|
The Mars Volta is the creative partnership
formed in 2001 between bandleader/composer/guitarist
Omar Rodriguez-Lopez and lyricist/vocalist Cedric Bixler-Zavala.
The Mars Volta's first recorded output
was the three-song Tremulant EP, released April 2002
on the Gold Standard Laboratories label.
De-Loused In The Comatorium, the first
full-length album by The Mars Volta, was released in
June 2003. Produced by Omar Rodriguez-Lopez and Rick
Rubin, De-Loused In The Comatorium served as a celebration
of the life of Julio Venegas, a local artist who had
been a mentor to Omar and Cedric during their youth in
El Paso, Texas, before committing suicide in 1996.
De-Loused… established the Mars Volta creative
template: Omar writing, arranging and musically directing
every note, and Cedric distilling every lyric and vocal
melody from a story he’d written inspired by Venegas:
a story in which fictional protagonist Cerpin Taxt falls
into a coma following a botched suicide attempt, experiences
fantastic adventures in his dreams, epic battles between
the good and bad aspects of his conscience, and ultimately
emerges from the coma--only to succeed in taking his
own life.
Omar and Cedric’s musical and lyrical creation
was expressed on De-Loused… with the help of keyboardist
Isaiah Ikey Owens, drummer Jon Theodore, sound manipulator
Jeremy Ward, as well as Flea and John Frusciante of the
Red Hot Chili Peppers.
The Mars Volta’s second album, Frances The Mute
was released in March 2005. While similarly inspired
by the memory of a dear departed friend, Frances… was
by no means a "sequel" to 2003's De-Loused….
Where De-Loused… was a finite sci-fi narrative
that took place entirely in an imaginary universe created
for the story, Frances… would transpire in the
real world, inspired by a diary found by late bandmate
Jeremy Ward (R.I.P.) and the similarity of the anonymous
author’s life to his own.
Frances The Mute was named for the
biological mother who is the object of protagonist Cygnus’ quest--a
story roughly and (deliberately) vaguely mirroring events
and characters in the aforementioned diary and possibly
even in the brief life of the then-recently deceased
Ward. The freshness of the trauma in the case of Frances… rendered
it a very different record from De-Loused…: Cedric’s
lyrical tapestry of abandonment, addiction and the search
for the meaning of family more intense and ambiguous,
Omar’s assumption of the musical helm more absolute
as he added video director (“The Widow”)
to his list of duties on Frances…, and dropped
the co- to produce the record himself.
Having made their recorded debut on
Frances The Mute, the members of the Mars Volta band
that had been touring together since De-Loused…--Owens,
Theodore, bassist Juan Alderete De la Peña, percussionist
(and Omar’s
younger brother) Marcel Rodriguez-Lopez, flautist/multi-instrumentalist
Adrian Terrazas Gonzalez, sound manipulator and fellow
at the drive-in alum Pablo Hinojos-Gonzalez—joined
Omar and Cedric in translating Frances… into an
unforgettable live experience—the culmination of
which being a stint curating All Tomorrow’s Parties
2005 Nightmare Before Christmas festival at the UK’s
Camber Sands. Inspired by the diverse array of talent
they were able to assemble—CocoRosie, Diamanda
Galas, Antony & the Johnsons and many others—Omar
and Cedric regrouped determined, in their own words,
to “step up our game.”
The resultant Amputechture, the third
album by The Mars Volta, marks the first time Omar and
Cedric have created a work without a single unifying
narrative. The essential creative process remained the
same: Omar creating the music (including the horn sections)
for Cedric to lyricize—but
this time with the freedom to document unrelated stories,
vignettes, inside jokes, various people, events memories… All
in all, Cedric likens the experience alternately to the
compartmentalized episodes of Rod Serling’s NIGHT
GALLERY or the disparate plotlines of David Lynch’s
TWIN PEAKS: Storylines not necessarily linear or in any
way connected, but all told in the same voice.
|
©2010
Outside Lands Music and Arts Festival | Privacy
Policy | Terms
of Use | Site by Fast
Atmosphere
