The Dyes of Patch 5

While all of the other main influences remain pretty much equal in terms of how much they influence me, how much I listen and study them, the final influence might be the biggest and most important because it is the one that holds everything together.

Patch relies on storytelling. The lyrics are usually the first component of a song ever written down. Not music. It's all poetry, or prose describing the storyline that will be turned into poetry or lyrics. Then the music is written to help carry the storyline in a personal, empathetical way, hopefully coalescing into a new sound.

I also like to use a lot of symbolism. Abstract images, speaking in small hints, giving clues, making up worlds and huge concepts. Plus, the stories and the lyrics are committed. I want to sound like I really believe in what I'm saying.

No one has given me greater influence in this regard than Marilyn Manson.

His work from 1994 through 2001 remains some of the most poignant storytelling and conviction I have ever heard in lyrical rock. The music is secondary to Manson's voice and lyrics.

However, Trent Reznor produced his first two records, having more of an input on Manson's greatest record, "Antichrist Superstar". He plays on most of the songs, even. It is on this record where both Trent's musical knowledge/production and Manson's gift of poetry joined together in the most perfect way.

"Antichrist Superstar" might be the most influential record of all time for me.

You've got theatre, found production and noise, a new sound (Trent's), challenging songwriting, and some of the best lyrics in rock n' roll. Boom! Patch was born while listening to this record on repeat in sixth grade back in 1996 and 1997. I wanted to put images and noises together. I wanted to perform crazy antics onstage. I wanted to shock people into thinking a different way.

The big three: "Antichrist Superstar", "Mechanical Animals", and "Holy Wood (In the Shadow of the Valley of Death)", are the main crux of Manson's good work. After these he delved into more campy goth territory. It's still interesting, he's still dealing with concepts and great influences and symbolism and metaphor, but it lacks the importance of the big three. Still, even "Mechanical" and "Holy Wood" don't hold a candle to "Antichrist". It's all here.

Every lyric is a symbol. Every symbol within the liner notes relates to a lyric. Everything in the music relates to the poetry. Everything in Manson's performance dealt with the story and the lyrics. Everything is connected, everything is whole. Perfect.

So really, listen to "Antichrist Superstar" in its entirety. It's a good place to start if you want to know where the whole Patch dream came from.

Here's "The Reflecting God", track 15 on "Antichrist", quite possibly my favorite Manson track:

Marilyn Manson -- "The Reflecting God"

The Dyes of Patch 4

This next influence is the most direct, meaning it pertains specifically to songwriting and style. I'm a rhythm section writer by heart, guitars usually come second to drums and root notes in bass composition. One band has opened my eyes to guitars, to different time signatures, to challenging the audience by overwhelming means of writing and delivery.

The Mars Volta started out as mud to me. As time went on, I started to get them. More and more I came to realize that Cedric Bixler-Zavala's vocal delivery was my favorite out of any other vocal artist. He has quivers in his falsetto, his voice is gutwrenchingly high (meaning it's impossible for me to ever sing in his range), he conveys such emotion with each syllable. He's fantastic.

Omar Rodriguez-Lopez writes the music. He fuses latin jazz with punk rock. Again, a whole new sound all their own. But this might be one of the more challenging forms of "new sounds" in modern music today. A lot of people have a love/hate relationship with the Volta. They started out strong with their debut "De-loused in the Comatorium" and since have descended in critical acclaim. Their latest record, however, "Octahedron", has garnered praise, mainly because it is more simplistic in nature than their other recent ventures like "Amputechture" and "The Bedlam in Goliath". For me, "Frances the Mute" takes the cake as best Volta record. It was the most challenging record, but it was still riding on their success with "De-loused" for most people. It's the most mature and gutsy. The ends of songs have sprawling electronic ambient outros, but the songs themselves are pretty focused and well-written. The last song, "Cassandra Gemini", clocks in at 32 minutes.

After listening to this record and "De-loused" over and over, I welcomed the new material with open arms. The stuff that got more carried away, with lots of different sections and changes. "Amputechture" might have been the record that changed me as a songwriter. At this point, my songwriting was very 4/4 based, blues riffs, production oriented. After listening to "Amputechture", I immediately wrote "Typosgraphy", totally a play off of Volta. Since then, I've tried to make it a goal to have lots of different changes, challenging time signatures, challenging riffs, more story arcs in my writing. They can put mind blowing rock together with emotional music. Again, here's another band that can make me cry. I always get tears in my eyes at the end of "Frances" when the acoustic guitar comes in for the last minute after the thirty minutes of noise in "Cassandra Gemini".

Another song of mine is a good example of the change I've experienced. "Trachomanic" has a lot of changes, and could be the best example of things to come for Patch. Every one of my influences is exemplified here: NIN's electronica and punk beat, Beck's found production, Tom Waits' theatrical personality, the Volta's section changes and complicated solos. The last influence, tomorrow's, puts the final touch on all of these . . . a lyrical influence, symbollism. Intense, engaging storytelling.

Here's one of my favorite songs by The Mars Volta. It shows the section changes, the complicated solos, the complicated rhythm section, their own patented sound, the emotion in Cedric's vocals, and the intensity of the climax in the movements. This song makes me crazy (in a good way) whenever I listen to it. Especially the end.

The Mars Volta -- "Goliath"

The Dyes of Patch 3

Anyone who knows me and my musical tastes shouldn't find this next icon to be a surprise.

Growing up, he was my main influence. The be all, end all. Nothing could take the reign as top dog in my book other than this man. Reflecting now on the last couple of years, where Patch has started to take a new direction and have a maturity in my mind regarding songwriting, I view this icon's music in a different way.

Trent Reznor, to me, is the ultimate producer. A producer who has crafted his own sound. When a Nine Inch Nails song comes on the radio, you know exactly who made it, even if you've never heard the song before. One of my main fears about Patch was that, because I've listened to NIN all my life and have pretty much studied Trent's production everyday since I was 10, my music would sound like Trent produced it.

People ask, "Would it be your dream to have Trent Reznor produce Patch?" I retort with a large "NO! That would completely make it his, not mine, then. My production skills would be nothing. I'd like for him to like my music, but never to produce it."

I want my own sound. I want to come up with something no one else could replicate. It's what I call "Typosgraphy", having something completely new that no one else can call their own. Make my own crime scene using evidence and markers from the past, my influences, and making it the Peter Kenyon sound.

Trent's lyrics are less than desired. But they have personality (just like Tom Waits). You can sense personal emotion in the delivery. The main treat of NIN is the music. When Trent spouts his thoughts on sex, loss, government, etc., it's the music that does most of the talking. He takes electronica and puts it together with acoustic instruments, very much what I like to do. I just hope to god it doesn't sound the same.

This blend of electro-acoustic is heard in "Just Like You Imagined" from The Fragile. This is one of the only songs in the music world to make me cry on occasion. It's instrumental, save for a chorus of "Ahhh's" by Trent. It's placed in a portion of The Fragile representing Trent's fall from helping another, someone who has been with him on his journey of repair, a lover perhaps, and he/she betrays him. At least, that's what sources say. To me, it's a representation of losing something you love in a terrible way. I broke up with a girlfriend of two years and immediately put this song on. It was a bad breakup, and it was everything that I was feeling. The music has personality, not just vocals. Trent speaks best through the instrumentation of his music. His vocal delivery just adds a cherry on top of the masterpiece.

Plus, on a live performance level, Trent's energy onstage is some of the best stuff I feed off of. Especially in the early NIN days, Trent was so crazy, you'd fear for your life if you were in the front row. I'd like to embody that intensity, that danger, in my live shows.

I hope my music has both a vocal personality akin to Tom and Trent's voice delivery, and the notion of an entirely new sound that speaks volumes in its own personality. A new language, a new school. "Typosgraphy".

Nine Inch Nails -- "Just Like You Imagined"

The Dyes of Patch 2

The next main influence to my songwriting doesn't happen to be an artist I listen to every day. I like half of his songs, I get bored from the other half. But I respect his whole repertoire due to the way that he carries himself as an artist. He blends reality and fiction into a whole where you're not sure where the story begins and the true artist ends. He has made a complete ethos out of himself, as much an actor as he is a musician. He is a more "down-to-earth" version of my number one influence. A more folky version. A lighter version. More quirky and campy.

One extreme in my songwriting to my number one's other extreme.

This man is Tom Waits.

His more straight ahead blues songs, his ballads, I don't much care for. It's the weird stuff, the stuff where you can hear the room ambience in the recording, where his gruff scream is the ultimate delivery, where bones are played instead of regular drums, where the theatricality of it all comes out. I picture some basement of a dive bar to be the locale for Tom Waits' music. A strange cabaret where something isn't quite right, but you'll go along for the ride. I like when an artist prompts the audience to constantly question the sanity of the man/woman behind the work.

I dabble in simplistic production from time to time. Set up pots and pans in a room, play a simple acoustic riff, and scream from across the room. It adds character and depth to the personality of the music. Mr. Waits is excellent at portraying character.

One of the best examples of Tom's work for my influence would be his song "Earth Died Screaming" from the album Bone Machine, and one of the main songs from the "12 Monkeys" soundtrack. It was actually the first song I heard of his. I thought it was special, a dark voice with such a strange personality to it. So much is going in the way he conveys the message, but it's done in such a simplistic way. There are bones for percussion, a distorted blues guitar, and Tom's voice. That's it, except for the Death song excerpt at the end. Hearing this song, it makes me want to find a random venue, not traditional, where the band takes garbage cans, water jugs, chains, one guitar and one amp (one of lesser quality) and put on a show entirely in this magnitude. I wrote a song called "Whisper a Scream" which consisted just of metal on stone hits and vocals. A lot of "In Hopes to Mend" is inspired by Tom Waits, as well. One of the main features of the bridge is a bongo drum played with me holding keys loosely in my right hand. I put the reverb up in such a way as to suggest that I played it in a lone basement room, which is where the song takes place.

A basement room not unlike the one I picture Tom to claim as his performance throne.

Tom Waits -- "Earth Died Screaming"

The Dyes of Patch 1

In these final entries, seeing as though Karmath the Blog has been primarily a personal MP3 journal, I'd like to share the main influences of my songwriting. My "greatest hits" if you will. What with all the MP3 "Best of the Year" lists and everything, I figured I'd show you where I take most of my inspiration from in the music world.

I s'pose I'll start at the back end of inspiration and work my way up.

I love artists who blend a lot of genres together into a hodge podge collage, creating an entirely new sound all their own. They aren't creating a movement, but they are creative enough to show that they are true geniuses. I take a great liking to raw rock, big drums and production. I also love riff rock, heavy recognizable riffs that are both easy to play and easy to remember. Riffs that get stuck in your head.

I'm a fan of music that changes its production from song to song. What happens when you take an electronic music duo production team that makes great heavy sample beats from all sorts of different sources and put them together with a singer/songwriter with a nack for folk/rock/blues/funk/dance/country/experimental music? Genre bender with production bender = Beck.

I consider Beck's best albums to be the ones where he teamed up with The Dust Brothers, best known for the Fight Club soundtrack they scored. These albums include "Odelay", "Midnight Vultures", and "Guero". There are so many different sounds from song to song, it's like a new palette was created for each. They're so interesting to hear and distinguishing and taking in each new timbre of each new song's aural palette is extremely engaging and fun. These albums are what gave me my love for really staying in tune to production and found noises. It keeps albums interesting. You're reinventing yourself with each new song. Beck does this better than any other artist I know.

I try to make all of my songs sound different. I want each record to sound different. I want all sorts of different styles within my music, blending together to create a new whole.

Here's a good example of a quintessential influential Beck song: Derelict from "Odelay". It has samples galore mixed with found, somewhat sloppy noises. It's dark, with a distorted vocal line. Plus, the eastern instruments provide for a sort of drug induced ambience that's not uncommon for Beck. His ridiculousness can sometimes provide for some far out noises and feelings.

So, we've got found noises, a great collage of different genres, great production, and an empathetical feeling due to all. I have no idea what the song is about, but I feel like I do:

Beck -- "Derelict"