From The Archives: Mike Patton – A Perfect Place0

by Erin Broadley

Our story begins with a poker game gone bad… a lifeless body on the floor, hand still clutching its cards… whacked on the head with a bass guitar. In the background, Mike Patton’s haunting film score crescendos over the radio waves as the other two poker players argue over what to do with the body. Incinerator? Garbage disposal? They haven’t a clue.

Without a doubt, Derrick Scocchera’s short film, A Perfect Place, is a dark comedy, wonderfully directed and acted. But it is Patton’s striking film score that ups the ante on this noir story; it transforms every scene, drives the action, and pushes the audience into a surreal world that they have visited only in late night, restless dreams.

While some musicians skulk and idle in the corners of your iPod, Mike Patton charges forward like a maestro possessed, and continuously delivers transgressive albums that one-up the status quo. In recent years, we’ve watched the former Faith No More and Mr. Bungle frontman push new ground with bands Fantomas, Tomahawk and Peeping Tom (amongst others) and now with A Perfect Place, we get to enjoy his debut as a film composer.

Released on Patton’s Ipecac Recordings – a geeky enclave of the alternative underworld, marked by a distaste for run of the mill, rock & roll schmuckery – both the film and score to A Perfect Place are packaged as a double-disc and are a must-have for cult connoisseurs.

SuicideGirls had to get the details so we dusted off the ol’ video camera and met up with Patton over sake and fresh eel in San Francisco’s Japantown to chat about his foray into film scoring..

Read our exclusive interview with Mike Patton on SuicideGirls.com and view footage from it here.