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…
…Well, of course, restraint was the next logical move. It was the only move. Seriously, you can’t go crazier than The Bedlam In Goliath. Such an endeavor would put TMV somewhere near the bastard child of Slayer and Tool. If Goliath was a hatchet – a blunt tool with which to strike for maximum damage and minimal effort – then Octahedron is a surgical laser – its adversative counterpart, a tool of precision used for the most delicate of sonic attacks. And the band can’t get more obtuse than Frances The Mute, lest its sound move exponentially closer to the prog version of Metal Machine Music. So, yeah, TMV toned it down for the new record. And rightly so.

TMV have been ascribed as the modern-day Pink Floyd from the outset, but that’s never been wholly true. Pink Floyd always had a logical structure and a journey of the mind (yes, I did just say that). TMV had structure, but in order to find it you needed the thought process of Jackson Pollock. Volta’s always been more extreme, more obtuse, more everything (aside from pretension, something no band will ever wrestle away from Roger Waters’ fingers) than Floyd ever was. That’s been both a good and bad thing for TMV, depending on who you ask. But with Octahedron, the characterization is actually accurate – and to a ridiculously particular degree: it’s The Mars Volta’s version of Wish You Were Here. Before you get upset with my absurd name-dropping, hear me out. You’ve got the acoustic tracks (‘With Twilight As My Guide,’ the first half of ‘Since We’ve Been Wrong’), the out-and-out mellow vibe not duplicated in either catalogue (‘Copernicus’), and an air of transcendence-by-way-of-despair isolationism (the appropriately titled ‘Desperate Graves’).

And like Here’s ‘Have A Cigar,’ ‘Cotopaxi’ is the oddball. It’s the lone song that retains the breakneck speed of Goliath. While it is a rather fun and vigorous three-minute hurricane, it doesn’t belong with this collection. It’s more like a Goliath B-side than a fitting album track of Octahedron. The track apparently only exists to quell the fears of fans that TMV totally pussed out after Goliath. No, guys, it hasn’t given up. It’s just trying something different. Remain calm and put down the inhalers.

Restraint, however, does not mean that TMV doesn’t take sudden left turns on occasion; it’s just done to make a point or emphasize a passage. ‘Copernicus,’ for example, features out-of-nowhere programming half way through that acts as a series of digital tumbleweeds. Better still is the coda of album closer ‘Luciforms’ which contains what is perhaps the only Mars Volta of old on this entire escapade: a wah-wah-saturated guitar solo freakout that spirals and dances around Thomas Pridgen’s furious kit-bashing. It’s beautiful. More importantly, though, it’s telling. It suggests that while Octahedron is a departure from the Mars Volta’s previous exploits, it doesn’t mean that it can’t “return” sometime in the future. But while it has meditatively detoured, we might as well enjoy the trip.
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The Mars Volta on Myspace

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

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.

Love him or hate him, you know an O.R.L. track when you hear it. It cannot be denied that he is one of the most individual sounding multi-instrumentalists of his generation. That isn’t to say that he’s the best, far from it, but he can be credited as having a sound all of his own. A man who is apparently constantly fighting for control with his guitar against a sci-fi background of alien armada effects and deep space reverbs, Old Money is a constant reminder that the war, it seems, is never over. Opening track ‘The Power Of Myth’ eases us in gently to the Omar experience, sounding initially more like Ocean Colour Scene than anything else, but soon enough that vibe is replaced with the comfortable feel of a chilled drum and bass jam, with dissonant guitar melodies flicking left and right. But only for, ooo, about 20 seconds? Then off it rockets again into unfamiliar territory. But this is no math-teenager with twitchy legs syndrome of an album. Songs like ‘Private Fortunes’ stays in the same place, chord progression and general vibe for its entirety, a Latin-infused smooth number with a Santana-on acid solo guitarist doing his best to twist his own head off. In a purely musical sense mind. ‘Family War Funding (Love Those Rothschilds)’ is a song that throws itself like a madman into Primus territory, and then not content with its current position, blasts into a demented Polysics/Mad Capsule Markets/Japanese punk-pop rush to the moon. This immediately followed by ‘Vipers In The Bosom’, which is reminiscent of a wild west film, a desert scene where the previous race to the moon has sadly ended in a decent into somewhere very hot and very sandy.

Old Money is a musical odyssey, without the cliches of concept or abstract notions, it is an amazing collection of music which encourages the listener to form their own story rather than push ideals into their ears. This is mostly due to Omar’s talent for layering songs and stitching them together in a way that doesn’t interrupt the flow of music, but compliments it. Each songs segues into the next perfectly without any stilted feelings or dramatic drops. Even when silence is found at the end of some tracks, it only serves to give the listener a quick breather, time to collect their thoughts rather than get bored and switch off. A good example of this is the change between ‘I Like Rockerfellers’ First Two Albums, But ‘After That’, and title track ‘Old Money’. The former track is a rasta-stomp with some nasty and diseased chord sequences, and an undead-slash guitar line that gives the overall feel of what could only be described as the worlds first Mexico-Jamaican zombie horror movie. And then, 15 seconds of brooding silence allows us to wash off the previous image and brace ourselves for a new chapter to the Old Money story. And it works perfectly.

I was never a true fan of The Mars Volta, I still struggle to properly appreciate At The Drive-In, and I was VERY disappointed by Sparta’s last effort, given that ‘Air’ is one of my favourite tracks of all time. Hell, most progressive, jam music bores me rigid. But there’s something about Old Money that is incredibly appealing. It’s just quite joyful to listen to really, and when you do listen, you feel that there was a lot of time and effort taken to create music that is more focused on emotion and imagery than killer hooks and catchy chord progressions. It’s Omar Rodríguez-López, and when he has free reign to take himself in a solo direction, he has the ability to create stunning albums like Old Money. After a few listens, this album has the potential to draw you in like no other. Highly recommended to both fans and prog-newbies alike.
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Omar Rodríguez-López On Myspace