When it comes to special live sets involving Mike Patton, there’s really no competition with The Chapel. The venue already hosted an exclusive set with DJ Qbert and Patton, their first ever live performances together – back in February of 2018. Now, Patton has performed another set of challenging, heart-pounding, mind-expanding and ultimately, inspiring music for fans in San Francisco. This time he performed a collaborative improvisational set along with experimental music legend John Zorn. The two got avant-garde pretty quick, but it’s obvious from the videos that the audience loved every minute of it.

The two musicians were joined by another envelope-pushing artist, a masked Trey Spruance of Mr. Bungle and Secret Chiefs 3 performed an opening set as NT Fan, which fans will know is one of the seven bands that make up Secret Chiefs 3. After his opening set, he joined Patton and Zorn during their headlining show to contribute to their mind-melding sounds.

All three performers have worked together in the past as well as on current projects. Zorn produced the self-titled debut of Mr. Bungle, a band which at the time included Patton and Spruance. More recently, Zorn and Spruance have worked together – Spruance’s Secret Chiefs 3 will release an album MALKHUT as part of Zorn’s 11-album box set Masada Book III: Beri’ah.

First up a video of Spruance performing as NT Fan.

Then the full set of Patton and Zorn performing together. Things start out with Zorn on sax and Patton beatboxing/screaming/scatting and get even more avant garde from there. The set hits a creative high point when Zorn literally plays a water-filled tea cup (which doesn’t sound too far off from what you’d expect) while Patton created a ghoul-like backing track that seemed to float off into the ether. Finally, Spruance comes out to add some guitar.

And finally, the encore with Zorn, Patton and Spruance:

Photo Credit: Raymond Flotat