With all of Mike Patton’s various projects, you get a good dose of innovation within familiar art forms, delivered with an avante garde twist.  In a sense, the surprises are expected, but still satisfying.  With Peeping Tom, he opts for a decidedly more straight-forward approach, trading in the over-the-top conceptual dedication of Mr. Bungle and the sheer mathematical hysteria of Fantomas, for much more predictable hip-hop and techno-inspired collaborations with a number of notable guest musicians.

The payoff is spectacular on more inspired tracks, like the opener “Five Seconds,” alternating between densely layered beats and moody, ambient octave-doubled vocals that carry the verse, and a frenetic, polyrhythmic chorus, which eventually propels the song into a brief, paranoid noise breakdown of a bridge.  Other songs fall a little flat, like the monotonous drone of “Getaway,” or “Sucker”s somewhat bland duet with a foul-mouthed Norah Jones.

All in all, the risk pays off.  Given total creative control with his own record label, it’s refreshing to see Patton challenging himself with such rigid structures, though one can’t help wishing he would cut loose a little more.  The chorus of “Don’t Even Trip,” for instance, chopping and dissecting the pulse into an anxious 11/8, only reminds you of the potential of Patton’s bizarre mind, the delivery falling short of some of the more out-there experiments of Tomahawk and the aforementioned Fantomas.  It’s always great to hear him breathing new life into a somewhat tired genre, though with this release, it feels like he underestimated his audience just a little.