Posted on 24 June 2009 by Steve Lampiris
Dear Omar Rodriguez-López, is everything all right at home? Let’s face it: something is wrong. Look at your newest concoction, The Mars Volta’s Octahedron: a less-than-CD-capacity run time (50 minutes this time around), song titles that don’t force the listener to consult a dictionary and/or encyclopedia to understand (well, some anyway), no song over eight minutes, actual song structures… Continue Reading
Posted on 14 April 2009 by Rich Hughes
The Mars Volta return! A new album, called Octahedron, will be released in the U.S. on 23rd June on Warner Bros.
The album seems to be a more restrained version of the Volta, as it’s only 49 minutes in length, with only seven songs…
The usual Volta duo Omar Rodriguez-Lopez and Cedric Bixler-Zavala are joined once again by multi-instrumentalist Marcel Rodriguez-Lopez, drummer Thomas Pridgen, keyboardist Isaiah “Ikey” Owens, bassist Juan Alderete de la Peña, and guitarist John Frusciante…
The Mars Volta plan to tour behind Octahedron but so far, only shows as part of Bonnaroo and Outside Lands have been announced.
Also, the workaholic Omar Rodriguez-Lopez will release Cryptomnesia, the debut album from his new band El Grupo Nuevo de Omar Rodriguez-Lopez, which features all the usual Volta crew plus the Hella drummer Zach Hill.
Octahedron tracklist:
01 Teflon
02 Halo of Nembutals
03 With Twilight as My Guide
04 Cotopaxi
05 Desperate Graves
06 Copernicus
07 Luciforms
Posted on 26 January 2009 by Sean Bamberger
At The Drive-In. Just one utterance of this collection of words is enough to send thousands upon thousands of musical elitists into saliva-filled gushing torrents of praise for the work of the band in question. They are often name-checked as being one of the most influential bands ever to grace our ears. Upon dissolution, A.T.D.I. split into two offshoots, with Cedric Bixler-Zavala and Omar Rodríguez-López starting up prog-noise concept toting wizards The Mars Volta, and Jim Ward, Paul Hinojos and Tony Hajjar forming the initially exciting but ultimately boring Sparta. And now, after a few years making albums about dying artists and other such things, Omar Rodríguez-López is ready to step into the limelight by himself with his latest solo release (coming after the exciting release of many albums recorded earlier in the decade but never released). This album is called Old Money, and it sounds like…well…Omar Rodríguez-López. Continue Reading
