Anonymous (Tomahawk album)

Production

Anonymous was recorded after the departure of Tomahawk's bass player Kevin Rutmanis, leaving a lineup composed of Mike Patton, Duane Denison and John Stanier. Denison and Stanier recorded their musical parts for the album in Nashville, Tennessee, before sending them to Patton in San Francisco to add vocal parts and samples; the resulting album was a mix of live studio recordings and overdubbed sounds. Due to the absence of Rutmanis, both Denison and Patton recorded bass tracks for the album. Patton's former Mr. Bungle bandmate Trevor Dunn became the band's bass player in 2012.
The songs on Anonymous are based on Native American compositions, which Denison had researched while touring Indian reservations with musician Hank Williams III. During that tour, Denison had been listening to Native American rock groups and was disappointed "at how normal they sounded", having expected to hear music that was "more aggressive, spookier and more kinetic" than the Southern rock and country rock he had heard.  Denison found transcriptions of traditional music, and based his work for the album on these—the title Anonymous is a reference to the uncredited composers of this source material. The original compositions were mostly written with one melody line—often for a nose flute—with a simple accompaniment such as hand clapping. As a result, Denison has said the group "took a lot of liberties, and filled in a lot of space", leaving much of the album newly composed around these simple frameworks. Denison has called Anonymous a "kind of a detour" from Tomahawk's usual sound, and described it as a concept album.