Interviste, Octahedron era

There will come a time, many many years from now, long after the dust has settled, when we look back at this point in music's vast history, and Omar Rodriguez Lopez will be left standing. There will be others for sure – luminaries like Jack White, Prince, Trent Reznor, Eddie Vedder, OutKast, obviously Radiohead, probably Trey, Jim James, Jeff Tweedy, perhaps Patterson Hood and certainly many more, but none are as prolific as Omar. Consider this, as of July 2 – almost exactly the halfway mark of the year – Omar has released four solo albums (with a fifth already done and scheduled for September) and one Mars Volta record (Octahedron – released June 23 on Warner Bros.). At this clip he's looking at about ten albums for 2009, and that actually puts him right on schedule.
"I do like nine or ten records in between Mars Volta records; and that being a Mars Volta record every year," says Omar over the phone from his new home/recording compound in Zapopan, Mexico. You caught that, right? Ten records a year. What the fuck?

But you know what's even crazier, earlier in our more than two hour talk, as I tried to comprehend how he's able to produce so much high-quality music in such a short period of time, Omar admits that he has "way more material that's unreleased than I actually do have released." So again, how the hell does one man write, record and produce so much music (not to mention the films and photography)? Like all the really big questions in life, there's no easy answer or ingredient list that explains genius of this kind, but it definitely has something to do with kicking junk.

Omar and his musical life partner, vocalist/lyricist Cedric Bixler Zavala (the two have been making music together since they were kids growing up around El Paso, TX) had major drug habits about which much has been written. Hard core junkie shit, mostly heroin and crack, but you know how junkies get. They shot bags and made music, primarily as the force behind post-hardcore heroes At The Drive-In (1994-2001). Shit got real nasty and people started dying, most notably close friend and Volta (as well as dub side project De Facto) bandmate Jeremy Ward, who overdosed in 2003. It scared Omar and Cedric straight – so straight in fact they are now hyper-healthy, yoga practicing vegans who don't even drink coffee - and since then the flood gates have burst open.
"It's like a faucet. Things are just coming out all the time and I have nothing else to do except put them down and document them," says Omar. "I'm putting buckets under the sink and it's leaking everywhere and I catch what I can."

Contrary to the popular belief that once rock stars sober up their music sucks, it took getting clean for things to really take off for Omar. "I bought into the great lie of drugs which is, 'You need me in order to be creative. You need me in order to be yourself','" he says. "And once I saw the other side and said, 'Oh, well, not really, actually all that's doing is magnifying things that are already inside of me. So, why can't I be the magnifying glass? Why do I need something?' Once I sort of grabbed onto that thread it's been hard to let go ever since."

Omar has pretty much seen it all – and gotten it out of his system - and at 33 he has no interest in any of the rock star bullshit or even the pedantic "normal" socializing of most young men. "I don't really have a life," he says. "I don't do what someone my age normally does, like go out and drink and socialize and those types of things." And if you don't believe him, well, that's a big part of why he recently moved from Los Angeles to Zapopan. Let's just say the L.A. scene wasn't his thing. Mainland Mexico is much more his speed nowadays.
Wise beyond his years and working without the haze of drugs, Omar has transferred the all encompassing time and energy it takes to be a full-time junkie into creating art, and this delicate combination of timing, place, talent and experience has given us one of the most prolific and, as history will likely prove, important artists of our time.

And you'll notice I didn't simply say "important guitarists of our time," because to call Omar a Guitar God is limiting, nay, insulting. Although true, his rapid fire bunches of notes, alien-channeling effects and sonic storms certainly make him one of the most gifted guitar players alive (Rolling Stone lists him in their current "Top Greatest Guitarists of All Time"), but he is so much more. He's a brilliant composer (he writes every single note you hear on a Volta album as well as his solo work), bandleader, producer (he's produced every solo and Volta album since their 2001 debut, which he co-produced with Rick Rubin), label/production company owner of the newly formed Omar Rodriguez Lopez Productions (which grew out of GSL Records when it closed in 2007) and perhaps most important, a visionary.

When he and Cedric broke free of At The Drive-In and formed The Mars Volta in 2001, Omar knew what he wanted. He had a vision and he was finally able to seize his destiny. He would control every aspect of the music, Cedric would handle all lyrics/vocals and he would rule the music with an iron fist.

"During the time of At The Drive-In, I was still a drug addict, so I was very much under the spell of not liking yourself and not believing in yourself, hating yourself and trying to destroy yourself at all costs. So, what that did was hinder my true self, to hinder what it is I'm capable of. I was constantly putting myself down and limiting my role," explains Omar. "I think a lot of that came out of fear, out of saying, 'I'm not good enough to... I'm not smart enough to... I couldn't possibly... So I'm just...,' and once I quit doing drugs and once I started The Mars Volta it started flipping and it became the opposite, it became, 'Wait a minute, I can do anything I feel like doing. I'm only limited by my imagination.' And all of a sudden there was this big realization that, 'Wow, that applies to everything in life.' So, if I want to grab control of our business and if I want to grab control and have it be my band and not have it be this fake democracy we had in At The Drive-In then I can do that, too."

And that's exactly what he's done. Omar has taken control of everything and it's not just The Mars Volta and all that goes along with it (the producing, writing, touring, etc), he records and tours under a dizzying array of monikers making it difficult for even the dedicated fan to keep track. In addition to The Mars Volta, there's the simple solo recording name Omar Rodriguez Lopez, the Omar Rodriguez Group, Omar Rodriguez Lopez Quintet (which can shift from a quartet to a sextet) and the latest addition, El Grupo Nuevo De Omar Rodriguez Lopez.
Certainly this seems a bit excessive - aren't these all really just Omar side-projects? Well, not so much side-projects but extensions, and like any gifted artist blazing at the peak of his creativity, it's always changing, shifting, pouring over the rim, busting out of the faucet. And when a new project is formed with new musicians playing new/original material, Omar gives them a new name.

"People have to remember, too, I didn't grow up with rock music. I don't come from that rock sort of mentality, like you're in Kiss and that's it. I grew up with salsa music and my heroes were Eddie Palmieri, Willie Colón and Héctor Lavoe. And it's just this whole different thing. These are records like jazz music. These are records where the bandleader, for all you know, is the guy playing the two sticks, you know? Not the singer," he says. "And rock music is very limited in its format. It's limited in its music, it's limited in its approach, and it's limited in the way people perceive it. People go to see a rock band, they perceive the singer. He's up front. He must be the leader. He must be the person who does everything. They forget the frontman is there for a reason. He fronts the group. There's someone else, you know, behind the curtain, there's the Wizard of Oz somewhere."

But this Wizard isn't smoke and mirrors; Omar is the real deal. And this is it, folks, this is perhaps the single defining kernel of what makes Omar's music so "important" – and if you aren't yet willing to go that far, then at least compelling, entertaining and original. He ain't from this part of town, and he didn't grow up on American rock radio. Born September 1, 1975 in Bayomón, Puerto Rico, Omar came from a house where – like most Latin families – salsa music was a cornerstone of everyday life. He isn't limited by four chords and power moves. Omar is definitely operating on the rock landscape, utilizing such visceral, psychedelic brutality that at times it's often too heavy for new ears, but instead of being rooted in the blues it has grown out of Latin soil, and that changes everything. The rhythms are different, the tempos, the way it flexes, the heart and the soul. By taking all that and plugging deep into heavy psych, post-punk and experimental waters Omar is truly adding pages to the modern rock history book - scratch that - he's adding chapters.

The latest additions, the 2009 Chapters if you will, thus far include the Volta album and four solo ones with the majority of the non-Volta work being recorded around 2006 while Omar lived in Amsterdam. It may seem odd that we are just now hearing the stuff recorded in 2006, but this is how the man works. He loves the process. It's about creating music, not creating product. And because of the velocity with which he operates, he's always moving forward, only stopping to actually release albums when the "craving" strikes him.
This process of constantly making music borders on obsessive and you might say it's his new drug, with guitars and sheet music replacing needles and balloons, but there's more to it, a very tangible goal to the proceedings. "Think of it as if I've been running," he says. "I've done enough jogging and running that I'm very fast, or I've been lifting enough weights to where I'm really strong by the time I get to the Mars Volta record."

However, it's not that the solo work is a disposable exercise or the songs are all that different than what eventually makes it onto a Mars Volta album. "When it's actually happening, when the material is being written, there is no separation; I don't ever sit down and go, 'Now I'm writing a Mars Volta song. Now I'm writing a solo song'," he explains. "But that having been said, definitely anything that I do – whether it becomes a solo record or what not – anything I do ends up being an exercise for when I do get to quote-unquote focus on a Mars Volta record."

The material is always broken up after the fact as Omar looks it over and finds groups that work together, the core idea being that he's always refining ideas leading up to his yearly Mars Volta masterpiece. The five to ten solo albums he'll release in a year on his own label are ways of fleshing out ideas so that when the major label (read: big money) production (and we must always remember Omar is the producer as well as guitarist and bandleader) arrives he's 100-percent ready with laser-lock vision.

ut before we can get to The Mars Volta main event, we have to do our training. This year's regimen began with the release of the Rodriguez Lopez Production's Megaritual on January 26.

"Megaritual was a really fun one," says Omar. "I was living in Amsterdam at the time, and my brother [Marcel Rodriguez Lopez] came to visit me. That one started as just an exercise to be closer to my brother. Because of our age difference I didn't really get to know him because I left home at a very young age. We're eight years apart and I dropped out of school and left home when I was seventeen, so he was very small. When I finally came back to the family structure and made amends then I was always on tour. And so I got to discover my brother by inviting him into the band. It was sort of always the idea that I would bring him into the factory eventually. When I did that's how I got to know him - through being on the road and being on tour. Then when I moved to Holland, I would invite him there to come visit me, so it could be just me and him. And that's what this record was; it was an exercise in just me and him. I went to the studio and I showed him the songs and he played drums, and between me and him we played all the instruments. There was nobody else, so it was just a really nice moment for us."
Next there was Despair, also released on Rodriguez Lopez Productions on January 26.

"Despair was just when I went back to Amsterdam from Israel, and it was sort of my meditation on Israel, Palestine and Syria, and sort of what the experiences I had had there and the things I had brought back with me." Which include the infamous Ouija board purchased from an Israeli flea market which became the catalyst behind the band's "cursed" 2008 release, The Bedlam in Goliath (read more about this from Kayceman's 2008 talk with Omar and Cedric here).

Then there was the January 31 release of Old Money, which was a "meditation" on American corporations and yup, you guessed it, their dirty, stinky, old money. Most recently, the May 5 release of El Grupo Nuevo De Omar Rodriguez Lopez' Cryptomnesia, which in addition to Cedric and bassist Juan Alderete (who is involved in almost everything Omar does – including the Volta), features Hella drummer Zach Hill.

"Cryptomnesia was a meditation on bad manners," sighs Omar. "This drummer that I had for a minute in The Mars Volta was such a bum-out and just had such bad manners in general that this was sort of my little vacation. And I called up Zack Hill, who's an amazing individual and very conscientious and very wonderful to be around and really, really great to work with. I say it's a meditation on bad manners because the conclusion I came to was that it doesn't have to be this way. It doesn't have to be a struggle. It doesn't have to be like pulling teeth."

The obvious question now is, which of the two previous Mars Volta drummers is Omar refereeing to: Jon Theodore or Blake Fleming?

"Both of them," he says without hesitation. "Jon was in the band for a while and he just…I still don't understand why he was in the band. He didn't seem to like my music. He didn't like me directing him. He didn't like certain people in the band but yet he was in the band, and it was such a strange marriage because I just kept going, 'Ah well, after the next record I'll fire him.' And that turned into two or three records. This is very unlike me. Usually I'm a person who moves on very quickly, and so finally I moved on. Then I made the mistake of giving Blake another chance because I'm a strong believer that people can change."
After the experiment with Fleming blew up Omar started to question himself. "What is a bad attitude? Can I blame the other person or is there a part of me, too?" he asks. What he learned was that "it's just a matter of personality. It's like the progress reports when you're a kid - 'Does not get along well with others.' It's like some people enjoy misery... From this idea was where [Cryptomnesia] was born."

This totally pleasant experience working with Zach Hill provoked Omar to start his search for a new Mars Volta drummer. Hill was and is deeply involved with Hella and Omar had no intention of poaching, so he just manifested a new drummer. "When you meditate on something, when you pray for something, when you give yourself over to something I think the universe or God or whatever it is you believe in always makes room for you," says Omar. "And so the universe delivered Thomas Pridgen to me."

"The addition of Thomas was the missing piece," continues Omar. "Like I said before, I had two really negative drummers and all of us were trying to be on this high, on this wave and believe in what we're doing and believe in my music and believe in Cedric's storytelling, and even if you have seven [bandmates] that are like that, if you have one that is holding you back that's like a ship that's docked with a rope holding it back. Thomas believes wholeheartedly and he's very involved in the band and he always has positive energy, always, even when things get a little weird. He has such a great attitude that I just can't help but think that last piece was in place. All of that at the same time has carried us into this insane wave of energy that's been 2008 and now into 2009."

This brings us to last week's release of The Mars Volta's fifth full-length, Octahedron. Clipping the lineup from eight to six people, Omar asked "sound manipulator" Paul Hinojos and horn player/multi instrumentalist Adrian Terrazas to leave (which they did amicably) and coincidentally or not, the band has created their most restrained, easily accessible and flat-out different album yet. If they hadn't already won a Grammy ("Best Hard Rock Performance" for 2008's "Wax Simulacra") and weren't already on their way to being one of the biggest bands on the planet, you might say this is their attempt to reach the masses. But, they've already done that, and if we've learned anything about Omar it's that he bends for no one (as he said earlier, "This is my band. You'll be playing my music. If you're not okay with a dictatorship then this is not the place for you") and he certainly isn't catering to any sort of radio play or MTV presence.

"This record is definitely a mellow record. It's a melancholy record," says Omar. "It is not aggressive; it is the opposite of Bedlam. If Bedlam was asphyxiation and claustrophobia and fire and darkness, this is space, water, there's this calmness to it. It's definitely a new chapter, and that for me [is the most important thing] because my biggest fear is repeating myself, having one record sound just like the next one."
While Octahedron is receiving high marks precisely because of this change in course many longtime fans of the heavy, never-ending onslaught of their prog past may feel a bit letdown.

"Unfortunately for a certain type of fan that's [inevitably going to happen] – they want to relive whatever record, the second record, the third record, whatever record it was when they fell in love with their girlfriend, whatever record it was when they fell out of love or when they went through this traumatic experience. Whatever it was they latched onto they want to relive that feeling, but from the complete other side, from the creative point of view, it's the exact opposite - you want to have a brand new feeling, you don't want to relive feelings. You want to feel like you've moved on."

Clearly Omar has moved on from the weight of Bedlam, placing more emphasis on eerie, tension-filled ballads over psychedelic cliff hangers (although there are plenty of head-shredding moments), but Octahedron is still very Mars Volta and if you really have been following the band's career it shouldn't be that much of a surprise.

"I've been talking about making [this kind of record] for years with the people in my group. I've been saying I want to make a record that's just like the mellower sounding stuff like 'Televators' on the first record or 'Miranda That Ghost Just Isn't Holly Anymore' on the second record, things like that, the really moody stuff that we do. I want a record like that," enthuses Omar. "And I just love it so much. It sounds so fresh and exciting to me, and it's a record I can listen to right now! Normally when I finish a Mars Volta record that's it, I can't hear it again."
But, that's really only half the story. After the writing and recording comes touring, and considering the Volta put on one of the most technically impressive, wildly chaotic, critically acclaimed, fan-worshiped hard rock shows around, the live thing actually supersedes the album.

"The record can never compare, not even close. As much as someone might enjoy the record, it can never come close to what it is we do live," remarks Omar. "Another thing I'm getting into is I want to be able play more songs when I go on tour. We've been playing theses same songs and some of them just go on forever. I love the fact that we'll be able to have mellower stuff in the setlist and mix them in. If you saw us this last year, seeing a Mars Volta show was sort of like being punched in the face the whole time [laughs]. It will be really nice after a year of touring like that, of just fucking boxing every single night, it will be really cool to present a film with dynamics."

Yet as much as Omar is driven by his artistic desires, he's only human and, like all of us, he wants to be liked. There is a distant concern about how longtime fans (who are viewed almost like friends) are going to swallow this mellower stage of the Volta's career. It's a classic scenario for bands, but the great ones never stop pursuing their muse – Screw expectations! Who cares what already works?!? – and Omar knows this. But a little confirmation never hurts, and when I tell him that any real fan of the band as a whole (not one album or one song or one moment in time) will embrace this, and in fact doesn't care what songs the band plays they just want to experience whatever the artist wants to present - Omar is overcome with joy.

"Man, you just made my day!" he shouts. "I say that same thing so many times when I'm doing interviews and sometimes they [the interviewer] just has a blank look on their face. I often bring in this point that I'm a fan of music myself. I also like bands. And when I like someone, if I like Blonde Redhead or if I like Radiohead or whoever it is I like, I'm not going because I want to see what I think they should play. I always say exactly what you just finished saying - I want to see where their heads at. I want to see what their experiencing, what they're feeling, because I'm a fan."
And like Radiohead or Blond Redhead, heck, like all of us, Omar is getting older. He's no longer the angry, drugged out young punk, nor is he the 20-something scratching for his piece of meat. He's changing, growing, and just as any person striving to fulfill their potential must constantly evolve, it's critical that artists do the same. The problem is marketing schemes are built on re-packaging hits. They don't count on fans following a band into new terrain. But, it's the artists who flip-off the suits and do whatever the fuck they want as they constantly careen forward that become legends.

"It goes back again to a lot of people who are taught by society to try to relive moments, and then there are those of us who are looking for the next moment," says Omar with a dramatic pause. "Unfortunately, that's the sad the truth - people can't let go of the past, 'Oh remember the summer when... Remember this... Remember when I was young,' and it's why people have a midlife crisis and they end up piercing their ear and getting a Corvette. For me, I'm embracing getting older. I like that there's something new coming. I enjoyed the shit out of when I was younger, and I enjoy the shit out of every single era, but I definitely don't want relive it again. I already went through it. I want to go somewhere new."

High Volta
T in the Park audiences in for a something a little different as progressive rock band The Mars Volta take to the T in the Park stage next weekend. By Sean Bell

IT WAS foolish, in retrospect, to expect anything resembling a linear conversation with Cedric Bixler-Zavala, lead singer and lyricist of exuberantly coiffured musical test-pilots The Mars Volta, whose style has always veered between rigorously disciplined arrangements and the freest kind of improvisatory noodling. While other musicians would be vigorously plugging their latest album - in The Mars Volta's case, Octahedron, greeted thus far with the kind of mixed reviews that reveal more about the critics than the band - Bixler wants to talk about what's on his turntable.

"I'd been listening to a lot of Scott Walker lead singer of the Walker Brothers, as a lot of that stuff just got re-released. Also, I'm a really big fan of Roky Erickson - he's got a lot of loud rock, but he does these beautiful ballads. Plus, I love the fact that a lot of his lyrics border on the absurd - because he's a little cuckoo, you know? So that, and Vic Chestnut, and The Wicker Man soundtrack ... most of the stuff I've gotten into recently is off that Finders Keepers label. They do these great B-Music compilations, which have everything from Turkish psych rock to Bollywood soundtracks."

The list goes on, yet avoids those names one would expect when considering the "prog" label that has dogged The Mars Volta since Bixler and fellow bandmate Omar Rodriguez-Lopez put all-conquering post-hardcore outfit At The Drive-In on permanent hiatus and went off to record a jazz-punk concept album (a move regarded by many at the time as emptying a shotgun into the cash-cow's skull). Their debut, De-Loused In The Comatorium, was a surrealistic, genre-mashing broadside against minimalism, which intimidated the critics as much as it impressed them. Since then, chronic accusations of self-indulgence have made "prog" a permanent facet of The Mars Volta's image, despite the fact they couldn't be further from the horrors of King Crimson and Yes.

Bixler, to his credit, has said repeatedly they take the word "progressive" literally, and don't see anything progressive in singing about hobbits and spaceships. For Octahedron, the Californian-born band instead looked to their roots.

"We come from a Latin culture where the subject of the Devil is often predominate and usually feared, because that's just the way Catholicism is. So I definitely wanted to go down that road and explore that kind of subject matter, as well as what a family must feel like when their loved ones are kidnapped, especially in South America where kidnapping's an industry. The feeling of putting the ransom note down instead of actually reading it ... the bleak feeling of the desert ... stuff like that."

And in that, they are successful - Octahedron's greatest strength is its evocative nature, indicative of the way The Mars Volta carry with them not only a sound and a mood but an imaginary landscape - a place of dry heat, red light, old ghosts and narcotic hangovers. It will be interesting to see how such an illusory vista will translate to T in the Park, with its 50/50 chance of rain and pale blue audiences.

The Mars Volta's live shows are notoriously lively affairs - the crowds are often largely made up of At The Drive-In fans who have stuck by their heroes throughout their experimentation, and thus retain a mosh-pit sensibility. On stage, Bixler's distinctive falsetto vocals are punctuated by stunning feats of acrobatic prowess, from backflips to apparent epileptic fits. Given the exhaustion that's inevitable at the end of such touring, what does the band do on its off-time?

"I just try and watch movies and listen to music that's the exact opposite of us. Get away from the loud people, y'know? But that's kinda hard cause we're all loud people," he laughs. "Between tours, we sometimes scatter, but our drummer's been trying to instil this family vibe in us, which is really great since he's still kind of the new guy - he's like 24, I'm 34 - and he takes it really seriously. He's never been part of a rock band' before, he was more of a session musician for all these great artists ... I mean, he introduced us to Booker T the other day. I was always saying, You played with Booker T, man!' and he's like, Nah, that's hella-boring.' Gah! He doesn't really understand the significance of it."

Before we end our encounter with a brief discussion about Doctor Who - Bixler and Rodriguez are unashamed geeks - I ask, given the ever-changing line-up of the band, is there anyone Bixler would like to work with? "It'd be fun to work with Brian Eno, but I doubt he'd be interested in going backwards and doing stuff that he's done already, which unfortunately is what I'd want to do. But then I can appreciate wanting to move forward."

The Mars Volta's fans can do the same.

The Mars Volta will be playing the Radio 1/NME Stage at T In The Park on Friday, 10th of July.

Life on Mars

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Having already danced with the supernatural on their last album, 2009 finds The Mars Volta dogged by another old ghost. But Omar Rodriguez-Lopez tells Dave Kerr that he won’t be press ganged into reforming At the Drive-In.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


As I sit down to talk to the Mars Volta’s Omar Rodriguez-Lopez, it dawns on me that this interview can’t be some big chin-stroke about the way he’ll condense his unwieldy jams into a 40 minute set at T in the Park; I’d be an idiot not to clarify his position on the topic that’s got everybody from the music pages of the local Courier to the gossip inches of Rolling Stone in a funk: "Will you reunite At the Drive-In?" An innocuous slip of the tongue by bandmate Cedric Bixler-Zavala recently confirmed that the El Paso quintet were on speaking terms again, but then it was Cedric himself who once suggested in song that ‘a single spark can start a spectral fire…’

“The fact of the matter is that we’re in our thirties now and that breakup happened ten years ago,” Omar starts. “As a human being you just don’t want that kind of karma. They did a lot of shit talking, and we did a lot of shit talking, so I just called everybody up and invited them to my house and said ‘hey, listen, we’re in our thirties now, I’m sorry for whatever I said, I’m sure you guys didn’t mean what you said – you guys were upset because I split up the band and we were upset because of whatever. Let’s be friends again.”

So far, so dinner and a Columbo marathon. “But do I want to reunite and play fucking 15 year old songs?” he lingers. “Well, it would be like asking you, ‘do you want to get back together with your first girlfriend?’ You learn some amazing things together, but I just shudder at the thought.”

With the common perception being that At the Drive-In bowed out at the height of their powers under the ambiguous slogan of an “indefinite hiatus”, it’s little wonder they’re thought to have unfinished business. Not so, Omar clarifies: “We were a band that went out on top, which is good, but it’s just a coincidence. We were also a band that had been together for seven years, and for six of those years played to nobody and had a great time but were also on the verge of splitting up many times before that. It’s an old relationship. People would like to think of it as unfinished business because to them we went out when we were most popular, but that has nothing to do with the creative element. As far as the creative element went, it very much was finished business. That’s why I ended the band! Now, thank god, fucking ten years later, we’re not holding a grudge and we’re all cool with it. People pick up on the difference of attitude and think ‘oh, this could mean a possible reunion’, but that’s just them projecting their own desires upon us.”

However, after such a resolute dismissal of the idea, he still tantalisingly concedes that “we’re both smart enough to never say never, because you just end up putting your foot in your mouth.”

Although Omar appears to have made peace with this pivotal chapter of his career, the lyrical matter of the fifth Mars Volta album recalls an unresolved phenomenon first highlighted by Relationship of Command’s Invalid Letter Dept. Past story arcs have ranged from narratives wrapped up in outer body experiences and heretical folk tales, but Octahedron engages a very real concern which is consuming the band’s hometown.

“The main theme on this record is of disappearance: kidnappings and unexplainable things of that nature,” says Omar. “In El Paso and Juarez – its sister city right across the border – there are 900 kidnappings a day, just a gust of women. When you drive down the freeway there’s gigantic poster boards that say ‘Are you being held against your will?’ with a hotline to call. So yeah, it’s a pretty crazy phenomenon. It’s still the biggest problem in Mexico, where I live.”

As a reflection of the human face that Cedric paints for Octahedron with his lyrics, Omar shed the excess of previous releases and stripped the songs down to their core, leaving the usual bells and whistles one associates with a Mars Volta release well off the menu. “A lot of discipline went into this record,” he affirms. “A lot of discipline goes into every record, but a lot of holding back and enforcing limitations was a big part of making this one.”

Dubbed their “acoustic” album as often as their poppiest by critics, purists will argue that this is precisely the kind of focus that The Mars Volta need, having previously created progressive rock that’s equally appealing to aficionados as it is alienating to fans of their old punk band. Yet they still exist on their own plain.

“We’ve always been out there on our own," Omar acknowledges. "We’ve always had this feeling, especially coming from El Paso. We didn’t have a scene. It’s not the same as being a band in San Francisco or DC or Washington where you could just be a band and somebody would put out your record, or part of a collective of lots of bands that were sharing ideas, y’know, we were just on our own. It’s always felt that way, and we tour on our own – we don’t have opening acts. Definitely, there are people like Mastodon, M.I.A and Battles who feel like kindred spirits, but at the same time we’re in a little bubble of our own out there in the universe.”

I would like to point out that some parts were modified a lot (from what Omar said), which is kinda lame... and the interviewer doesn’t seem to like the band improvising for longer than 2 minutes... I also won't be translating the intro because it doesn't seem necessary and certainly it isn't very interesting. I’ll use the translations I did before because those are a direct translation of what Omar said. The first article is cut and it doesn't say anything we don't know, except he was 5 when he visited Mexico for the first time, they moved to Puebla so his father could continue studying medicine).

As a producer, what did you want to achieve with your last album? (here it’s replaced for “In what sense can Octahedron be considered an acoustic record?” and “¿Cuales fueron tus parametros como productor del disco?”)

I came out from TBIG, which was a nightmare, it was a nightmare to do that record. It was very strong and agressive, I think it's the most agressive record I've done y'know, its violent and full of fire and darkness... so when I came out from that, I felt like I wanted to do a record which was like water and full of space, and that's what became Octahedron.
As a producer the most important thing was to restrain myself y'know, restrain me from using 90 tracks like I normally do so... an important point was all that restraint, I only used... I don't know, 30 tracks and just 3 vocal effects, I decided I wouldn't write sections for metals (?) or free jazz or whatever that is... just limitations to achieve something different.

I heard With Twilight as My Guide and I think that outro is just too extense
WTAMG is a good example because that outro you’re talking about was another section for that song. But now the song changes to another section and has a total of three sections, which had to do with the limitations I was talking about. It wasn’t until I was mixing that record that I began to decide what it was going to be like. I decided to do an extensive fade out, with a lot of guitars to create that calm atmosphere before getting to the most aggressive song on the record, Cotopaxi.

Any connotation behind the title of your albums? (the question is changed here too)

The interesting thing is that albums have a meaning, but it's like you find out about it after you are done with it. Everytime we're going to name a record it's about finding a name that fits y'know, a name that screams "I'm the name of this record", so when we're doing a record we have a giant paper and we write a lot of names on it, and at some point, we find a name that pops out and that's different from the rest, and in this case it was Octahedron because it's a very special and visual word, and so we decided that was going to be the name of the record, because we've been together for 8 years, by that time we were 8 band members... and there were 8 songs on it. It's like everything was connected... it was very random stuff so... the meaning always comes later, the process is not intelectual, it's just emotion y'know, "I like that name, I like that sound, I like that song" or whatever.

Collaborations with John Frusciante and other musicians (here it’s divided into some questions the writer re-organized and mixed a little: John Frusciante ha sido un colaborador muy cercano en los ultimos discos, ¿como se dio esa relacion? – all the way to - ¿Eso es importante?)

I met John when he came to see us in another band that was called De Facto and after the show he came to talk to me, and at some point I asked him if he got this movie from Buñuel and he said “yeah, of course” so I went to his house and we watched a lot of movies and I was like “you are the guy from that band, the RHCP”, (on the written interview it says Omar got told by someone that "the guy you're talking to is the guitar player from RHCP") that was very cool, I didn’t know anything about RHCP, I mean, I knew they were an enormous band and I knew some of their songs but I didn’t know anything about their history or about what they were through and he had a very similar history to mine. From there we became big friends and he became a big fan of The Mars Volta, its a very important band for him… so he said to me “when you need me… I know its not a normal band and that you’re like the director, but when you need me, if you want me to play on your record I don’t mind you telling me what to do, I want to give you my talent so you can use it for what you want to achieve”. And that’s how it all started, because he learns just like this, he learns very fast and that’s important for me because I like to record everything really fast y’know, I’m always writing a lot of stuff and I need that kind of musicians.
It’s interesting to bring someone that is like from another world because it gives the music and unique feel, like having a jazz musician… because I’m not even a musician myself (laughs)… so, I gather a lot of musicians from different genres, pop, electronic music, jazz, blues, and I tell them “do this” and the outcome is very interesting.

How is you career as a solo artist going?
Very well. I record like 10 or 13 records a year since 2001, I came to a point where I don’t really know how much records I am writing and recording, but since 2005 I’ve been able to release 4 or 5 records per year.

I’m curious about Ximena Sariñana being featured on you next record, because you don’t really have anything in common musically. These questions have been combined (or splitted?) to the part above in italics, I’ll only translate what is new.

Ximena’s got a beautiful voice, she’s a very talented person. She learns his parts really fast and she’s always in the right key so I don’t need to record the vocals over and over. Same goes for Mark Aanderud (a lot of grammar errors on the interview) and Aaron Cruz (the bass player on Omar Rodriguez Lopez Trio). You show them a song and they learn it on their first try.
Remember about Zappa’s records with Eddie & Flo?, the vocalists from The Turtles? (laughs his ass off), they achieved something different because they had really nice voices and they sang Frank’s lyrics and melodies… it was a completely different thing, very different to Zappa’s low pitched voice (I can’t find the word I’m looking for/ this part was very interesting to me, Omar’s collaborations with Pridgen, Mark and Ximena make his records sound completely different)

To achieve that unique sound The Mars Volta has you use hundreds of pedals, can you tell us about them?
I’ve always used a lot of delay pedals, especially analog models like the Electro Harmonix, and I also use vibratos and ring modulators. My fingers are a little stiff, I’m not too delicate with my playing… and sometimes I’m not really tuned, so I love using vibratos because they exaggerate that.

Psychedelia or drugs?

I don’t know… I don’t know… I haven’t consumed drugs for like ten years now and… psychedelia is a totally separate entity and there’s psychedelia in a lot of aspects from life itself, which is connected with surrealism and drugs are like… not having to put any effort, y’know… like a shortcut, It’s like “I take this and I see a totally different thing” and… I was into that for some time and it was fun but (music suddenly stops)… it’s like it makes everything too easy…

Do you have a special diet? How much do you care abour your health?

I had, but since I came to Mexico I began to eat a lot of quesadillas and huitlacoche (laughs). I’m still a vegan but I eat a lot of cheese, eggs, things like that. I care about my health but not too much about how I look like. My wife (wtf?) always has to tell me to take a bath, but I just care about recording. I’ll put it on more straight terms… I’m just a bum.

What can you tell me about your clothes? You have a lot of fans and they are starting to imitate the way you dress.

It was made by a friend of mine, but it’s the same clothes I’ve been using for like 5 years now. I asked him to make me 5 suits and they all look alike, 3 are black and 2 are brown. That way I never have to think about what I’ll be wearing, right? (I was just looking to a documental about Luis Alberto Spinetta and he had very similar clothing to Omar's like 25 years ago. Spinetta is a very impressive musician from my country with a really extensive career and discography. He's very creative, he wrote music that sounded like Zeppelin even before Zeppelin did it, and he has explored a lot of different genres. Omar got some records from Spinetta when he visited Buenos Aires with Ximena some time ago. Here's an article in case you want to read about him http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luis_Alberto_Spinetta)

Now you’re living on Zapopan, Guadalajara. Is there any band you like from there?

I haven’t seen too much. I’m always at my house working, recording, composing, filming… I met a band called Troker, they are good people, I have played with them and they are very honest (that makes it sound like they are not very good IMO I also met Le Butcherettes, they caught my attention (sounds like he’s talking about the girls in the band and not their music), but I haven’t seen too much from them (laughs).

http://www.clashmusic.com/feature/the-mars-volta

“If you’d be so kind as to leave your preconceptions at the door, The Mars Volta will see you now.”

This isn’t how I’m ushered into a small, glass-walled meeting room for my interview with vocalist Cedric Bixler-Zavala and multi-instrumentalist Omar Rodríguez-López, but it should be. The pair you see plastered across magazine pages, straight-faced and serious: they’re not here. Instead, a couple of amiable individuals chuckle their way through our allotted time, even dangerously lowering the tone when it serves to illustrate a wider point, one more relevant to their wondrously ambitious brand of progressive rock.

Case in point: Omar turns to Cedric and says, “It can be a cool thing that I might’ve literally just dreamt about raping your mother.” They both laugh extremely hard, wicked cackles that one can only let loose in the company of a best friend. They do this a lot, like a pair of mischievous children who can’t quite believe they’ve not yet been caught with their hands in the cookie jar. Metaphor untangled: the hands are their music, the jar the messed-up insides of your head when you’re listening to it.

And the context behind the quote: we’re discussing the method behind the madness, the bubbling cauldron of creativity that’s endlessly stirred just behind the sparkling eyes of the duo. When critics commend the band - ostensibly the pair, but both on stage and in the studio they’re assisted by a wealth of talented musicians - for their complex polyrhythmic passages, their skewed signatures and conceptually deep lyricism, what do they think? Do they hear the same, or…

“I hear a lot of inside jokes, sarcasm and absurdity,” answers Cedric. “I hear a celebration of the absurd.”

“That’s the best way to describe it, I think,” continues Omar. “I did an interview on the television the other day, and the guy’s first question was: ‘People describe your music as…’, and he went on to describe it, before asking, ‘And how do you describe it?’ And he was looking for something musical, but I think what Cedric just said is perfect - it’s a celebration of the absurd thoughts that we all have, that sort of spring from the darker side of our subconscious. Rather than repress them - like, ‘What the fuck was that all about?’ - we go: ‘That was a weird thought, I’d better write that down! I have no idea what the fuck it might mean, but it was inside of me and I’m not trying to keep it in there.’ It’s better to celebrate these things, rather than let them freak you out.”

The latest tangible product of this everlasting outpouring of peculiar passion is ‘Octahedron’, The Mars Volta’s fifth studio album - that their first, ‘De-Loused In The Comatorium’, was released in 2003 is evidence enough that the band have hardly been slacking in the productivity stakes. While traits remain present from record to record, the group’s sound has morphed over time, from beguiling interstellar overtures to subdued flirtations with the most reserved introspection, and everything between. ‘Octahedron’ is, by its makers’ admission, not as rigid of thematic framework as previous efforts, the relatively freeform ‘Amputechture’ of 2006 aside, but its tracks do touch upon definite narratives. The track ‘Cotopaxi’, for example, tells of child disappearances in a small town, lines like “Don’t stop dragging the lake” vivid in their imagery. Cedric’s words aren’t as wrapped up in mystery as once they were; here, like the music that surrounds them, there’s an emphasis on directness, and ‘Octahedron’ is without doubt their most comparatively traditional album yet.

“People have always been saying that we don’t know how to write songs,” says Omar, referring to the perception that the band live only to confuse with their compositions, “but they don’t know anything about us beyond what they’ve read in the magazines. We started by writing traditional songs - when we were very young we wrote like that, but slowly you get fucking bored. So, you take the traditional structure of a song and you break it up a bit, you insert new sections, and you keep yourself interested - not anyone else, just yourself, because you’re the only one playing it in the practise room for four hours a day. You begin to fuck with the traditional formula of the song… and then people ask us why we can’t write a song? Writing a song is the easiest part; you can do that in your sleep. But challenging yourself to go further and further and further, that’s what takes will and exercise. Now, we’ve flipped that, and we’re a little bored of breaking up a song. It’s like, ‘Hey, remember when we were fourteen and we used to write those little songs? Let’s do that again, but with the sound we’ve got now.’ So we’ve done that, and now what? We’re constantly searching for the new feeling.”

The search for this new feeling drives the pair to the edge of reason, to an outer limit of existence where the quest consumes reality, and the world twists into a distraction from the never-ending pursuit. Explains Omar: “It’s like the same when you get a craving for food - it’s beyond your own instincts. I’m not saying I’m great because I feel something new all of the time, but I’m chasing something, constantly. Maybe it’s my own tail, but that’s how it is. You’ll catch it, do it, and then find that it wasn’t what you were looking for, so you move on. There it is, over there! You’re chasing this gigantic question mark, trying to form it and capture it, but you’re never going to quite accomplish it.”

So your mind never switches off? “No. I think I have one of those minds, and Cedric too, that just won’t shut the fuck up. And when it really gets going, it’ll be at midnight. The circus gets going, and then you’re up all night… I think it happens to a lot of people. You get all these crazy ideas, songs coming back to you from the 1980s that you never even liked but now you find amazing, it’s all nonsense. And then eventually you make yourself go to sleep, wake up and then there’s that internal monologue again. We all have it, and I think we’re all trying to escape it.”

Escape is expressed in the form of writing and recording, and the impression The Mars Volta give is that this is when they’re at their happiest. Performing can be a rush, too, but there’s pressure from the audience at play, and not every night can be as big a thrill as the one before it. “There’s a great expectation for Cedric to have an ‘on night’ every single night,” comments Omar. “He’s who most people notice, but they forget he’s a human being, that he gets tired and will have off nights; he can’t go crazy every single night. They don’t understand that’s it’s not a premeditated thing, that you either feel it or you don’t.” But in the studio, a certain tranquillity descends, individuals in their elements. “I think it’s playtime when I get to tell other people that it’s work,” says Cedric of this part of the process. “Deep down inside I know that it’s playtime, even though there is discipline involved. But it’s all play for me!”

Play it might be, but the singer never entertained the idea of having a plan B should his band endeavours hit the skids. “I always hated it when my mum would say that to me,” he says. “I love and respect her, but I’ve always discussed this with my girlfriend: if we ever get to the point where we have kids, I don’t want to ever ask the about a plan B. If my kid wants to be a dentist, I want them to work really hard, and dream about drilling mouths!”

Omar continues: “It’s a bit of a sick concept, having a plan B, if you think about it. It’s like meeting a woman, and saying: ‘I love you more than anything, but if this doesn’t work out I’m going to have to go to plan B, you know, what’s her name’. When you’re driven by passion, and emotion, and not on an intellectual level, it doesn’t work that way. This is it, this is it, this is it; consume, consume, consume. It seems totally watered down to say: ‘I’m totally obsessed with you, but if you don’t work…’ Those who are truly obsessed don’t have that sort of foresight. They know their objective and they’ll stop at nothing to get it. Expression is the obsession - and jokes are part of expression.” He flashes a dazzling grin, one mirrored by his bandmate. Po-faced these men most certainly aren’t, and the fuel for their frivolity comes from a source quite close to home.

“I love The Office,” says Omar. “The American version I didn’t like as much. They’ve just started showing The Mighty Boosh in America, too. Americans can’t do English humour - no other culture can, and people shouldn’t try! The American Office just isn’t the same - it doesn’t make you feel as uncomfortable. When I watch Extras, or The Office, it makes me want to crawl out of my skin.”

“You couldn’t have a Monty Python anywhere else, you just couldn’t,” he continues. “You can be inspired by it, and do your own shit, but you can’t do Monty Python USA… And all of these things are a celebration of the dark side of the subconscious, like The League Of Gentlemen and The Mighty Boosh. How do those minds come up with that shit? It must be a similar level to how we come up with things, and if that’s the case they must have a great time. They must just sit there and write down whatever fucking thing that comes into their head, whether they’re on the toilet or on the train, whatever.”

And suddenly talk of raping a best friend’s mother makes a degree of sense. Sort of.



Words by Mike Diver

He came for the first time to México when he was 5 years old. Since that moment, Puebla became his seconds home (after Puerto Rico) because he and his family changed their residence to that city so his father could continue with his studies in Medicine.
It was like “love at first sight” the musician says.
The common slang, the colors, the odors, the arquitechture, but also that surreal side of México that seduced and inspired Luis Buñuel. – btw, one of his idols- cautivated him.
In Guadalajara, he ate for the first time Huitlacoche quesadillas: http://www.flickr.com/photos/bubbletea/289927300/sizes/o/ a taste that he had never erased from his mind and is diet.
Now that city (I thought it was Zapopan, which is next to Guadalajara) besides being his home is also his operational center, there he has his record studio, in which he created his new solo album, Xenophanes, which will be released on next September.
For some musicians, releasing a solo album represents the freedom of creation they don’t have on their bands. Omar’s case is different.
“For me, it doesn’t have anything to do with, In Mars Volta I do what I want, is my band, is my music, anything, what happens with the band is that I’m compromised to release an album per year, from that, that I started to develop solo albums”, he explains.
“When I did the contract with Mars Volta, I was really excited, because I had a very special relationship with the label Universal, they gave me the whole control, since choosing the singles, the art, everything… it was so good, I got really excited; if it would depend on me, I would release 4 albums per year.”
The creative process of the music of The Mars Volta, and the process of Omar Rodríguez as solo artist, always had a very strong connection with the film Industry, Xenophanes wasn’t the exception.
From that, the musician found the inspiration in the filmed (kidnapped) (secuestrado or rabid dogs) from the Italian master of horror Mario Bava (Isn’t Octahedron about kidnappings, also?)
“It was a movie that wasn’t released for 25 or 30 years because the production company was in bankrupt, so, it was released recently. I’m a great admirer of Bava, Takeshi Kitano, David Cronenberg, it’s a very dark side of films, but it’s an inspiration that comes out of the absurd side of the imagination, I believe we all have, but we don’t talk about it”, he refers.
The passion of Rodríguez for films has reached in a way that he was chosen for the cinematographer and writer, Guillermo Arriaga (21 grams, Babel and Amores Perros) to do the socre of his film El Búfalo de la noche.
After that, Arriaga defended with “nails and teeth” his right to have the guitar player featured in his film The Burning Plain (2008) as creator of the score, along the many times awarded Hans Zimmer, in spike of the distribution company declined arguing “Omar Rodríguez was an unknown in film industry”
“When Guillermo (Arriaga) needs me, I’ll be there. I know The Burning Plain will be released this year, and for mi working with him is a experience that allowed me to grow up”, he points.
“In Mars Volta I’m the boss, the “maestro” of the band; with Arriaga at last I found the situation in which I don’t have the control, he directs me. For me it’s a very important part of being a down to earth person and take advance of that moment in which you can re invent yourself, I don’t direct there, I receive instructions and learn”.
While Xenophanes see the light, Omar Rodríguez is preparing for the releasing of the 5th and new studio album from The Mars Volta Octahedron, that will see the light in June.
With the premiere of Octahedron, Mars Volta will have a new tour in some U.S, cities and European festivals, which causes Omar a tremendous pain, who accepts that in difference to past years, he prefers to stay at home working in new songs.

The interview is in spanish but it has a visual of Omar's in home studio, having him explain that this is where all The Mars Volta records are made.

Around 0:53 the interviewer asks him about the trio, and Omar says he believes it is coming out in October. The interviewer then asks him what the name of the group will be and Omar chuckles and says, "It's just gonna be under my name, El Trio de Omar Rodriguez-Lopez"

He then goes on about all different genres of music, noting he may not like nu-metal but he's sure other people love it. He mentions The Police as exemplifying the definition of pop.

He also notes that as much as he listens to music, he watches more movies. Mentions he movie, Kidnapped by Mario Bava as being obsessed with it and watching it 4 or 5 times last week. (mi pare citi anche Gozu di Takeshi Miike)

2:22 Mentions all the different entities in movies he loves and the video does a nice job of giving a face to the names by giving you a slideshow of the people.

Most interesting part is around 2:43 on, and by all means my spanish speaking people out there correct me if I am wrong. The interviewer asks Omar about his own cinematic ventures and Omar responds that he only does it for the exercise itself and to do it, not just to be processed.

Saying he's done 5 movies, including the names:

La Venganza de los Labios Extranjeros (Latest piece, started in August)
First Movie with Jeremy made in 2001
Letters from the Stopia (Made in 2003)
The Sentimental Engine Slayer (Made with his brother in 2007)
El Divino Influjo de los Secretos (Made in Juarez in 2008)
Boiling Death Request (Made in the beginning of 2008)

The Mars Volta Bring Octahedron to Life
El Paso Prog Rockers Make Tour Stop at S.B. Bowl
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Love ’em or hate ’em, El Paso’s The Mars Volta are an undeniable force to be reckoned with. Since rising out of the ashes of early-’90s post-rock outfit At the Drive-In, guitarist Omar Rodríguez-López and lyricist Cedric Bixler-Zavala have turned more heads—and stirred up more critical disagreement—than most bands do in a lifetime. Together, they have arguably crafted some of the best avant-garde hard rock of their generation, melding progressive song “structures” with jazz and blues complexities and instrumental prowess with some surrealist lyricism.

This June—with help from longtime Volta collaborators Isaiah Owens, Juan Alderete, Thomas Pridgen, and Red Hot Chili Pepper John Frusciante—Rodríguez-López and Bixler-Zavala released their fifth studio album, Octahedron. Dubbed by many as the band’s most approachable record to date, Octahedron is chock-full of Rodríguez-López’s signature spiraling guitar solos and hard-hitting chord progressions, but gone are the 12-minute rock-outs and overarching conceptual narratives. Recently, I caught up with Rodríguez-López to talk about the new album, critical labels, and why fans are helping to rewrite his perceptions.

You’ve said that Octahedron was your way of breaking away from what you guys were doing on previous albums. Are these songs still providing a good outlet for you on tour? Yeah, we’re able to have more dynamics now. Playing a live show isn’t just three hours of drums and bass [anymore]. Now I’m able to put songs in the set that are much mellower, so there’s a dynamic there that wasn’t present before.

Can you tell me a little bit about the cover art for Octahedron? That’s a piece by Jeff Jordan. Early on, I started sending him some music and some of Cedric’s lyrics, and we’d worked together a couple of times. He did Amputechture—but that piece was already done—and then on Bedlam [in Goliath] we sort of had the same process, where I would send him music and lyrics and themes. On this one, I handed him a couple of pieces of music and explained to him what we were trying to do, about the changes I was trying to make and the limitations I was trying to have on myself. [The cover] is his response to that.

You say “limitations.” What was your goal going into the making of this album? “Limitations” just meaning putting handcuffs on yourself so that you don’t do the things that you’re accustomed to doing. People who create stuff—artists, whatever you want to call them—are afraid of limitations, when actually limitations help us to be creative. … The less you have, the more your brain works, you know? It’s like exercising for the mind. The more you have, the more content and the lazier you become. I remember doing a lot more when I only had an eight-track recorder and one guitar and a couple of pedals and a Rhodes. You become creative because your mind’s working in a way that it normally wouldn’t. It’s saying, “How can I improvise here? How can I get more out of this?”

How do you respond to people who call this the most accessible album you’ve made? I don’t know. I don’t think of it in those terms. I don’t think it’s more accessible, or it’s more digestible. It’s my music; all my music is accessible and digestible [to me]. By somebody else’s perception they could easily laugh that off, but I don’t think our music is that far out there, especially considering the century that we live in and the fact that it’s 2009. I think, 50 years later, if rock ’n’ roll music is still meant to be guys playing 12-bar blues but loud and fast, then we have a problem. Things are supposed to change and evolve and grow. … [This is] the record that I wrote at that point in time and it had to be what it had to be, and maybe my records become in somebody else’s eyes more accessible, or maybe they become less accessible … I don’t know. I’m just making my music according to what’s happening to me in my life.

It’s also just the consequence of putting your music out there. That’s a really important fact. I can say all day long that I’m making this music just for me, but at the end of the day I also make a decision to let it leave the house, leave the studio, leave the bird’s nest. We all know that any thing, when perceived by something else, that person’s perception changes it. Once someone else hears it, it changes automatically, whether the other person intends for it to change or not, it just does because they have a different background and a different way they are looking at it. So if you have an audience, then forget it; that’s a whole other power. The whole thing changes into whatever their collective perception is, and for us that’s usually two polarized groups. [Laughs.]

4•1•1
The Mars Volta play the Santa Barbara Bowl (1122 N. Milpas St.) this Wednesday, September 2, at 7 p.m. For tickets and additional info, call 962-7411 or visit sbbowl.com.

Interview: The Mars Volta's Omar Rodriguez-Lopez
By Ryan Wasoba in Story Outtakes
Tuesday, Sep. 8 2009 @ 2:23PM


The Mars Volta is far too weird for its own popularity, but somehow Omar Rodriguez-Lopez, Cedric Bixler-Zavala and their virtual lazy susan of band members have turned virtuosic, psychedelic prog jams into gold records and a Grammy for Best Hard Rock Performance. Nobody is more surprised by the Mars Volta's success than Rodriguez-Lopez, who spoke with A to Z in anticipation of his band's appearance tonight at the Pageant.

Ryan Wasoba: Octahedron is your newest record. I noticed that people have been referring to it as your acoustic album.
Omar Rodriguez-Lopez: I referred to it as an acoustic-inspired album, but I never said it was an acoustic album. People take things way too literally and out of context. At the time I wrote it I was listening to a lot of Nick Drake and Syd Barrett and Leonard Cohen, but I don't consider inspiration to be a carbon copy. Just because I was listening to those albums doesn't mean it's just an acoustic guitar and a voice.

It is a little bit more mellow than your previous work, though. I know that live, The Mars Volta is known as being this chaotic thing. Has performing these songs changed the performance ethic? Do you get a little bit of a breather?
It does in a certain sense, just because dynamic-wise, they're different tempos and different moods. But I still find them challenging, just in different ways.There's a real power in something people perceive as mellow. There's a certain type of intensity in that type of sound and that type of feeling that you can't achieve no matter how hard you bang on a drum or how loud you turn up an amp. I sort of found out that after eight years of doing this band that the performances are pretty much one dimensional, that it was sort of just a punch in the face for three hours. There were very few moments of space; all the space really just happened between songs. So it seems like a nice way to add dynamics to the set when we play live.

I've always thought that Mars Volta performances must be pretty physically demanding.
Oh, yeah. I think performing is physically, mentally, emotionally demanding. It's demanding on every level, because there's so many layers to it and there's so much depth to it. It is something that's cathartic, but at the same time it's very fun but it's also very physically challenging because I like my music. I'm not up there just playing my music to play it. It makes me feel good so it makes me want to dance. I'm connected to it, and I can't pretend to be indifferent to it.

As far as the band's lineup, it's always been you and Cedric Bixler and everybody else has sort of rotated. It's almost like you've gotten to form a supergroup and get musicians that you're fans of to play with.
That was always a concept early on. I think it's the most important thing in playing music or doing anything in life, that you surround yourself with people that you like and love and have fun around. With At The Drive-In, we were this set group of people and this is the band and this is what it's going to be. I realized how limiting it was to have that mentality. So with this band I don't care if we have different people every year as long as it stays fresh and interesting and stays on the path that I want to stay on.

Do you think you were rebelling against At The Drive-In when you started the Mars Volta?
Not rebelling against it, but dramatic changes are just part of making progress. Any time I make a Mars Volta record, it is juxtaposed with the one that came before it. Bedlam In Goliath was my most aggressive album, so it's completely natural to want to make this one a mellow record. I would hate if at the end of my life of playing music that all my endeavors sort of sounded the same. I really embrace the idea of looking at one end of the spectrum and the other and seeing that they have nothing to do with each other. To me, that's living. I had been writing songs with At The Drive-In for seven years, so finally when I broke up the group, just like if you break up with a girl after seven years, you start over and get to the core of things. What did I learn from them and how do I want to change my life and how do I move forward from here?

One way you're moving forward is by starting [label] Rodriguez Lopez Productions. How did that come about?
The idea was originally to start another label. We were doing GSL for a long time and then we closed down and wanted a fresh start, just like you would quitting a band and starting a new one. Then I realized there was no reason to limit it to just being a record label. Really it should just be some factory where things can be released be it albums or movies or books or magazines or whatever it is. I just wanted to sort of leave it open ended so it can change and transform and be anything that I want it to be.

You self-released your latest solo record, Cryptomnesia. I was actually surprised by that that record's similarity to the Mars Volta in a way. Was that written around the same time as Octahedron?
No, it was written and recorded at the same time as Amputechture. And of course it's going to sound like Mars Volta -- Mars Volta is my band and I write all the music for it. When I write, I don't differentiate between one project and another. I don't say "this is going to be a Mars Volta song" or "this is going to be a solo song." I just write a bunch of material and at some point it has to get organized into records. Contractually, I can only put out a Mars Volta record every eighteen months because I don't own the band name, I sold it to the record label. So by default, I find other avenues of staying healthy and creative and doing what I want within the limitations of working in the mainstream framework.

That seems like that's one of the challenging things: The system the Mars Volta exists in is sort of unfitting for you creatively.
Oh, no it doesn't make any sense at all. I still don't understand at all how we've had the success that we've had, and I don't understand why major labels are interested in us and our way of doing things. It seems so backwards for their template. I mean, I turn in records. It's not like anyone from the label ever comes in and hears the records or has any input or has an opinion that matters. I make records the way I've always made them. I make them at home in my studio and then I turn them in and I say, "Pay me." It's a very strange and fortunate relationship.

It seems like you just have an infinite amount of projects going on at any point in time. Do you ever just take a month off and not do anything?
Not really. For me what I do is taking time off. I get to make music for a living. I'd be a fool to complain or to see it as work. Obviously there is a work aspect to it; there is a discipline that goes into it to finish any project. But in general, it's all play for me. I get to play and I get to be in my garage, so to speak, just making things for a living. I'm super grateful for that.

Before playing The Pageant, Mars Volta guitarist and songwriter Omar Rodriguez-Lopez spoke with The Current.

The Current: I know that you have expressed that you are a big fan of David Lynch and David Cronenberg's films. What part does cinema play in yours and The Mars Volta's songwriting?

Rodriguez-Lopez: Cinema is probably my biggest influence in songwriting, more than books or paintings or other music itself. I really just like movies and the idea of trying to capture them and recreate a certain character or scene or tone in my music.

TC: So might you say that that's been a part of The Mars Volta's evolution into more expansive sounds where you cover so much ground and so many moods, kind of trying to achieve that same cinematic feel?

Rodriguez-Lopez: Yeah, definitely. That's why I am so long winded with my music, I can't [indistinguishable] that's why our records are so long, I mean, everything we get criticized for, like … I don't get to the point and … too many interludes … it's because I'm in no rush. I'm not part of fast-food culture. I like setting a scene and telling a story … I think you can think of my records as films of sound.

TC: So here's one about The Mars Volta's lyrics, and this is maybe Cedric's territory, but I'm sure you can shed some light on it. Almost all of your lyrics are stream of consciousness and don't necessarily follow a narrative line. What kind of things enter into those lyrics, though?

Rodriguez-Lopez: Well, you know, having been working with Cedric for twenty years … I know that he writes, like you said, stream of consciousness, and what he calls "automatic writing."
And I think that if you examine all of his lyrics closer,
you'll see that they're full of references to pop culture, movies, inside jokes that we have, actresses that he's fond of…it's very much like that Tom Waits-ish feel.

TC: Right, pulling from all sorts of areas.

Rodriguez-Lopez: Sure, an amalgamation of things, not even something that you realize when you write it.

TC: Branching away from the music, I know that at a similar point in your life to where I and many of my readers are, you hitchhiked for a year, is that true?

Rodriguez-Lopez: Yeah … yeah that was in 1994. I was … 17 and wasn't sure exactly what I wanted to do. So…yeah (laughs).

TC: Well, I mean that's the kind of thing that, like I said, me and some of our readers maybe still romanticize or think about and I was wondering, maybe, what you got out of it and could say about it.

Rodriguez-Lopez: Oh, I ... you know I think it's a wonderful experience that most people should do, especially when you're at that age and making a transition from adolescence to … some sort of [indistinguishable] of adulthood.

TC: Right.

Rodriguez-Lopez: And, you know, and … I guess there's just nothing more important in general, whether you do it by means of hitchhiking or by means of just dedicating time…there's nothing more important than being with yourself and being alone and letting go of, you know, everything … or either letting go of or questioning everything, everything that defines you.
For me I had to … get to a place where I was no one. I was not … somebody's son, I was not somebody's brother. I needed to be no one and figure out who that no one was.

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ent/6620315.html

Mars Volta albums don't come easy. The band makes thistly music, often with breakneck tempos and odd time signatures, stopping and starting with devious alacrity. The process behind the band's recordings has often been labored.

Guitarist/writer/producer Omar Rodríguez-López says he usually works on two recordings simultaneously.

But that doesn't mean they are completed tidily. The former El Pasoan had to put the recent Octahedron on ice to finish the labored The Bedlam in Goliath (“It had a complicated birth,” he says) last year. Another album he was working on parallel to Octahedron is completed, but he decided he didn't like it, so it was stashed in his vaults.

The band has lost members and friends, and its music conveys a sort of 21st-century anxiety, with mysteries and kidnappings and other dark matter.

Yet multiple times in discussing his work Rodríguez-López uses a childhood metaphor for his job.

“I don't think of it as work,” he says. “Obviously there's work involved. It requires discipline. But generally speaking, I'm fortunate to play music for a living.” He laughs. “So I'm dedicated to playing in my sandbox all the time.”

Then he proceeds to deconstruct decades of heady descriptions for music's creative process. Rodríguez-López says he's constantly composing at home, on the road, even in the bathroom.

“For me it's nothing mythical or grandiose,” he says. “It's like being a janitor, or putting a bucket under a really leaky sink. I have a leaky sink for a brain.”

In his defense, Rodríguez-López does seem to flood the market with albums.

Over the past seven years he's had a hand in five Mars Volta albums (along with a few EPs and a live recording) and numerous recordings released under his own name or El Grupo Nuevo de Omar Rodríguez-López.

“Working on different projects at the same time helps keep my mind off balance,” he says. “Ideally one feeds the other.”

He also suggests the albums are always connected in some small way to what comes before and after. So it is that Octahedron, tagged as the band's “acoustic album,” isn't exactly guys on stools playing folk music; it's distinctive among the band's albums, but it still sounds like the Mars Volta.

Rodríguez-López suggests he was listening to a lot of Nick Drake, Leonard Cohen and Syd Barrett while writing the record but was more influenced by “their spirit and approach — who they are more than what they sound like.”

There's great range in the album's dynamics. Mars Volta albums often flitted between frantic and very frantic.

By adding some more nuanced pieces of music, there's a great sense of build and release on the album that should also be reflected in the band's shows.
“That's the incentive to make a record for me,” he says, “finding a way to juxtapose what you just did. To turn it around and find something new.”

Rodríguez-López's wandering spirit extends beyond his music. He's moved frequently since childhood. He was born in Puerto Rico and spent some of his childhood in South Carolina before his family moved to El Paso.

Since he and singer Cedric Bixler-Zavala split from El Paso's At the Drive-In in 2001 to form the Mars Volta, he's also holed up in Los Angeles and, most recently, Mexico, where he plans to stay for a longer period of time.

He says his time in Texas had to have had some influence on him, even if the music he made had little to do with what is typically tagged as Texas music.
“Even if you'd never heard of ‘Texas music' the fact that I was living in these landscapes and seeing the same things that people who love that music are seeing, that filters through your own set of circumstances. Living in the desert you can't help but produce a certain kind of sound.
“It seems like any place we've had roots, there's some camaraderie there.”

While Texas is a regular stop for the Mars Volta, Rodríguez-López thinks the band's San Antonio date on Saturday might be its first.
“Cedric and I were just talking about that, wondering if it goes back since At the Drive-in. It's been too long.”
He suggests the time he and Bixler-Zavala spent in El Paso in some way informed Cotopaxi. “I can't help but think we've been influenced by stories of the disappearance of all those women in Juarez,” he says.

“One of the themes of this record was disappearances, physical and emotional disappearances.”
Though the songs are loosely linked thematically, it's not a full-fledged concept album like some of the band's previous work. The group isn't in the business of three-minute pop songs about girls, which is as endearing to its fans as it is abstruse to others. It's a difficult band to label, which doesn't stop people from trying.
Asked for his nutshell description, Rodríguez-López replies quickly. “If I had to describe my music, I'd say it's just the celebration of the absurd thoughts about things from the darker places of the subconscious.

“I think everybody has strange thoughts and fantasies and phrases and images, but we almost never share them with people. Maybe we're frightened of them since they're from a darker place. We choose to celebrate it rather than shy away. Saying, ‘This is me, but why is it me?'”

Prog-metal band known for unique lyrics and bombastic arrangements, takes it down a few notches with more-accessible 'Octahedron'

In today's music scene, there is no other band like The Mars Volta, which plays today at Cleveland's House of Blues. The progressive-metal act, formed from the ashes of At the Drive-In at the turn of the century, has released a handful of albums that have ranged, one might argue, from compelling and drawn-out to tortuous and brutal. Led by singer Cedric Bixler-Zavala and guitarist Omar Rodríguez-López, the act kowtows to nobody. Take for instance its head-scratching opening performance for the Red Hot Chili Peppers Halloween night 2006 at Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland.

For nearly an hour, fans and newcomers were barraged with not Mars Volta songs but one long ear-piercing jam. It turns out the group was trying out its current drummer, Thomas Pridgen, with a trial-by-fire audition, audience be darned. As unexpected as that was, the band has once again zigged when others expected a zag with its new highly accessible, bluesy rock affair "Octahedron."

The News-Herald recently talked to Rodriguez-Lopez about what makes The Mars Volta tick.



The News-Herald: Congratulations on "Octahedron," which is easily the most accessible Mars Volta album to date. Was that the idea?

I definitely hear that. It's not as abrasive. Our mixing engineer said, "I love your records, but it's interesting to me when I get your record and listen to it it's usually a workout. It's very dense, and at times it's like, '(Expletive) you, I dare you to like me.'" And he said with this record, as soon as it was over, it was a record he felt for the first time he wanted to put it on again.

There's almost a night-and-day difference between the convoluted "The Bedlam in Goliath" and the bluesy "Octahedron."

That's just juxtaposition. You have to remember that as the writer of all of these albums, I'm not looking at it in micro-steps. I'm sort of looking at the overall picture. I'm sort of seeing them as sort of one continuous work, like they're chapters in a movie. So if you just had a scene that was very dialogue-heavy and indoors, then the next thing to do is you have a scene that is outdoors and where you're telling the story visually with very little dialogue. For me, 'Goliath' was sort of that type of scene, very claustrophobic, very indoors, very, very dense. And for this next scene, this record ("Octahedron"), the idea was to juxtapose it now with a lot of light, a lot of open space and a lot of big scenery and make it less dense and less volatile.

Something interesting on "Octahedron" is the track "With Twilight as My Guide," which is almost Evanescence-like. Is there a female singer on the track?

No, that's Cedric. He used to get that a lot when we first started out. When we put out At the Drive-In's first album, we got reviewed and it said, "Great band, great female vocals." So he used to get that a lot, and I guess there's still a little bit of that left in him.

Have we started to look ahead to the next Mars Volta project?

It's in a weird state. Right after "Octahedron," I recorded another record that would be the follow-up. I usually hand it over to Cedric who writes his lyrics. And as I finished it I was excited, but I didn't feel like it was anything new or interesting. I felt it was like not where I was at. And I started working on another one. But, to tell you the truth, I put it down for a minute for the first time in a long time. I'm sort of letting it sit there and see what happens.

It's kind of funny to think ahead how in concert new fans expecting to hear the more accessible Mars Volta will be shell-shocked by your abrasive and non-linear older material.

That was another great part in making this record was the fact that I realized on this past year of touring that our show, while it was very fun to play and very exciting, lacked dynamic. It was three hours of being just punched in the face. And I started to realize it would be really nice to add some dynamics and have songs that are lower in volume and come down and are more subtle to break up the set. So that also played into the making of this record. And I think people who are coming, who maybe never heard the band before and just heard the new album, I think they could be surprised.