What with Jon Theodore and Zach de la Rocha finally getting their act together and putting out their collab EP under the name of One Day as a Lion, I thought it would be a good time to highlight some of my own personal experiences with collaborations. We all know about the fiendish rock fun of Run DMC and Aerosmith, and you can still buy Jay-Z and Linkin Park’s mashup attempt in your local supermarket, but I wanted to touch on songs, or whole albums/EP’s that have a special place in my heart. How’s about you – are there any joint ventures that you reckon deserve a listen? Give me a shout.
Deftones and Maynard James Keenan – Passenger [White Pony]
Considering the rather ostentatious airs Maynard holds for his own music in Tool and, to a lesser extent, A Perfect Circle, it’s quite surprising when you consider how involved he was in the early roots of the horribly coined genre tag of nu-metal. Duets with Rage Against the Machine and this notable performance on Deftones’ masterpiece album, White Pony, which took all that young adult angst and used it as a foundation for a deeper, more soul searching sound.
Whilst White Pony brought with it a load of media attention and singles which Chino and co probably still live off the royalties of today, the standout track for me is ‘Passenger’, a song which had Maynard covering vocals with that familiar angry croon of his whilst the rest of the ‘tones worked on a moody landscape in the background, bursting out with ferocious guitars as the chorus reached its climax.
I’m not too sure what it is about this track that I love so much. The chorus just acts as a total catharsis with the vocals sounding angered but always retaining a subtle undercurrent of delicacy. It retains a sense of epicness that is usually reserved for the likes of Mars Volta or other such bands that spend precious time building to a climax, but here the combination of Deftones and Maynard bring that peak in a digestible form.
Dillinger Escape Plan and Mike Patton – Irony Is a Dead Scene
It would be pretty easy to fill this whole list out with Mike Patton related collaborations. The guy seems to do his best to appear on anything of any kind in some shape or another. Hell, he even put forward his unique talents towards the voice of GladOS from Portal.
But I’ve chosen the the EP he did with Dillinger Escape Plan as a notable favourite. I’ve never really been able to get into Calculating Infinity as much as Dillinger’s later work, but I think this EP really combines the aggressive nature of old school Dillinger Escape Plan with their more song driven sound that was brought in by Miss Machine.
Whether it was Patton who gave the band fresh ideas of where to take their music, you can’t deny the genius of tracks such as ‘Pig Latin‘ which opens with a tantalisingly picked guitar line and then just explodes into Patton’s best strangled chicken impression. Oh, and it’s got a crackingly grotesque cover of Aphex Twin’s ‘Come to Daddy‘ which makes this more than worth picking up.
MP3: The Dillinger Escape Plan & Mike Patton – Pig Latin
ISIS and Aerogramme – In the Fishtank 14
The ‘In The Fishtank’ series is a project devised by Netherlands independent music distributor Konkurrent which invites high profile bands to get together in a studio over a period of few days and see what they come up with. Other experiments have seen artists such as Tortoise and Sonic Youth in the studio, but one of the most ambitious recordings was the joining together of ISIS and Aereogramme, two bands with notable followings.
The results are tremendous, with opener ‘Low Tide’ proving a desolate grower as sound upon sound is layered over one another with a delicate craftsmanship, and middle track ‘Delial‘ evoking the heavier nature of ISIS’ influence on the EP. What is most surprising about this recording is the way the two bands, both really quite different, managed to find a common ground together that sustained a perfect balance of heavy rock and patient prog posturing, the latter of which I swear influenced ISIS on their last release ‘In The Absence of Truth‘.
MP3: Isis & Aereogramme – Low Tide
Yourcodenameis:milo & Martin Grech – We Hope You Are What You Think You Are [Print Is Dead vol.1]
Although YCI:M actually put out a whole collaboration album of their own, which is where you can find this track, Print Is Dead proved a mixed bag for me. But one track I completely admired from the first listen has to be ‘We Hope You Are What You Think You Are‘, a raw slab of angry rock that bubbles with intense anger and scorn.
The intro to this track alone is worth the entry fee, with a slick bass line that moves up and down, before guitars come slamming in and the joyous screaming begins. “I will never come down when told to” is the opening line, and it oozes the kind of rebellious persona that this kind of music is all about as it reaches an unbearable crescendo that has solo artist Martin Grech and the others screaming “there is no God in this town”, giving their all to a groin-kicking conclusion.
Mark Lanegan and Greg Dulli (The Gutter Twins) – Saturnalia
The project known as ‘The Gutter Twins’ has been a long time in the making, with Dulli (of Afgan Whigs fame) and Lanegan (of having one of the heartiest growls since pirate days fame) being good friends for quite a long time. It’s no surprise then that when the musical offering from this couple finally presented itself in last year’s ‘Saturnalia’ it was a soulful embodiment of their respective talents and personalities.
Despite its rather poppy format, with shorter tracks, the album is a dingy example of how to make depressing music uplifting as possible. Lanegan shows his incredible ability to alter that powerful bark that most will be familiar from with his work for Queens of the Stone Age to a husky whisper that sends a shiver down the spine, and Dulli adds a haunting guitar sound that only exacerbates this feeling. In doing a bit of research for this post I found a fantastic quote that pretty much sums up the experience within this album. Music critic Liz Raftery said it’s “an audial descent into the dark emotions that often lurk beneath the surface.” Spot on.
