THE MARS VOLTA ITALIA forum: "In Thirteen Seconds"

Interviste, Octahedron era

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SaraKeenan
CAT_IMG Posted on 13/5/2009, 09:54




Non so se è stato già postato...

Source: http://www.qprime.com/bands/themarsvolta.php


For The Mars Volta's brand new fifth album Octahedron, however, Omar adopted an oblique and entirely new strategy, one he'd never tried before in the group's career. Having cut the basic tracks for this new album, instead of retreating to the studio to tinker endlessly with the songs and recordings, he chose to step away. Instead of feverishly adulterating the tapes with the mosaic of overdubs and FX that have typically aided Omar in realizing his concepts, he chose instead to polish and refine what he had, to hold back on every bell and every whistle. The result is, he says, the first of his albums that he can listen to for pleasure. It is also an album that distils all of the energy, all of the furious invention that characterises music with a clarity they've never before achieved. In keeping with this spirit, Omar pared the band down to a 6-piece lineup, asking Hinojos and Terrazas to leave, both of whom did so amicably.

"It was really challenging, to hold back," he smiles. "To add many layers, or an instrumental freakout section here or there, began to feel predictable to me, so I started putting restraints on myself, saying no, you aren't going to add 97 extra parts to this song. I reined it in, and kept it to the core of what those songs were."


Octahedron is an album heady with the emotion and high-drama that has always been The Mars Volta's trademark, their newfound simplicity and focus delivering some of the most immediate and powerful songs in their discography. Lyrically, Cedric employed 'disappearance' as a loose theme, inspired by the culture of kidnapping that has latterly infected the group's current home of Mexico, by the mysterious disappearances that populate the library of urban myth, and the way emotions - even the strongest, purest emotions - can mysteriously, but entirely, ebb away.

The album opens with the tender ache of "Since We've Been Wrong," Cedric's keening vocal establishing a mood that's deeply blue, powerfully melancholic, a suckerpunch that hits every bit as hard as Octahedron's unashamed rockers (the gleaming futuristic funk of "Teflon," the tense chase-music of "Cotopaxi"). Pulling back from the full-tilt experimentation of previous releases, Octahedron invests its energies in Omar's gift for songcraft, for swooning guitar runs of high tension and emotive power (closer "Luciforms"' epic riffage), for the nagging hooks and choked melodies that wreath the churning rhythms of "Desperate Graves." "For me, all that's important is if something moves you or not," explains Omar. "I've never tried to be tricky, to be complicated; if it gives me goosebumps, I'll use it. If it's striking, if it hits me as a listener, that's all that matters to me."

Ultimately, the album is another in a series of testaments to Omar and Cedric's unassailable faith in following their muse in whichever direction it takes them; thus far the journey's been the ride of the creative lifetime, and they see no sense it second-guessing it yet, especially not when it delivers so pointedly powerful a record as Octahedron.

"The only reason we even have a fanbase is because I've stayed true to my instincts," nods Omar. "We've not tried to repeat previous successes to make them happy, we've stayed true to ourselves, and made the music that we want to make, and that's what they respond to. They can sense this is something really pure." And on Octahedron, perhaps purer than ever.
 
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Walkabout
CAT_IMG Posted on 13/5/2009, 12:26




oh, finalmente qualcuno dice qualcosa su st'album!

Qui manca meno di un mese e mezzo all'aprirsi delle danze, e tutto ciò che è dato sapere è che è un album "accessible" (e come quest'articolo ben specifica, assolutamente non "mellow", al di là di quanto Since We've Been Wrong ci abbia fatto temere). A settembre 2007 (5 mesi prima dell'uscita di Bedlam) si sapeva dell'ouija e di gerusalemme e jim jones e cazzi e mazzi...

In merito alle parole di Omar: a prescindere dalle dichiarazioni di indipendenza da ciò che "loro" (decidete voi chi) vorrebbero, io continuo a stupirmi di come quest'uomo si muova - musicalmente parlando - a mò di rinoceronte in acido, e mi rendo conto che effettivamente dopo gli eccessi di Tbig la strada più difficile da perseguire sarebbe stata quella di iniziare a togliere strati piuttosto che inzepparne altri a forza.

Ovvio, parlo senza aver sentito il disco, però queste parole mi fanno pensare alla grande stima che ho per l'artista, anche quando tira fuori delle zarrate che probabilmente non ascolterò più di due volte in vita mia.

Inoltre: si son spostati in Messico (chi? dove?), questa può essere una influenza interessante, ma non si capisce se pre o post stesura dell'album. Immagino c'entri la rigazzina... Ancora: Pablo e Adrian non ci sono su disco, ma (affidandosi giusto al myspace di Adrian) pare che ci saranno live. Lo scopriremo solo in occasione del Bonnaroo, comunque chissà come differiranno i pezzi tra live e disco.


 
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SaraKeenan
CAT_IMG Posted on 13/5/2009, 19:51




CITAZIONE (Walkabout @ 13/5/2009, 13:26)
Pablo e Adrian non ci sono su disco, ma (affidandosi giusto al myspace di Adrian) pare che ci saranno live. Lo scopriremo solo in occasione del Bonnaroo, comunque chissà come differiranno i pezzi tra live e disco.

Eh anche io mi sto chiedendo sta cosa da un pò....Vedremo...
 
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CAT_IMG Posted on 13/5/2009, 22:53

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più che un'intervista, questa è praticamente la nuova biografia della band (come già per Bedlam), la Qprime, infatti, è la loro agenzia di management.
 
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Walkabout
CAT_IMG Posted on 16/5/2009, 13:40




riporto dall'intervista postata da Sara:

CITAZIONE
Rodríguez-López went on to say that he's currently more concerned with preparing for the release of The Mars Volta's new album 'Octahedron', which is out on June 22. "I had the spirit of Syd Barret's solo records and people like Leonard Cohen and Nick Drake," he explained about the record, which is largely acoustic. "It was an interesting exercise for me to make all the songs acoustic based," he added. "In fact, now I'm finding that it's a limitation that I have - I don't know how to write in major keys! That's why a lot of my songs end up sounding dark, and sad, and melancholy.

"I tried various experiments to try and write something uplifting on 'Octahedron'. It's difficult for me, but that's where I'm going now. My weaknesses are always what interest me."

 
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con_safo
CAT_IMG Posted on 16/5/2009, 13:50




CITAZIONE (Walkabout @ 16/5/2009, 14:40)
riporto dall'intervista postata da Sara:

CITAZIONE
I don't know how to write in major keys!

cioè vuol dire che questo non ha mai scritto in scala maggiore in quindici anni che strimpella?
:blink:
 
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CAT_IMG Posted on 8/6/2009, 16:49

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bella intervista a Cedric su Drownedinsound, si parla anche di ATD-I...:
CITAZIONE
Interviewing bands as a fan or as a journalist is all well and good but there's only so much insight a 'critic' has. Musicians are like a totally different breed and if we've learnt one thing from our takeover weeks, it's that musicians talking to each other is incredibly illuminating. We're yet to come up with a great title for this new feature (Artist-on-Artist, Peer-to-Peer, Muso-mush...) but the concept of getting musicians we like to interview each other is a definite goer. So far, we've have Catherine AD picking Tori Amos's brains and Ed Droste from Grizzly Bear chatting to Phoenix via Skype. For the third instalment of Artist 'n' Artist, former Les Incompétents and current Ox.Eagle.Lion.Man man Frederick Blood-Royale meets former At The Drive-In and current Mars Volta spearhead, Cedric Bixler Zavala.


Distant PR person voice: Cedric meet Frederick...Frederick meet Cedric.

...click...

FBR: Obviously the first thing to bring up, is that having listened to Octahedron a few times, it's clearly a pretty big departure from Bedlam. Lighter, more straightforward, more commercial. What's the idea behind the record?

Cedric Bixler-Zavala: We wanted to make the opposite of all the records we've done. All along we've threatened people that we'd make a pop record, and now we have.

FBR: Something deliberately more accessible?

CBZ: Well, just for us really. The first song was something that was meant to end up on Bedlam, but I guess it didn't fit. What we wanted to make was an acoustic album. So this is our version of that, but obviously not sticking to the rules. It's always good to get rid of one audience to gain another. The old audience always knows what to expect. And I'm sure whatever audience comes from this album, we'll disappoint them with the next record.

FBR: So you want a challenge for the fans who only want twenty minute guitar solos and no choruses?

CBZ: We did have choruses before, just the libraries of music in people's heads are so undeveloped that their ideas of choruses are training wheels and the Bay City Rollers.

FBR: In terms of your career as a whole, is this going to be as 'pop' as The Mars Volta ever get?

CBZ: I don't know what's going to happen. The next record might be a combination of everything we've done so far. At the same time Omar's releasing an album called Crypt Amnesia with the drummer Zac Hill...

FBR: From Hella?

CBZ: Yeah exactly, so if anyone's bummed that The Mars Volta record's too simple or too pop, they can buy that album and it'll take them right back to that kind of sound. It's one of my favourite things I've ever worked on. It's pretty much a Mars Volta record, just without Thomas, Ikey, and Marcel. With Volta [Octahedron] was just our acoustic record that turned into our pop record.

FBR: And is it a concept record?

CBZ: Not really. I thought it was going to be but never really got around to writing about anything in particular. Just a lot of instant song composing and regular themes that I wouldn't even want to elaborate on...

FBR: Surely there imagery that stuck in your mind throughout the lyric writing process?

CBZ:...kidnappings, vanishings, 'what if' scenarios about how to get Republicans out of the White House if they'd got in.

FBR: What have you been listening to that influenced it?

CBZ: A lot of Scott Walker ballads, ballads from Rocky Ericsson and the raspberries.

FBR: Your lyrical vocabulary seems a lot more down to earth too.

CBZ: Yeah, probably. But you think I'm saying something and then you read the actual lyric and realise it's pretty bent out of shape. What people need to understand is that we've been doing this for almost ten years now and everything we do is just our way of making things interesting for the band.

FBR: Looking at the number of solo albums Omar makes, he's clearly constantly writing. In terms of songs, how does he differentiate what's for one of his own records and what's for the band?

CBZ: Some stuff he just feels passionately about, and that's for Volta. Or I'll stick my head around the door and ask if we can use something for the band.

FBR: And can we expect a Cedric solo album any time soon?

CBZ: Yeah, there's a lot of music that's ready. I just need to get around to singing on all of it. I've been working a lot with a friend of mine called Deantoni Parks, a drummer who's spent time with like, Tom Waits and John Cale. He plays in this band Kudu who are pretty much a modern version of Vanity Sticks, and he toured with Volta for a while. Omar's made a couple of electronic records with him. He's known as like the live drummer that can sound like a machine.

FBR: There's that sort of electronic sound that comes through subtly on Octahedron, especially on tracks like Copernicus...an almost '90s Warp vibe in parts. Can we expect more of that on future Mars Volta stuff?

CBZ: Yeah, I'd definitely push for more of that.

FBR: Have you got any current musical recommendations for Drowned In Sound readers?

CBZ: I dunno, I've just been really into my ballads...and anything that ends up in murder, somehow. You've got to take the love story down that road. A lot of time that's just how it ends up...[laughter]. And I like a lot of dancehall, except the homophobic element of it. I mean, I love to dance to it, but I can't dance when the hypocrisy of the statement 'one love' excludes certain types of people.

FBR: What about the live shows for this record? Are they going to be lighter too?

CBZ: I reckon we'll play the majority of the record and then we'll probably end the set with some of the older stuff that we can include improvisation on. I think the game plan is to play all the new stuff as individual songs, unless something opens up and we recognise it as a spot to fool around with.

FBR: And after almost ten years in the band, do you think it'll be going for another ten?

CBZ: Yeah definitely, especially being around the people in the band right now just excites me. Plus, to have as much time off as we've had from it...it's a good break to remind you what you love doing. I love it and I'll always love it. It's the one outlet I have that won't get me arrested or get me in trouble. I can get away with it. I don't know if I could collaborate with many other people. The closest thing I've found to like minded people is when we curated ATP.

FBR: That was the first ATP I ever went to. It blew my mind, you had everything going on from Acid Mothers Temple to Saul Williams to Lydia Lunch to Peanut Butter Wolf...

CBZ: I was so excited that everyone would even say yes to sharing the stage. Mastodon, Diamanda [Galas], Antony [Hegarty]...I felt like a little kid, and I don't even know if we deserved it, but I've always thought ours was the most diverse so far. Hopefully Barry will let us do it again...

FBR: They'll probably be up for paying you a lot to reform 'At The Drive-In', like they did with Sleep at few weekends ago.

CBZ: Oh yeah, they do that right? [laughter]

FBR: But I take it you probably won't be accepting any offers on that front any time soon?

CBZ: I don't know what to say about that really. We've been making amends with a lot of the members and having some really good talks with them. And we've been trying to get our financial business in order because a lot of people have been ripping off that band really badly...as far as the business side goes. I wouldn't mind it. Y'know, it might happen, we just have to iron out a lot of personal things. A lot of it we've dealt with already and I've apologised for a lot of things I've said and the way it ended...we'll see what happens.


The Mars Volta's fifth studio album, Octahedron is out on June 22 through Mercury. They also play live at the ICA, London on June 18 and return to play Somerset House on July 13.

http://www.drownedinsound.com/in_depth/4137051
 
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CAT_IMG Posted on 17/6/2009, 11:58

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Sempre da Revolver Magazine, Cedric ci dice la sua riguardo ai suoi brani preferiti del disco:
CITAZIONE
The Mars Volta's Cedric Bixler-Zavala
On his favorite tracks from Octahedron

"Teflon"
I've been listening to a rough version of it for a while now, and it had no drums. It was just an electronic piece. I always loved it. It reminded me of some B-side from Girls Against Boys, but our style. I had been writing the lyrics and sort of testing the waters of how much I could say if McCain had won the election. I don't usually write anything about things like that. I think "Teflon" is my favorite because it kind of has that slacker attitude of someone who doesn't vote but at the same time is giving a fuck. I think a lot of people could maybe understand that.

"Halo of Nembutals"
We got to use an old sample from [former Mars Volta member] Jeremy [Michael Ward], who passed away to begin this song. It starts off one of his old MiniDisc noise records that he worked on; he had the sample leftover that he'd done for De-Loused that we never got to use. Omar just had it and it fit with the song he was writing, and it made me really happy because I hadn't heard that sample in ages. It just took me back. It reminded me that he's still here.

"Cotopaxi"
I liked writing "Cotopaxi" because the time signature was really odd. I was really, really pissed off having to work on it. I wrote some lyrics on the spot and had to edit it and take away some connecting adjectives and stuff like that because the time signature was so different that it was just really, really hard to sing to. It was a fun challenge. At the time, I was mad. I was throwing things around and getting pissed off because I'm not used to fucking up. I was mad that I finally got a song that was kicking my ass. It was challenging me and beating me. So I liked writing that one the most.

--------

Omer at Bonnaroo, quasi peggio che a Rock TV:

http://www.fuse.tv/tours/bonnaroo-09/video52.html
http://www.fuse.tv/tours/bonnaroo-09/video53.html

(se non altro, farfuglia qualcosa circa dischi dal vivo da mixare...)
 
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CAT_IMG Posted on 20/6/2009, 13:57

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interessante intervista a Cedric dal sito di Revolver Magazine che spiega un pò dell'album, del fatto che, come noto, Since We'Ve Been Wrong era già pronta ai tempi di Bedlam, dell'ispirazione data da Vic Chesnutt e qualche aneddoto sul Grammy:

CITAZIONE
WEB-EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW: THE MARS VOLTA'S CEDRIC BIXLER-ZAVALA ON GOING POP, WINNING GRAMMYS, AND MIXING WITH GERMANS


Source: http://revolvermag.com/node/3345

In Revolver’s August issue, out now, we interview vocalist Cedric Bixler-Zavala of prog rockers the Mars Volta about their new album, Octahedron (Warner Bros.). For those of you who didn't get enough (or are too cheap to buy the magazine), here's the best of the rest of our wide-ranging chat.

REVOLVER What was the writing process like for The Mars Volta on this album?
CEDRIC BIXLER-ZAVALA A lot of it was written on the road. The first song that’s on the record was finished when we did [2008’s] The Bedlam in Goliath, but we didn’t know if it fit on that album and at the time we had different managers. We showed them the song but they really didn’t even say anything about it. So we just kind of left it because we really wanted to make an acoustic record. We had seen this guy Vic Chesnutt play and it kind of gave us the inspiration to move in a more mellow direction. That song was done a long time ago and everything else just came into place from being in studio on days off from tour.

You say you wanted to make an acoustic album. Is that what Octahedron is you, the Mars Volta’s acoustic effort?
I’ve always been into the ballad-sounding songs from, like, Roky Erickson. We saw Vic Chesnutt play when we were doing press for our last record in Paris. We initially didn’t know anything about him. We went to watch him because we knew Guy [Picciotto] from Fugazi was playing in the band and we wanted to see what Guy was doing. So we went and saw it and the whole band was sitting down. It was just really beautiful. He covered a lot of Nina Simone songs. It was just really beautiful music and it was mellow. It’s stuff that we wanted to do. We knew we had that side to us but it just never came out, and if it did come out, it was just one song on a record. But people would always ask us to play those songs. This time around we wanted to do something that’s opposite, kind of an alienated record, something that’s mellower, a little more simple. People know us as writing over-the-top, long songs. So we wanted to try honoring the threat that we’d always talked about, which was making a pop record because no one would expect that from us.

I know that in the past Omar [Rodriguez-López, guitar] had everyone in the band play their parts completely on their own in order to have you guys play without any kind of preconceived notions as to what was being done before you did your take. Was that the same approach that was taken for this album?
Here and there, yeah. We would practice little parts and improvisations. But for the most part the whole thing was just written separately from what we were doing live. It would be kind of impossible for us to improve a lot of the acoustic stuff in what we do already. We were trying to. We were trying in Germany but people would just be really rowdy and they would just be yelling in between or during the acoustic stuff. So we just kind of gave up on it. It’s not easy, just because half of the time I’m gonna have to spend arguing with them to shut up. I don’t wanna blow my voice yelling at everybody to shut up. And the funny thing was it was a German crowd yelling at Omar to play with more heart. For a German to tell a Puerto Rican that is kind of funny.

What did Omar respond?
He didn’t finish the song. He was just thoroughly insulted. You gotta understand that every time we go to Germany, the culture over there always finds it necessary to tell you how they feel or their opinions about a song. It’s kind of funny that we would deal with that over there. There’s always this preconceived notion of being obsessed with starving artists, and we always joke about it. You know, “Last time you came here you were sick, your lungs weren’t working, it was so good, there was no PA. This time the PA works, you have clothes on, you’re healthy, it’s not so good.” Typical German view.

Can you tell me a little more about the lyric-writing process for Octahedron?
Everything just comes out right away. I used to spend a lot of time taking a song home with me and treat it as homework. What I’ve grown to like is to just write a song instantly, on the spot. If you change a song, it kind of dilutes it. So I like to write on the spot.

How does Octahedron compare to your previous records?
I would say it’s our take on making a pop record just to amuse ourselves. I think we’d be really bored if we made another album that had super-difficult music. It’s just the album that’s honoring the threat that we’ve been saying for so long: that the most revolutionary thing we could do in our system was to make simple pop songs. It’s what we do listen to when we’re not in the band. I personally don’t sitting at home listening to Mahavishnu Orchestra or a lot of jazz fusion. I do love a lot of that shit, but I get really burnt out on it. Sometimes I just like simple songs. I like a lot of 50s oldies and stuff like that.

Do you have a favorite pop act right now?
The last thing that I really was fixated on as the Klaxons. I thought that they had a lot of good pop formula but they did it in a really interesting way with a lot of falsettos, which I like. I feel that sometimes I don’t identify with people and am shaped differently because of my voice. So I utilize a lot of higher singing because I can. I figure if anyone is born with something like that, they should use it all of the time and not be afraid of it. I just thought they were cool. I like their presentation. I liked everything about them. I liked that they didn’t rely on using that disco beat that plagues a lot of Williamsburg. I just thought they were cool. It was different for me and it was pop. And then a lot of older stuff. Badfinger, which is like the poor man’s Beatles. I love shit like that.

You won a Grammy this year. What was that like?
Well, originally I set up a party at my house because everyone in the band was like, “We have to go,” and I didn’t really want to go. So I had a party set up and the party was called “We just lost to Judas Priest.” And then when we got back from the party it was like, I can’t believe we just fucking won. We were there watching and everyone was dressed nicely. We were making fun of every category that was being announced because Lil’ Wayne was winning every category. So we were like, “Best Soap Opera Star: Lil’ Wayne.” We were laughing so hard and making fun of everybody else that when they announced it, we just couldn’t believe it. We were rolling on the floor laughing like we pulled the biggest bank robbery ever. And then we walked by and we saw the Zappa crew cheering us on and that’s when it hit.

 
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CAT_IMG Posted on 21/6/2009, 13:59

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CITAZIONE
Rock duo Mars Volta unveiling disappearing act

Sat Jun 20, 2009 11:15pm EDT


NEW YORK (Billboard) - When guitarist Omar Rodriguez-Lopez and vocalist/lyricist Cedric Bixler-Zavala left At the Drive-In to form the Mars Volta, the duo burst out of the confines of post-punk into a kind of sprawling, Latin-infused prog that has been called everything from utterly brilliant to completely inscrutable.

Despite this, the band also managed to sell albums; 2005's "Frances the Mute" sold more than half a million copies, according to Nielsen SoundScan, while its most recent, "The Bedlam in Goliath," sold 153,000.

The Mars Volta's new album, "Octahedron," due in stores Tuesday, significantly scales back the complexity of previous work. Billboard spoke with Rodriguez-Lopez about making a record that meditates on disappearances and, for the first time in a while, simplicity.

1. YOUR ALBUMS GENERALLY HAVE A CONCEPT. IS THERE ONE HERE?

The concept we were throwing around was that of disappearances. When we were in high school, there was this lake the kids used to go out to and two of our close friends went out there and never came back. We started talking about how impactful that is. At least death you can assign to your own personal beliefs. You can say, "Oh, he's with God and the angels," or whatever you believe in. But when you don't have answers, it's the most aggravating. And then the fact that emotions disappear -- you can be in love with someone for 20-30 years and then wake up one day and say, "Honey, I don't love you anymore. What are we going to do?"

2. YOU'VE SAID THAT THIS IS YOUR ACOUSTIC ALBUM, BUT THAT SHOULDN'T BE TAKEN LITERALLY, RIGHT?

Well, that's one of those things that gets misinterpreted. I only ever said this would be acoustic-inspired. I was asked what I was listening to and I said, "A lot of Nick Drake and Syd Barrett and Leonard Cohen. That'll be the starting point." I always maintained I didn't think it'd end up there. That's the springboard.

3. DID THINKING ABOUT DRAKE AND COHEN -- WHO SING A LOT ABOUT FALLING OUT OF LOVE AND ROMANTIC ALIENATION -- FEED YOUR THOUGHTS ON THE DISAPPEARANCE CONCEPT?

I never even thought about it until this moment, but that's a really good point. At the time my love for heavy music or rock music or whatever had just completely gone away -- and I think I'm still in that -- so I think I was also just searching for anything else to listen to.

4. YOU'VE SAID THAT ALL YOUR SONGS ARE POP SONGS AT HEART. DOES THAT COME THROUGH HERE?

It was a need to just do something different. At the core of every song I write, it's just verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge, chorus and you're done. Then I get bored and start playing with the edit. With this record I said, "That's the first thing I'm not going to do. I'm not going to f--- with it. I'm going to stick with the original intention."

5. YOU SAID YOU WANTED "THE BEDLAM IN GOLIATH" TO BE YOUR LAST MAJOR-LABEL RECORD, BUT THEN YOU ENDED UP JUST JUMPING FROM UNIVERSAL TO WARNER BROS. WHAT HAPPENED?

Wait -- Warner isn't an indie? Again, this is the problem with just saying what you're feeling at the time. Especially when you act completely out of instinct, the way I do. As with a record, it's so different what you have in your head and what comes out when you start writing the f---ing thing. I felt that way and felt that way and then ran into (Warner Bros. Chairman/CEO) Tom Whalley. I'd known Tom in the past and liked his attitude. It just felt like, "OK, let's give this relationship a try." And it's like any relationship you'd have. You say, "OK, I'm going to trust you, but you got to trust me also."

6. YOU'VE BEEN DESCRIBED AS A CONTROL FREAK WHEN IT COMES TO WRITING MUSIC, AND YET CEDRIC BIXLER-ZAVALA HAS COMPLETE CONTROL OVER THE LYRICS. DO YOU CLASH MUCH BECAUSE OF THIS?

We've had three arguments in the 18 years we've known each other and two of them have been over food. It's unspoken. He hears my record and goes, "Ah, OK, of course." It's one of those things we can't really explain or even understand.

da http://www.reuters.com/article/musicNews/i...E55K06920090621
 
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CAT_IMG Posted on 21/6/2009, 23:24

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The Sunday Times Culture:

SPOILER (click to view)
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CITAZIONE
Dal Times

The Mars Volta are simultaneously throwbacks and futurists to whom the three-minute song is an alien concept. In the past six years, the guitarist Omar Rodriguez-Lopez and the singer/lyricist Cedric Bixler-Zavala have unleashed five “concept” albums packed with long, freeform musical pieces with bizarre titles and cover art that would not have disgraced a Yes album. Their last album, The Bedlam in Goliath, a sprawling, dense, dark work that entered the American charts at No 3, was, despite some exquisite moments, too much to bear. But now comes Octahedron, lighter, acoustic, melodic... and almost traditional. Except for its dark lyrics, driven by the memories of childhood friends who disappeared at a lake near El Paso.

Omar and Cedric met in a rehearsal garage in the Texas border town 20 years ago, two kids with green mohawks. “My bandmates were ruthless,” Cedric recalls. “They forced me to listen to things I wasn’t into. The punkest thing is to be well versed in all sorts of music.” While others in the band were street urchins who stole their instruments, Omar and Cedric were sub urban kids, first-generation middle-class. Raised in the barrios of Puerto Rico, Omar’s father became a doctor; Cedric’s was a university professor. From the beginning, they were inseparable, smart and driven. “Over the years, people have been unsettled by how close we are,” Omar says. ‘They shouldn’t be that close, they share clothes, they have lived together for 13 years” — “and,” adds Cedric, “they finish each other’s sentences.”

Omar’s hotel bedroom could belong to a hyperactive teenager — stills and video cameras, a drum machine, bottles of vitamins, an Asimov sci-fi classic, a brace of guitars, half-empty takeaway containers, charging mobile phones and a fully automatic plastic BB gun. Dark memories, still-forming ideas and arcane philosophies rat-a-tat from his mouth. While Omar, in his big framed glasses and floral shirt, is 33 and looks all of 16, Cedric, two years older and just as skinny, wears his past enthusiasms on his sleeves. Tattoos of the comedian Andy Kaufman, The Wicker Man, R2-D2, a Shogun Warrior, Joan Crawford and a giant spider cover his arms.

Growing up in El Paso gave them their edge. It’s a no man’s land, neither America nor Mexico, gritty, ugly, but beautiful, like a Sam Peckinpah movie. “On the surface, it looks like still water, but underneath is a lot of crazy shit,” Omar says. “Everybody in high school went over the border to Juarez, because that’s where you could drink underage. Which meant you could be arrested for a week, you could be murdered, raped — you could disappear. It is a free-for-all.”

Their original band, At the Drive-In, have attained near-legendary status: hardcore punk with a twist, driven by unpredictable rhythms, Cedric’s often surreal words and muscle-defying stage performances. “We were the only five guys in town who cared enough to quit their jobs, go tour, make no money, then come back to do it again,” Omar says. “Other people were happy to be hometown heroes. We wanted to play in other countries, experience the culture, even if it was playing to nobody.”

ATD imploded on the verge of breakthrough, partly due to boredom, partly to musical differences. Cedric and Omar flirted with a dub band, De Facto, before forming the Mars Volta with the sound manipulator Jeremy Ward. The name comes from Fellini, who described a changing scene as a “volta”, and their love of science fiction. Their debut album, the Rick Rubin-produced Deloused at the Comatorium, was based on Julio Venegas, an El Paso poet and artist who went into a coma after a deliberate drug overdose, recovered and later committed suicide. While touring, Ward died of a heroin overdose.

“One day, we were all getting high, and Jeremy asked me if I could see he had worms in his head,” Cedric recalls. “I never touched the stuff again. His passing was the final nail in the coffin. We never went back.”

The creative connection between the two is almost spooky. “We both have addictive, curious personalities. We rely on impulse and instinct,” Omar explains. “We are locked into a sound because I write the melodies and Cedric has a very particular voice. We experiment to keep a healthy relationship. My biggest inspiration and challenge is Cedric, I want him to hear something and feel he has to do something new. I record the music, then I give it to Cedric, he writes his lyrics, then I record him and we tweak a little bit. That is where the telepathy aids us — when I give him the music, he knows exactly what I mean by it. ”

Cedric is no fan of real-life, “I went to the pub”-style lyrics. He has a fondness for Frank Zappaesque humour and writes in English, Spanish, even Latin. “I love to take common sayings, pervert them, mutate them a little. So you think I am singing one thing, but when you read it, it is different.”

“Perhaps Octahedron is a new birth, maybe a new era,” Omar grins. “An aggressive album, a far-out album. We are self-indulgent, we do what we want.”

Cedric likens the Mars Volta to Werner Herzog’s Fitzcarraldo, permanently hauling the boat over the Amazon hill, except that he insists: “I never want to reach the top. Otherwise we’ll stop trying.”



Edited by Kitt - 25/6/2009, 13:18
 
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SaraKeenan
CAT_IMG Posted on 23/6/2009, 10:36




da qui: http://www.gigwise.com/article.php?id=51321&page_no=1


CITAZIONE
Mars Attacks... Again - The Mars Volta
The prog legends talk At The Drive-In and Octahedron...

by Laura Davies
Monday, June 22, 2009

Think chaotic, think in your face, think apocalyptic, think The Mars Volta. Until now, that is. The afroed kings of punk rock are slowing it down for new release 'Octahedron'. So what shape does the fifth record find them in? Beautiful, poetic and cohesive – but with all the screaming intensity we know and love from the 21st century’s answer to Led Zeppelin.

“It’s about kidnapping, vanishings, disappearances, things like that,” explains energetic frontman Cedric Bixler-Zavala. “We’re honoring our threat of doing something simple.”

Simple for The Mars Volta musicians, is not how the rest of us use the word. Simple for the former At the Drive-In duo is pounding heartbeat drums, frenetic guitars and melodramatic synths. The only thing simple about the latest offering is you can understand the lyrics and hear a beautiful sometime falsetto voice behind them.

Very unlike The Mars Volta’s early ideology of beating up their instruments, gained from their At the Drive-In punk rock roots – roots that they may be making a welcome return to (but more on that later). “We’ll have dynamic in the set,” explains Omar Rodriguez-Lopez, the slightly smaller afro behind the music. “Instead of being three hours of being punched in the face, now you can get punched in the face, then have a slow dance right afterwards, then get punched in the face again.”

Genre-bending music is in the El Paso resident’s blood. A recent six month Mars Volta hiatus saw Omar make six solo records under the name Omar Rodriguez-Lopez Group and shoot a couple of films. “My studio is in my house. I have to cross my studio to get to my kitchen, so there is no avoiding it,” says Omar. Not that he’d want to. The man dressed in black shirt and jacket teamed with a black train driver’s hat is as talented as they come. “This is fun for us. It’s not a job.”

The live band – made up of Ikey Owens on keyboards, bassist Juan Alderete poached from Racer X, thumping Thomas Pridgen on drums and Omar’s brother Marcel Rodriguez-Lopez hammering away at percussion and synthesizers – are always one step ahead of their label with future records already in the pipeline. Record they're fighting to be given a release date.

“There are a lot of finished records and ideas that are being kicked around. It’s a big messy room that you constantly have to organise into piles,” says Omar, adding: “When you’re organising things to create a record, you choose the eight most interesting tracks to you at that point. Sometimes one says 'I don’t belong here' and one from another pile says 'I wanna be part of that record.'”

Playtime for Omar is about giving birth to a creative little entity called music. It speaks to him in a way that only true geniuses can testify. “A record is no different than a child. One day it grows legs and starts to speak and it’s not all about you anymore. You have to come to a mutual agreement with the record itself. It may reject ideas and guide you once you’ve given it a vocabulary.”

Omar is not the only member to go down the solo road, with Cedric using the break to work on his own material. Not that he wants the fanfare. “I hope it can go out on Omar’s label. I don’t want people to be like 'Oh look, the singer’s making a record, too.' I want it to be under the radar – for fun.”


If fun is what guides the consistently progressive back catalogue, then The Mars Volta are the most fun band on the planet. After At the Drive-In destroyed the competition with the untouchable 2000 'Relationship of Command' record, the band began to show cracks. Omar and Cedric hoped to experiment with their sound while Jim Ward guitarist and co-founder, bassist Paul Hinojos and drummer Tony were happy to stay on path. The ‘indefinite hiatus’ was called in 2001 and The Mars Volta was born from a previous side project DeFacto, while the other members formed now defunct Sparta.

The Mars Volta haven’t held back either, releasing five albums in near enough five years. It would be more too, if they didn’t have record label bureaucracy to contend with. All epic concoctions on their own, but together an arsenal of manic punked up rock and roll. Octahedron brings a slower pace to the martian mix. Making live experiences all the more eclectic.

Unfortunately for us, the festival season got in the way. The Mars Volta are only touring Octahedron on a small scale, for now anyway, with a date at Somerset House in July. “We’ll be back. This is just the beginning,” hints Omar.

And so on to the future. The all important reunion that so many want and so few actually believe will happen, until recent reconciliation rumours surfaced, that is. Cedric puts the record straight. “All it was is that we took time to bury the hatchet with the other members. There had been a lot of shit talk, at least on my behalf, and I had stuff that I wanted to say. I wanted to be friends with the guys again.”

This journalist’s heart sinks. “We’re just trying to see if we can still get along,” continues Cedric. The heart fizzes a little. A glimmer of hope appears. And are you ‘getting along’? “So far so good. It couldn’t happen any time soon because we have so much Mars Volta material.” The heart is now pounding. There is light and the end of the dark At the Drive-In tunnel. And we’re happy with that glorious maybe.

“Do you look forward to getting back together with your first boyfriend?” Omar enquires. If he made music like At the Drive-In, then yes you’re damn right I would. “We’re smart enough to never say never as you don’t know how life is going to happen. It’s like your first girlfriend, you learned amazing things together, but do you really want to open that can of worms?” Again, if those worms wrote 'One Armed Scissor' I’d probably give them another shot.

“We want to be peaceful with those people because we were in a band for seven years together,” offers Omar. “We’re in our thirties now, we don’t want to be angry about something that happened ten years ago.”

“The thing with At the Drive In was the excitement of the first time. Like the first girlfriend or sexual experience, you can never recreate that moment,” reminisces Omar. “You can have other amazing highs and learn all sort of things, but there is nothing like the first time when you don’t know what the fuck is going on. There’s nothing like the first time coming to Europe, nothing like the first time being on tour, or putting out a record. The first time smoking crack.”

Putting the At the drive in dream return aside, The Mars Volta have more than filled the rock void – they have brought more originality, attitude and talent than one band deserves, let alone two, and numerous side projects. It’s not just when would the duo themselves would have time for an At the Drive-In return, it’s when would we?



Edited by Kitt - 25/6/2009, 12:47
 
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CAT_IMG Posted on 23/6/2009, 17:27

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CITAZIONE
Interview: Omar Rodriguez-Lopez on Mars Volta's Fifth Album Octahedron and His Solo Record Cryptomnesia

"You come and see us and it's three hours of getting punched in the face."

The Mars Volta's guitarist and co-leader, Omar Rodriguez-Lopez, seems possessed by an almost demonic energy. The fifth Volta album, Octahedron, will be released tomorrow, June 23. The latest in a string of over a dozen releases under his own name, Cryptomnesia by El Grupo Nuevo de Omar Rodriguez-Lopez, came out in May. Both albums are among his most accessible releases; Octahedron features melancholy ballads in place of the usual headlong screaming and solos, while Cryptomnesia is a wiggy Latin-rock explosion featuring Zach Hill and Jonathan Hischke of Hella, Mars Volta bassist Juan Alderete, and on vocals, Rodriguez-Lopez's hetero life partner, Cedric Bixler-Zavala. We caught up with Rodriguez-Lopez by phone, as the Volta was preparing to leave for Bonnaroo, to talk about the recording process, boredom, and getting punched in the face.

Tell me a little bit about Octahedron; is it true it was recorded at the same time as [2008's Volta record] The Bedlam in Goliath?

It started that way. I have a tendency to work on records simultaneously, at least two or three at the same time. But when Bedlam started sort of taking off and having its own life and its own problems, I had to abandon Octahedron completely, 'cause it turned into a fuckin' nightmare of a record to make, and for the first time in my career there was no way I could sustain both projects. So I had to put all my energy into finishing the nightmare that was Bedlam. So when I finished it, I picked back up with Octahedron, and then it all made sense why it just wasn't meant to be, why I couldn't do them simultaneously.

A lot of the new songs are very quiet - and am I hearing drum machines?

Yeah, there's drum machines and sequencers and that sort of stuff on there.

You've said that you give the musicians their parts with little or no preparation in the studio. Is that still your working method?

Yeah, the same this time around. But the interesting thing is, now I'm gonna have to come up with something new, because everybody's getting used to it, and everybody's getting really good at it. So on the lighter side, as a result, this record got made in three weeks. Plus the material is easier, it's a different type of record. But everybody's gotten used to that sort of gun-in-your-face mentality now, and just learning everything on the spot, and everyone's settled into something. The reason I started doing that in the first place was so they wouldn't be settled. So I'm gonna have to start changing my methods of making records somehow.

How many of these new songs are likely to make the live set? Won't this kind of material change the feeling of your performances, which have been pretty balls-out until now?

I'd like to play most of them if I can. We did one show where we did about half the record the other night, getting used to the songs, but the important thing is, a year or so ago, when we were touring for Bedlam, I realized that our show--as fun as it was and as intense as it was and as energetic as it was--lacked any real kind of dynamic. You come and see us and it's three hours of getting punched in the face. So I started throwing an acoustic set in the middle of our show. We had three acoustic songs from the old records, like "Televators" and "Miranda That Ghost Just Isn't Holy Anymore" and "Asilos Magdalena," just to break it up. And now with this record, our live show won't suffer as much, because it'll have a little of everything and be more dynamic.

Some people really responded well to the relentless, Santana-meets-'70s-Miles feel of the older shows, though.

Definitely, but that can't go on forever. I'm starting to get bored of that too now. My thing has constantly been following my instinct, changing and growing. You know how it is. You do the same thing for too long, you just start to get bored with it. You go to the same coffee shop and have breakfast at the same place, and it's great for the first months or years or whatever. But at a certain point, you go to the next place around the corner. Everything in life works that way. Unfortunately for fans, the problem is once they're barely catching on to the one thing they like, the creative person is already on to the next thing, so they get upset at the band. They say, "This is not the band I fell in love with. They should be doing this." And there's also the issue of, as human beings, we all want to have control over our lives and control things, so it's natural that people should feel that they have some sort of control over what we should be doing or playing, and when they realize they don't, it's a bit of a letdown.

In a lot of ways, though, Octahedron is the friendliest Mars Volta record since De-Loused. You could really win over new people with this one.

Right, right. I guess it's just the nature of our approach, which is just to make a completely different-sounding record, and if we were getting more and more unfriendly, to go in the other direction. I never thought of it in those terms, I thought of it more like, "What would be the opposite of Bedlam?" And if Bedlam was an aggressive record that didn't stop and was 50 minutes of pure chaos, then I wanted this to be a sort of tranquil, melancholy record, to reflect how I was feeling after finally finishing Bedlam. I had tranquility in my life finally, but it was bittersweet, because as much as I hated making that record, I fell in love with it at the end. I had this twisted sadomasochistic psychology with the record, so Octahedron started to reflect where I was at.

When we were doing interviews for Bedlam, I was talking about Octahedron being almost done, and how it would be more acoustic-inspired. Which of course, when you say something like that, people take it literally, so now they're like, "This is not acoustic. There are electric drums and blah blah blah." But it was acoustic-inspired, which means I thought a lot about Nick Drake and Leonard Cohen when I was making the record and conceiving the record. On every record there's an acoustic-based song, a song that started acoustic and then I just added layers to it. On De-Loused it's "Televators," on Frances it's "Miranda." So I always thought this would be something cool to explore when I was sick of playing bombastic, in-your-face music. And that's exactly what ended up happening.

You've also got Cryptomnesia out now; when was that recorded?

Cryptomnesia was recorded in the summer of 2006, around the same time I did Old Money. It was a very, very fun record to make. I made that record in five or six days.

You have three times as many solo albums as Mars Volta albums. In what way can the Mars Volta be said to be your primary band?

In the way that I take it all home, I refine ideas and I save the best of the best of the best. Solo records are homework, and when I get to the best of the best or the core of what I'm trying to do, then I utilize that in the Mars Volta. That being said, I don't compose thinking, "This is a solo song, this is for the Volta." I just compose constantly. I'm constantly trying new things, and when it's time to focus on the Mars Volta, out of 300 songs, I pick the eight songs or ten songs that I'm most interested to focus on, and I pull those out. So it's like getting through all the mistakes and happy accidents and getting to the root of it all. It's a way of burning through my ideas: going through stuff, getting bored of it, and getting to a place where I feel in my mind like I'm doing something fresh--fresh for me, as a creative person.

 
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CAT_IMG Posted on 28/6/2009, 15:22

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Classic Rock presents: Prog issue - giugno 2009

CITAZIONE
Eight Days A Week

From beginnings as a failed salsa pianist, The Mars Volta mainman Omar Rodriguez-Lopez has gone on to create some stunning music with cohort Cedric Bixler-Zavala. "It's all shapes," he explains to Philip Wilding.

For those that want to solve the knotty enigma that is The Mars Volta, founder, songwriter and guitarist, Omar Alfredo Rodriguez-Lopez (he drops the Alfredo for his solo work, possibly because it might not fit on the CD sleeve) suggests you take in Werner Herzog's [i] Fitzcarraldo. Tellingly, it almost did for its director as his partnership with leading man, Klaus Kinski ended in disarray, Herzog entertaining murderous thoughts about the actor. Succinctly put, the film deals with the dream of a man who struggles to bring opera to the remote city of Iquitos deep in the Peruvian rainforest. In doing so, and in a pivotal moment, he has to drag a three-story steamer over a muddy hillside with the help of the local natives.

"It's Herzog's greatest accomplishment, and the film itself mirrored Herzog's life; this guy who wants to bring the opera to the jungle so in order to do it he has to go through these crazy things, some people think he's mad for wanting to get this boat over the hill, all these people abandon him and then the natives help, but at the end the dream is something else to what he thought it was. The same thing happened to Herzog while he was making the film, his crew abandoned him, certain people believed in him, others didn't..."

An animated Omar is dwarfed by the blue parka coat he's wearing, his mop of curly hair just visible about the faux-fur hood, his glasses - think Geddy Lee circa Moving Pictures making him look inexpressibly young. Onstage later, dressed not unlike a well-heeled snooker player, he looks indomitable and gritty, off it, it's hard to imagine this is a man who took off in his teens and went hitchhiking for a year alone never once letting his family know where he was or that he'd struggled to overcome a major drug problem. The tiny back room at Dingwalls in North London reverberates as the support band thump through the wall. At one point, a security guard comes to check something and mistakes Omar for the band's manager, so innocuous does the guitarist look.

"So with Herzog, you know," he continues, "I think it's something that people have to understand, that people who create, who are really into this expression and not just trying to entertain or make money, people who are expressing themselves through writing or music or anything else, it always reflects their life... it really is a mirror of your life, even if you're coming up with fake characters, somehow something's happening in your brain that you're trying to work out subconsciously."

It's not easy to pin down which part of Omar's life is reflected in the willfully daring and sometimes eccentric music of The Mars Volta. As consistent a solo artists as he is a part of his band, his drive is unrelenting. When ...Prog bring up one of the three albums he's already released in the last six months, the excellent Old Money, he happily admits that he made it in 2006 and that it's pretty much sat at home since then. Like reclusive author JD Salinger is said to have a vault in his New Hampshire filled with unpublished manuscripts, so Omar has a similar set up in his Mexican home, hoarding completed albums that may or may not see the light of day either as the work of The Mars Volta or under his own name.

"I have around 16 albums in the vault, they're all pretty much finished," says Omar, as ...Prog's eyebrows shoot up in surprise. "That's where a lot of my energy goes now. I'm grateful to do this for a living, what I've been doing since I was 12 years old in my dad's house, and in that way I've never really grown up. And of course, when you take something as destructive as hard drugs away, you have all this extra energy that was sort of feeding off something else. I think of my albums as just Polaroid shots, just those moments in my life of things I'm going through, so some of them just better stay in there, others are too personal, then others are just fun and that'd be cool to put out.

"In-between every Mars Volta album there's another Mars Volta album that I didn't put out. The reason being, for instance, after Amputechture, I wrote that and I had written this other album (Old Money) and then I thought they're too similar, I like things to be a jump. For our fans it can maybe not be such a good thing. They say things like, oh, I like this one, but not the other one - they want the thing that made them feel good over and over again... unfortunately for them, my life doesn't work that way. As a person who creates, you want to try different stuff and to explore and pull out different feelings. So what I thought sounded on the mellow side of what Amputechture was, I sort of put it in the vault and went in a whole different direction with what became The Bedlam in Goliath, which is really aggressive and over-the-top."

Omar's distinctive approach to making music, whether it be with his former band, At the Drive-In, ("Returning to that would be like going to back to an old girlfriend you're happy you got away from."), solo or with The Mars Volta can be traced back to one thing: Omar's inability to play salsa piano, much to his chagrin.

"I started on bongoes and congas and percussion, with the rudiments of music, the rhythm section. It's the part that... if you have that foundation and it's right then the rest is just the icing on the cake, the melodies and stuff, it's still how I write now. I moved on to salsa piano after that, but I wasn't good enough, it's what I still listen to the most and I always wanted to play in my father's band. If you're a Puerto Rican, the joke is that you either play music or become a baseball player. My dad was a big influence on me musically, even before I was born, while I was in the womb he'd rest his guitar against my mother's stomach and play, and the song would resonate through me."

By the time his family moved to El Paso, Omar was a teenage skater and a keen musician, even if his enthusiasm did initially outweigh his skill. He was singing with the hardcore band Startled Calf at 13 ("I was just screaming and shit") and revelling in punk and heavy metal.

"I was sneaking out of the house and going skating with my friends and they were all smoking dope and listening to Slayer," he says. "It was all heavy, over-your-head stuff and like most people who hear punk rock for the first time who want to express themselves, I thought, I can do that! It made me feel as alive as salsa music, it made me feel that same fire and same passion. I looked at my dad's band and they were versatile and they'd played for years, they were really skilled musicians, and I thought, fuck, I can never do that so I'll just skateboard or paint. But when I heard Black Flag, it gave me the same charge as salsa, and I knew it was for me.

"Later, I got the same thing with King Crimson. It was Starless And Bible Black, our friend Julio (Venegas) who was sort of the older guy who played in bands and showed us a lot of stuff, he played it to me. The first Mars Volta record is sort of about Julio (2003's Deloused In the Comatorium, the central character, Cerpin Taxt is loosely based on Venegas who committed suicide in 1996), he was a really great artist and he took us aside and told us that punk rock was an idea, a mindset, not a haircut or dressing style, so he turned us on to Fela Kuti, King Crimson, Lenny Bruce and these things that he considered punk, people who were doing stuff, writers, counter-culture, whatever you want to call it."

Though it was El Paso that Omar fled at 17 to go hitchhiking ("I didn't really know what I wanted to do, I didn't know what my identity was outside of the music..."), it was where he'd meet and being working with Mars Volta singer Cedric Bixler-Zavala. It's a relationship that's endured through various hardcore band - that became more experimental with each incarnation - to At The Drive-In and ultimately, The Mars Volta. They've been friends and workmates for 20 years, they're still only in their 30s.

"Cedric and I have only had three arguments in all those years of working together and two of them were over food!" Omar laughs. "The other one is because I have such a fast pace when I work, sometimes he gets overwhelmed by it, but he doesn't want to be the one to hold up the boat, I make records, I make 'em, make 'em, make 'em and then I'm like, you've got to write lyrics. So sometimes, and I never realised this until later, it was pressure for him because for me it was just my excitement. So I've had to learn over the years that I have a different metabolism to other people. I can't expect other people to stay up 16 hours and make stuff up all the time. So it wasn't even an argument, it was more growing pains.

"It's just on ongoing stream, I'm just recording all the time and eventually I go, you're going to be a Mars Volta record. Then I focus on that. There's been plenty of stuff where I've been mistaken, 'oh, put that back!'. There are even songs that have been on my solo records that I realise I'm mistaken and it becomes a Mars Volta song..."

Although second nature to the guitarist, his approach to writing and recording can cause bemusement at best. When not harrying Cedric to complete his part of the catalogue of the songs he's written, Omar's given to handing bandmates and recording engineers drawings and graphs to get his point across.

"Cedric understands them," says Omar, sounding surprised that some people might not, "If they don't then I have to find another way to express what I'm trying to say, but for people who are trying to work with music I think they naturally have a lot of images in their heads when they're hearing things so they associate music with blocks, most of them use letters, but even letters have line, you know what I mean? It's a shape so I try to associate everything with shapes and waveforms; I really love that."

Strange to think now that for a guitarist who was once embarrassed by his inability to play well should now be so insistent on conveying precisely how he wants his songs to feel and sound that he will even revert to using a sketchpad to communicate.

"I was anti-guitar in a way, I admit it," he says. "I used to read guitar magazines and there would always be this, Oh man, I want to get that sweet, warm tone. But I really liked it when people would do this at a concert (puts fingers in ears and pulls a face). I have to admit, it started from insecurity as I wasn't a good guitarist so I used effects to cover my sound and then grew attached to it. I now have a sort of union that was borne out of insecurity and noise and I made it mine."

Typically, even though the next Mars Volta album is released in June (a European tour follows in July) it was finished sometime last year. Which must mean that Omar's already written and recorded at least one more album that might see the light of day or simply be destined to collect dust in his vault.

"Octahedron?" he says of the next band album, "That feels like it was done so long ago now. People ask me what I do on my days off, they say, you just work and work and work. What they don't realise is that to me is all I do is play, play, play..."

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CAT_IMG Posted on 1/7/2009, 13:04

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Revolver vs Omar

http://revolvermag.com/node/3353

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

 
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