To get inspired during the creation of Lovage's sensual debut album, Nathaniel Merriweather Presents... Lovage Music to Make Love to Your Old Lady By, the group — producer/songwriter Dan "The Automator" Nakamura (Gorillaz, Deltron 3030), vocalist Mike Patton (Faith No More, Fantômas) and vocalist Jennifer Charles (Elysian Fields, Firewater) — relied on various forms of mood-setting including candles, endless screenings of "The Ladies Man" and cognac mixed with passion fruit juice.

There were also more carnal methods.

One late night last spring, the supergroup was holed up in Nakamura's San Francisco studio. As they were getting ready to pack it in for the evening, Nakamura and Patton called for Charles, but she didn't answer, so they figured she had already left. Then, they heard a strange noise coming from the control room.         "It sounded like a wounded animal in heat, and I went over and looked through the window [of the vocal booth], but I didn't see anything," recalled the reclusive Patton from his Bay Area home during a rare interview. "The track's going and the moaning's continuing. So, Dan goes into the control room, and Jennifer's down on the floor ... It was creativity in action."

The resulting moans, yelps and gurgles are sprinkled throughout ...Music to Make Love to Your Old Lady By, an album that combines the artistry of romantic vocalists like Barry White and Tom Jones, trip-hop pioneers such as Portishead and Massive Attack and the creative, atmospheric hip-hop beats that have made Nakamura famous.

"I wanted to do this because I felt there was a need for love records," Nakamura said. "I don't think there have been any great love records in the past 20-something years. Love songs today are all like, 'C'mere, let me do you.' Love is a far more complex thing than that. I don't know about you, but I'm not gonna pop on Limp Bizkit if I'm trying to put down the candles and turn on the fireplace."

The group named itself after an alcoholic cordial brewed in the southern part of England which, when mixed with brandy, supposedly creates an aphrodisiac. "Brandy is a sharp drink," Nakamura said. "It's got a lot of fire to it. But when you mix the lovage in, it becomes much more of a smooth experience. That's kind of the metaphor for the record."

Smooth, textural and cheekily seductive, the album features guest musicianship by Kid Koala and spoken word appearances by Prince Paul, Damon Albarn (Gorillaz, Blur) and Afrika Bambaataa, who, in "Herbs, Good Hygiene & Socks," urges listeners to "wash your ass every day" and wear sweat socks to prevent girls from getting pregnant.

"I just figured if you're gonna make a record about love, you should put on the well-known sexperts," Nakamura said. "Obviously, Bambaataa comes to mind."

"Pit Stop (Take Me Home)," which is built around an eerie piano part, clanging bells, a tangled undistorted guitar line and an insistent beat, highlights Patton's half-rap and Charles' little-girl croon. And "Book of the Month," one of the catchiest ditties on the record, features Charles' breathy voice and Patton's sinister groan overlapped with such clever, suggestive lines as, "You and me are a disease and the germs are spreading/ Use me like Listerine keeping your breath fresher/ Feel the stroke of your paintbrush, my blank sheet of paper/ I'm your book of the month, redefine print later."

Perhaps the greatest inspiration for Lovage was '60s French cabaret-pop composer Serge Gainsbourg, whose sexually explicit material went over big across Europe, but never really gelled in the U.S. While they worked on ... Music to Make Love to Your Old Lady By, Nakamura and Patton exchanged Gainsbourg CDs, DVDs and books and giggled gleefully like junior high kids who've discovered a stack of Hustlers in a dresser drawer.

"Something like that can only happen in France," marveled Patton. "You have this grimy, foul-mouthed guy in his 50s who wrote a novel about his own farts. And he's dating every movie star known to mankind and making incestuous videos with his daughter. And the guy's at the top of the charts! You've got to be f---ing kidding me! Hats off!"

Nakamura started working on Lovage material as long as two years ago, but it wasn't until December 2000 that he began focusing intently on the project. By the middle of last year, when he finished the instrumental frameworks for the songs, he began brainstorming about appropriate vocalists. He decided to ask Charles to participate because he liked her sensual voice, but he was stuck for a male vocalist. He was planning to work with Patton on his upcoming rock project Peeping Tom, but hadn't considered him for Lovage.

"I was over at his home studio and we were in the early stages of firing Peeping Tom up, and he said he had to get this Lovage thing out of the way before we started working," Patton recalled. "He played it for me, and I flipped out. My eyes lit up and my tail started wagging and I started foaming at the mouth, so he asked me to do it."

A few months later, the album was in the can. As appropriate as Patton's voice sounds on the record, his involvement in the tuneful, mellow project might seem a bit strange

considering his other recent endeavors, Fantômas and Tomahawk, which have been cacophonous and chaotic. However, longtime fans should recall the R&B-flavored numbers recorded by Faith No More, not to mention Patton's obsession with confounding expectations.

"Lovage feels real natural to me and I see some kind of musical progression — however twisted it may be — in lots of things I've done," he explained. "Besides, over the last 10 years I seem to have constantly either disappointed or confused a whole hell of a lot of people. Why stop now?"