indie-pop of the SF Seals, how did you come to work with him?
Well, there was this band called Caroliner Rainbow Fingers Weaving Putrefiyed Corpse Tapestries, and there was this inhuman DRUMMER in a Victorian-but-day-glo outfit under black lights, and well... there are things that he can just "do" that no one on earth would have previously imagined, such as pick up his whole high-hat, stand and all, and use it as a drum stick, still managing to rattle off sped-up band-organ percussion rhythms at over 300 BPM! How could I NOT work with him?

Explain how an expirimental band such as yourselves came to be on a Christmas album.
If you think THAT'S weird, most of the other "bands" on that thing were Japanese Noise bands like Merzbow and Violent Onsen Geisha. It was a "cover version" of the entire "Phil Spectre's Christmas Album". I opted for a twisted-but-true Detroit Wall of Sound, they opted for a differnt Wall of Sound, and the world's most Fucked Up Christmas Record was born! On SONY no less!!!!!!!!

Your father has a lot of input into the website, what's it like working with him? Does he like the band(s)?
Yeah, he likes most of what I do. He's not as keen on the really extreme electro-acoustic stuff we carry, like Dumetrescu and Parmegiani, and I don't think he listens to Squarepusher daily, but he seems to like the Peter Thomas stuff! He's really an ace at HTML and the various web protocal, and he puts up with all of my bullshit. Yeah, I know I've got it good!

Name one person you'd most like to work with.
They're all DEAD!! I think I would have liked most to have studied with Oliver Messian. Among the living, I gotta say that I'm really happy to be working with Eyvind Kang. Between him and Sydney's own Jim Denley (whom I have played with too), I can't say I'm deprived of working with the best musicians on earth already!

You're certainly not a stranger to Australia now, what keeps bringing you back?
I don't want to lodge my nose too far up all your butts, but in my opinion Australia is by far the best country on earth! Come to America, come to San Francisco, LA, etc... see how FUCKED it is! I've travelled only in the US, Europe and Japan, so in the larger sense, I DON'T KNOW JACK SHIT! But from what I've seen, your society is the best run, your people are the nicest and the healthiest, from what I can tell you are the world's least corrupt nation, you have some of the best food, on and on... I drove across the outback. I mean, what more could you want?

Then again, the Brits invented the Teletubbies.

Apparently the underage scene is quite heavily into your projects, is this the sort of crowd you antipicipated?
Hmm... maybe I'm like Artaud, just getting crazier and more authoritarian so that younger and younger people are responding to my overbearing insanity, while my peers drift wordlessly out the backdoor when I arrive. How ever true that may be, I think what has happened is that Mr. Bungle's first record was mass marketed to all the same places as, say, Millie Vanilli at the time, and all the smarty-pants 11-16 year old kids who HATED all that other shit found an enjoyable and stimulating escape in Mr. Bungle. Now Mr. Bungle is mass marketed to all the same places along with, say, Third Eye Blind, and those same kids, now 17-22 years old, find themselves in the same dilemma as when they were younger. Thus, our disturbed CULT of musical expatriates and snooty avant-gardeists does some mingling with some disenfranchized youth at shows. This is DEFINATELY a good thing.