MR. BUNGLE, "DISCO VOLANTE"
1995, Warner Brothers Records
1. "Everyone I Went To High School With Is Dead"
2. "Chemical Marriage"
3. "Sleep (Part II): Carry Stress In The Jaw"
4. "Desert Search For Techno Allah"
5. "Violenza Domestica"
6. "After School Special"
7. "Sleep (Part III): Phlegmatics"
8. "Ma Meeshka Mow Skwoz"
9. "The Bends"
10. "Backstrokin'"
11. "Platypus"
12. "Merry Go Bye Bye
For whatever reason, my friend Mike (a raver but also a big Slipknot fan...) had a copy of Mr. Bungle's self-titled album, which he had apparently acquired at a rave. He knew I was into... uhm... "different" music, so he gave it to me one day. He said, "It's fucked up. It's insane." So, I listened to it, expecting my 13-year-old mind to be blown. But it wasn't! Listening today with different ears, it's still a good enough CD, but there's a bit too much funk on it, and the production is irritating.
Around the same time, California had just come out and I read in some magazine called Request (which you used to be able to get free at Sam Goody's) . They had given it a 12 out of 100 and described it as "horrible"; "the worst songwriting ever". I downloaded it on IRC through a bot (on 28k modem !), and it blew my mind. Amazing! I remember I went to school and we didn't have two phone lines, so I downloaded it from a bot from like 7 in the morning until whenever I got out of school. My grandma was wondering why no one had called all day long, hahaha...
So, years passed by, and for whatever reason I never heard "Disco Volante". I hadn't read about it, I knew nothing about it! My friend Brandon is talking to me about Mr. Bungle one day and I told him I thought self-titled was okay, but "California" blew my mind. He said, "Oh, have you heard 'Disco Volante'? You might like it. It's a bit weirder than those two albums.." I said, "No... burn me a copy." Well, it took him a while to burn me a copy, but I remember being excited to hear it and I remember talking to a few people about it, and I remember someone saying that there were covers of cartoon songs on it (?!??!?) and someone else told me that it sounded like a band who couldn't play their instruments who were trying to mix every genre every together. Either way, however it was described and whatever I read about it (I remember NME gave it a 0 and called it the worst album of all time -- but they thought the strokes were the greatest band in the history of existence, so..), it didn't sound like it was the same band as the self-titled or "California" Mr. Bungle.
So, I finally acquired a burnt copy... and WOW. WOW. One of those albums I put on repeat for days and days and days. I still listen to it. I wore out my burnt copy and somehow found a used copy for $3 at a local pawn shop a few weeks after my burnt copy skipped through every track.
This ... I dunno. Impossible to describe. Every genre of music ever piled on top of each other. Yeah. The most skilled "rock" (?) musicians imaginable playing extremely well-written and wonderful music. Trey Spruance is without a shadow of a doubt one of the best guitar players ever, and by far the best guitar player that no one ever talks about. Trevor Dunn's bass work is UNBELIEVABLE, and the other musicians whose names I don't feel like looking up do a very good job but... the star of this album is definitely Trey. Oh, and Patton does okay work, not that he does much on this album (he only wrote one song, "Backstrokin", and he only wrote lyrics to a few songs). Speaking of lyrics, what really struck me at the time was how few there were. Can't say that about the other Bungle albums.
Just.. seriously, amazing music. Obviously, there were probably a million overdubs, but the actual individual parts that were played in each song are amazing.
Standsout include "Ma Meeshka Mow Skowz" which really does sound like cartoon cover songs; "Merry Go Bye-Bye", which is a Beach Boys death metal noise song; and "Chemical Marriage" which sounds like a song Danny Elfman would write if he had big balls.
Probably my second favorite album ever. Endlessly inspiring. One of those albums I really can tell you every single lyric and every part of every song without even thinking about it. I've memorized this album. And yet I could still put it on today and not be bored with it. I can't complain about any of it, except it probably needs to be re-released with the volume bumped up a bit (it's ridiculously quiet), and "The Bends" maybe goes on a bit too long. An interesting thing to note is that the self-titled Mr. Bungle album has tons and tons of filler in between tracks, but this album is devoid of them, except for a few short jokes (and what's there is quite creepy: "Why are you touching me?").
To this day, I don't think "Everyone I went to high school with is dead" is anything too special, but I think it's such a perfect way to open an album: the most noisey and worst song to open one of the best albums ever. It's like if "Doolittle" opened with "Silver" or something.
This album is simultaneously mindblowingly complex, dark, humorous, sad ("Violenza Domestica" is one of the most powerfully emotive tracks ever), thought-provoking, inspiring, and touching. One of my friends only listens to Mozart, Beethoven, etc. and generally has very little tolerance for any of the music I like, but he can get into this (and similiar bands, like Secret Chiefs, Vicious Hairy Mary, Darth Vegas, etc). Weird, eh? I'd definitely reccomend this for just fans of good music, not just "avant-garde fans". That being said, I don't think this album is particularly "Avant-garde" at all, it's not "Adult Themes for Voice" or anything. It's just well-played, competent, innovative, technically impressive music.
Too bad Bungle's dead, but as a whole Secret Chiefs 3 is probably better anyway (though they haven't made an album this good).