Nevermen

The dark, experimental and hip-hop-flavoured tunes of Nevermen’s eponymous debut album come from a rich history of genre-hopping and a taste for the avant-garde, guided along by the sum of the band’s parts: TV On The Radio frontman Tunde Adebimpe; Clouddead alum and the founder of Anticon, Adam ‘Doseone’ Drucker; and the man of a thousand voices and at least a hundred projects, Mike Patton. The Faith No More singer was drawn to working with Adebimpe and Drucker for one reason and one reason only: they were weirdos, just like him.

“I think I was in the middle of making a Fantômas record when the engineer threw on a Clouddead record while we were having a break,” Patton recalls. “It completely cleared my ears out – I was like, ‘What the fuck is this?’ The engineer told me they were from my neck of the woods, and I knew I had to seek [Drucker] out and meet him. It wasn’t long after that when my wife happened to buy a TV On The Radio record – it was the first one, actually [2004’s Desperate Youth, Blood Thirsty Babes] – and we were driving around with it playing all the time. It really stood out to me. I had another ‘What the fuck is this?’ moment. I think they’re good ones to have. You know you’ve found people on your radar then – they’re the ones you want to go out of your way for.”

Both Patton and Drucker have a comprehensive history of side projects and working with other people. Since the turn of the century, we have heard from Patton in guises as varied as the aforementioned Fantômas, the alt-hop of Peeping Tom, the bizarre Italian pop of Mondo Cane, heavy-hitters Tomahawk, and even a new Faith No More record, last year’s Sol Invictus. Drucker, too, has worked on video game soundtracks, teamed up with fellow hip hop outsiders like Why? and served time in groups like Themselves, 13 & God and Deep Puddle Dynamics. By contrast, Adebimpe has never made an album outside TV On The Radio. It’s put to Patton that Adebimpe was somehow an outlier in the process of making Nevermen, but he strongly disagrees.

“I’ve always thought of Tunde as a kindred spirit,” he says. “He might not have done an album that’s a collaboration before, but he’s a very collaborative personality. He loves working with other people. He does it in music, he does it in movies, he does it in animation. I don’t think he’s any less experienced in musical adultery than Dose or I. The way I see it, we’re all on pretty equal ground. That’s why we’ve been saying this trio doesn’t have a leader – it’s just as much Tunde and Dose as it is me.”

Patton has been a serial collaborator since arriving on the scene in the mid-’80s. He shows no signs of slowing down, mentioning that he has even more projects in the works as soon as Nevermen finish touring in support of the album later on this year. So what draws Patton to a new project? He testifies it’s all about growing and evolving as a musician – even if you’re at a supposed veteran status, there’s still plenty more to discover.

“I think working with other people keeps the blood flowing and it keeps the mind sharp,” he says. “For the most part, I’m still learning on the job as I shift from album to album, song to song, project to project. I’ve been doing this something like 30 years and I’m still learning every single time I make a record. Nevermen was no different – I’d never put anything like this together before. We had no direction and no clear-cut intent of what we wanted out of working together – I think we were just excited by the prospect of it happening. We’d have two minutes’ worth of ideas, which would expand into five, which would lead to another song, then another, then another… there was no agenda. It was a learning process for all of us in regards to how the other approaches music and how they see things. No-one was telling anyone what to do – we were just figuring it out as we went.”

With Nevermen now released to the world, all three (never)men will soon take breaks from their quote-unquote ‘day jobs’ and take the album out on the road across North America. Patton is asked whether he would be interested in bringing the project down to Australia – as he has done for nearly everything he’s worked on in the past – and, as he shakes the proverbial Magic 8-Ball, the odds are looking favourable.

“I see no reason why we wouldn’t,” says Patton. “We all love it there. The only problems are getting in your country and getting out. Everything else is perfect.”

The band was actually supposed to be out on tour right now, but a lack of preparation prevented it from happening. “We kinda jumped the shark a little bit…” Patton pauses, questions himself and clarifies. “I meant jump the gun.” He laughs, “Geez, could you imagine if we’d jumped the shark?”