CITAZIONE
WEB-EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW: THE MARS VOLTA’S OMAR RODRÍGUEZ-LÓPEZ ON ‘OCTAHEDRON’ AND HIS NUEVO GRUPO
Omar Rodríguez-López is a busy man. Not only is the guitarist releasing Octahedron, the new record from his award-winning experimental rock band the Mars Volta, but he also recently dropped Cryptonesia, the first of three albums recorded in 2004 by side project El Grupo Nuevo de Omar Rodriguez-Lopez. Top that all off with multiples high profile tours and production jobs, and you’ve got one full plate. Somehow Rodríguez-López found a few minutes to talk to Revolver about his forthcoming projects and his band’s rabid fan base.
REVOLVER How was touring in March with the Omar Rodríguez-López group?
OMAR RODRÍGUEZ-LÓPEZ The tour was great. I got to go to Athens and Moscow for the first time—in 15 years of touring, I’ve never been there. Moscow was incredible! They’re a very passionate people. It’s something both very similar and different to playing for Latin countries—very loud, very excited, very passionate. It felt like people there absorbing every moment of music they could, which, nowadays, is a very rare thing.
El Grupo Nuevo de Omar Rodríguez-López just released Cryptonesia, which was part of a triptych recorded in 2004. Why release it now?
If you look at any of the releases that I have, none of them are current. I make a lot of music, and a lot of it ends up on my drive closet. I’m not thinking about a record as a means to an end, you know? And once I’m done, I’m chasing the next high—“That was that, now something new!” And then there comes a time where I want to put out a record, and then I go and dig it up and put it out. A great example is last year: I started having a lot of nostalgia for Jeremy [Michael Ward, the late Mars Volta sound tech]. I thought, Whatever happened to that record he and I made together? It’d be really nice to put that out. So I had to look in the closet and look all the way to where the stuff from 2001 is and find the record, and looking there, I see this whole other record that I’d completely forgotten about, and while Jeremy didn’t play on it, I remember that he was in the studio the whole time—the experience, the problems, where we ate when we were done at 3 in the morning. It’s a reliving experience, because it’s the other parts of making a record—putting together a lyrics sheet, making the artwork, that type of stuff.
What, then, were/are you trying to get out with Cryptonesia that you weren’t getting out in your other projects?
…I don’t know! For me, it was sort of like a little vacation. At that time, I had just released Amputechture [the Mars Volta’s 2006 album] and I had just begun working on the music that would eventually become Bedlam, and I just had this primordial urge to take it away from that… I sort of consider Cryptonesia my “punk record.” It’s a very generic term, but I wanted to get away from writing horn sections, string sections, all these different parts, and get back to this guttural, aggressive thing with just guitars. I wanted to strip things down for myself and write very simply. Plus, I was dying to play with Zach [Hill of Hella and Team Sleep]; I really wanted to do a lot of collaborations together.
The Cryptonesia press release says you’re “quick to point out that the Mars Volta is your top priority.” Do you ever feel like other projects might encroach on the Mars Volta?
No, not at all, but I think when you work a certain way, people start to create hysteria, like this swine flu bullshit. If you show someone that you have a new group, they’re like, “OhmygodtheMarsVoltaisbreakingup!” and they run away with their imagination and project everything on you that they want to. So this was me saying, “Look, let’s make it clear, so there’s no room for your fantasies: the Mars Volta is my baby and my pride and joy. And nothing will tear me away from it beside the point where I lose interest in it.”
Are your fans the rabid, rumor-prone type?
Yeah, they’re completely fucking insane. I think it’s really great—I remember being 15 and being completely obsessed, so I understand that aspect of it. But it’s really insane how much they read into things. And it wouldn’t effect me ’cause I don’t read reviews or what people are saying, but it effects me in that I’m walking around in Los Angeles and someone comes up to me and says, “Hey, I love your music.” Oh, great! ‘So is it true that…” For me, it’s just coming out of left field because I don’t live in that world, and so when I hear some of the insane perceptions people have, you have to sort of sift through them.
Do you ever feel a reluctance to take part in the press side of being in the Mars Volta?
…I see it as part of the equation. We are a band on a major label that’s in the public eye, and we’re touring, and…I get to do this for a living. I don’t take that for granted. You can either say, “Fuck the press! How uncool! How un-rock and roll!” Or you can say, “Fuck, man, I make music for a living! I don’t have to make pizzas anymore! All I gotta do is talk to somebody about what I’m doing? Hook me up!”
After 2008’s The Bedlam in Goliath was so well-received, how are you feeling about Octahedron? What can we expect from it?
You can expect that it’s different. That’s always a problem with music—everyone loves your first record? Good! If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it! For me, it doesn’t work that way. You made it, now destroy it and start over. Bedlam was the most violent record we’d made to date. When I think of it, I think of fire, claustrophobia, asphyxiation, darkness, no space—when I think of making that record, I think of a small crawlspace. So when I got out of that and life started changing, I looked to the polar opposites. Water, light, big open spaces, sky, these kind of elements. That’s what Octahedron is to me. It feels so good to be in a different space like that.
Interview by Chris Krovatin
