Balkan influenced melodies for maoist infants, internal organs and addled livestock. Performed on a multitude of instruments, featuring accordion, clarinets, musical saw and inclement weather.

9 MP3 Songs
WORLD: Eastern European, AVANT GARDE: Psychedelia

Details:
Alan Patton is a multi-instrumentalist who has collaborated with a long list of well-known artists of the thriving Tokyo underground theater and music scenes. Originally from California, he arrived in Japan in 1996 and began playing music full-time after moving from the countryside to Tokyo in 2000. His music is heavily influenced by much of the traditional music of Eastern Europe, in which both the great joys and most painful sorrows of life are often captured in a single song. This blending of polar opposites is central to Alan's music, which is often very dark but always full of whimsy and humor. His compositions and playful improvisations often unite very unlikely soul mates: Laurel & Hardy and a melancholic gypsy violin; a Macedonian shepherd with paranoid schizophrenia; emphysema and a waltzing accordion; a midget circus with Mao Tse-Tung. Indeed Alan has a long and healthy relationship with the absurd, having studied Russian literature and surrealist painting as a university student, and has continued to create absurdist art and short fiction up until the present. Originally a visual artist, his forays into installation and the resulting experiments with sound are what led him to choose music as his main creative medium. Both his recordings and live performances are characterized by a mix of ambient sounds (fits of coughing, howling wolves, squeaking mice, fluttering moths, rainstorms, etc. etc.) with hyper-active accordion playing, an eerie musical saw and lilting/crying clarinets.

Alan is a current member of KECSKE BROASCA and METROMANCE HOTEL and a former member of NINO TRINCA and BABA YAGA.
He often collaborates with: composer/vocalist Yotaro Ito (Metrofarce), violinist Honzi (Ua, Fishmans, Fuku), tuba/bassist Abdul Iwahara (ex.Kabocha Shokai), sax/clarinetist Keiko Komori (Shibusa Shirazu, Koenji Hyakkei), sax/clarinetist Yoko Tada (Komatcha Klezmer), guitarist Hallz (Metromance Hotel), composer/pianist Tadashi Ueda (Nino Trinca, Epoch), Tuvan throat singer Masaaki Aoyama (Bions), vocalist/pianist Emi Eleonola (Demi Semi Quaver), middle eastern percussionist Daisuke Jinushi (Tabla Kwaiesa), tabla master Dinesh Chandra Dyoundi, dancer/choreographer Masako Yasumoto, belly dancer Safi and others.
He has worked/played with: actor/singer/songwriter Minosuke (Nylon 100°), Director/singer Keralino Sandorovich (Nylon 100°, Synthesizer), Director/actor Suzuki Matsuo (Otona Keikaku), writer/actor Seiko Ito, Director/actor Tomorowo Taguchi (ex.Bachikaburi, Tetsuo: Iron Man, etc.), singer/songwriter Carmen Maki, multi-instramentalist Tadahiko Yokogawa (ex.After Dinner), multi-instramentalist Yoshiyuki Kawaguchi (Kuricorder Quartet, Cicala Mvta), clarinetist Wataru Okuma (Cicala Mvta), vocalist/actress Jun Togawa (Yapoos), voice artist/actress Inuyama Inuko (Nylon 100°), producer/bassist Tetsuo Nakamura, writer/actress Asako Maekawa, vocalist/actor Mikami Hiroshi, musician/performer Jon ç¬, singer/songwriter/multi-instrumentalist Maia Barouh, artist Suzuki Cohji (Cohjizukin Band), accordionist Spannko (Fuku), vocalist Emi Shirasaki (Shang Shang Typhoon), performance artist Barbara Murata, METROFARCE, DOLOMITES, MALDITA NOCHE, JUNIOR, noise legend Haino Keiji, improvisational musician Ayuo, vocal artist Ootaka Sizzle, .....and many others.

The story for which Alan's studio and label are named:

Speeding Farm

When Marcel opened the door to go outside, he found that his home was speeding through an open countryside. So he sat down on the porch swing to enjoy the scenery. Beating down a never-ending wall of waving grass, the porch steps had collected all manner of small rodents, frogs, insects and fowl; some smashed, others squirming and tumbling about in an incoherent mass. The house ran through a barbed wire fence, which immediately became tangled in the porch railing; an increasingly long snarl of wire and fence posts trailing behind. Then a grazing cow smashed through the front of the house, boring a tunnel of destruction through the living room and kitchen before neatly exiting the open back door. Scanning the horizon for further obstacles, Marcel observed the outlines of a grain tower, windmill, and barn sprouting up from the earth with alarming rapidity. Hoping to bring the house to a halt or change its course, he ran inside and began to manipulate plumbing fixtures and wall switches. Nothing happened, so he ran his record player at 78 rpm, inflated a shower cap with a hair dryer, then plugged his toaster into the back of the VCR and packed it with butter. Cranking an egg beater furiously, he ran outside but saw that the farm was still approaching. He could see chicken coops now, and a sow sleeping in a mire.
Then smoke began to belch out of the grain tower and the farm ripped itself loose from the surrounding fields with a deafening crepitation. At the same time, Marcel noticed a steering wheel mounted on his coffee table. He grabbed the wheel and steered for control. The house veered to one side, mowing down an outhouse as it overtook the farm. It seemed that his modest and comparatively light-weight home would make short work of the lumbering farm, but fueled by fertile soil and hard work, the farm accelerated quickly, thwarting Marcel's attempt at a clean pass. The farm soon pulled ahead, festooning the house with a cloudy trail of refuse. Marcel closed the front door, but animal dung and clumps of roots and soil continued to shower through the gap left by the cow. Acting quickly, he crammed the dung and a scarecrow into the fireplace and lit a magnificent blaze. The house gained speed, and once again Marcel drew alongside the speeding farm. He swore through his teeth and jerked the wheel to the right, slamming the house into the side of a barn. But weight for weight he was outmatched, and his house fishtailed away and fell behind. Retreating into the kitchen, Marcel shoved the refrigerator, gas range and a large iron safe out the back door and the house sped forward into the lead. But the farm quickly countered, dumping an entire year's corn crop from the grain tower, and caught up once again. The two properties traded the lead back and forth, neither one quite able to shake the other. Marcel soon grew tired of the whole business. "The Devil take it," he said, and went to the kitchen to make some cold snacks. Just then, both the house and farm went speeding right off a cliff, which brought the race to an end.
Alan Patton, 1997. Matsuyama, Japan

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