California

California is the third studio album by American experimental rock band Mr. Bungle. It was released on July 13, 1999, through Warner Bros. Musical style and writing The album's 1999 press kit by Warner Bros. Records states, The songwriting process for California was much less collaborative than the band's previous albums. Despite having a more accessible sound than prior releases, saxophonist Clinton McKinnon has stated, "It wasn’t some attempt at reconciling how much we’d previously tortured our audiences with white-noise [...] it wasn’t some conscious attempt to normalise our music or make it all the more palatable." On the album's writing and sound, Trevor Dunn stated in a 2017 interview that, "[we] never discussed our projected direction. We never sat down and said, 'ok the last record was like that so now let’s attempt this.' Instead we individually brought things to the collective table that somehow coalesced without premeditation." He goes on to state that "the recording of California was a bit of a nightmare. We attempted frugality by recording a lot in our rehearsal space which [our guitarist] Trey [Spruance] had partially turned into a recording studio. But we also spread the work out over various outside studios with a number of engineers as well as additional musicians. In the end we had two 24-track tape machines and two ADAT machines linked. That record would have been much easier to manage had Pro Tools come along a bit sooner."