THE MARS VOLTA---> AMAZING

Started by Thecowgoooesmooo, December 03, 2003, 10:05:26 PM

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Quote from: StefenHere, I yousended Frances The Mute the single.

http://s28.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=0AKS8UAXP29BN1O45VIY4TF9LK

I like it, the only part I don't like is the first 4 minutes cause it's really unnecessary noise. But it rocks and the acoustic parts are really good.

yeah i found on isohunt someone put up all the tracks they've released, including ambuletz, i never knew about that one...  it's  huge 600 meg torrent but worth it, now i've got great quality mp3s of everything, even though i bought the lps already it's a nice complete set.

the decoder song kicks so much ass.  i love how they reprise the beginning and ending of the album at the end.  i bet this song was going to be in the middle of the album when it was still a 2 disc.

i agree about the first four minutes of the song, i do like it, but it only had to go on for a minute or so.  this is the most prog sounding song in my opinion, especially at the end when it kicks back in.  thoughts on that?

-sl-
the one last hit that spent you...

Gamblour.

I just saw The Mars Volta live tonight at the Tabernacle.

Crazy.

The first hour and a half was spectacular. I was very impressed and in awe of Omar and the whole crew. I developed a HUGE mancrush on Cedric, I'm sorry the man is sexy, no homosexual remorse here. Take the Veil..., Cygnus, Drunkship of Lanterns!!!! So many great songs, but then.....

I got VERY angry and filled with rage. I felt like I couldn't breathe, I got very claustrophobic. And this douche bag in front of me was really pissing me off. On top of this, I was tired from standing, and the band played Cassandra BUT WOULDN'T STOP!!!! The 'noise' jams were horrible. The entire audience was alienated. I know that's their trademark, but it's really bringing the band down. In fact, I completed reevaluated my opinion. The noise jams are not only pointless but unbelieveably indulgent and egotistical. I was just pissed off by the whole thing. I wanted to scream and push my way out of that crowd. Anyhow, bad experience during the last hour. Otherwise, brilliant.
WWPTAD?

Sigur Rós

Quote from: Gamblor Posts DrunkI developed a HUGE mancrush on Cedric, I'm sorry the man is sexy, no homosexual remorse here.

You are the manwhore! But I agree.

Gamblour.

Wow, over a year later. Anyhow, the new album Amputechture has leaked. It's on mininova. I'm on the first track, so far...
WWPTAD?

ᾦɐļᵲʊʂ

It's definitely more relaxed than their other stuff, which I don't mind.

I think I like it more than Frances, but I don't know if I like it more than Comatorium.
"As a matter of fact I only work with the feeling of something magical, something seemingly significant. And to keep it magical I don't want to know the story involved, I just want the hypnotic effect of it somehow seeming significant without knowing why." - Len Lye

MacGuffin

Mars Volta's Amputechture Inspired By Immigrant Marches, Possessed Nuns
Band goes conceptual again on Frances the Mute follow-up.   

The Mars Volta revived the concept album in 2005 with their cerebral opus Frances the Mute. The epic LP centered on the thoughts of a man seeking out his adopted parents.

Those musings were contained within a diary discovered by former Volta bandmate Jeremy Ward while he was employed as a repo man. Before Ward's 2003 death from an apparent overdose, he took it upon himself to finish the unknown writer's work. The band's frontman, Cedric Bixler-Zavala, later used the writings as a blueprint of sorts for Frances.

For the Volta's forthcoming conceptual offering, Amputechture, which hits stores September 12, Bixler-Zavala didn't rely on just one source of inspiration for his lyrics — there was plenty on his mind this time around.

"It's all loose, really," he explained. "I love the way that [Rod Serling's 1970s series] 'Night Gallery' had that common thread that it was a gallery, and every painting told a different story. I guess I'd like that to be true of this album, too. The subject matter's all different, but [the songs] do all come together in a strange way. Every song would be a different episode that kind of relates in the way that [Paul Thomas Anderson's 1999 film] 'Magnolia' has all these different characters [who] all come back together in the end.

"There's the subject of the immigrant marches that were happening here," Bixler-Zavala continued. "And there were things I saw on the news, like the story about a woman who was killed by this priest because supposedly she was possessed."

That woman was a 23-year-old Romanian nun named Maricica Irina Cornici, who, according to news reports, believed she heard the devil talking to her. A monk bound Cornici to a cross, gagged her with a towel and left her in a dank room for three days without food. She died of suffocation and dehydration more than a year ago.

"That was sort of an inspiration to write about the Western phenomenon of incarcerating somebody if you think they're crazy, whereas in some parts of the world, like in South America, people like this woman would be considered a shaman," the singer said.

But that's not where it ends.

"This album's a commentary about the fear of God instead of the love of God, which goes hand-in-hand with Catholicism," he said. "To me, religion is the reason there is so much conflict in this world, and I think it's just so unnecessary to believe in this blue-eyed, white-bearded, white-haired God. Amputechture is my personal way of describing enlightenment, or just the celebration of this person who is a shaman and not a crazy person. It's about the pineal gland and how it has certain elements that mimic a DMT experience, and how we can come up with cures for cancer and AIDS if we're more in tune with what's going on in the rainforest."

Bixler-Zavala says the Volta started recording Amputechture last year while on tour with System of a Down. Guitarist Omar Rodriguez-Lopez produced the LP, which features eight ethereal tracks.

"We're excited about this album, because I think a lot of people expected us to rest on Frances and keep promoting that," Bixler-Zavala said. "It's great to just keep going and throw new stuff out there. We have the kind of fanbase that demands that. But we're constantly working, or else we get bored."

Rodriguez-Lopez, who is working on music for Guillermo Arriaga's forthcoming film "The Night Buffalo" as well as his own, five-years-in-the-making movie, had a virtual library of ideas he brought to the table for Amputechture, which features the Red Hot Chili Peppers' John Frusciante playing the majority of the album's guitar parts.

"We took an approach on this album of not letting everyone know what's going on with the music," Bixler-Zavala said. "Everyone went in and recorded their part right then and there. Frusciante learned his part five minutes before we'd go in to record it, and the entire album was recorded in big chunks. It's the closest thing to improvisation we can do."

This fall, the Mars Volta will open for the Chili Peppers on the band's North American tour, set to kick off August 11 in Portland, Oregon, and conclude November 5 in St. Paul, Minnesota. Afterward, Bixler-Zavala said the Volta will stage their own U.S. headlining tour, which should commence before year's end, with dates running well into 2007.
"Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art." - Andy Warhol


Skeleton FilmWorks

Gamblour.

WWPTAD?

ᾦɐļᵲʊʂ

Day of the Baphomets is easily becoming one of my favorite Mars Volta songs (possibly the favorite).
"As a matter of fact I only work with the feeling of something magical, something seemingly significant. And to keep it magical I don't want to know the story involved, I just want the hypnotic effect of it somehow seeming significant without knowing why." - Len Lye

MacGuffin

Mars Volta To Release 'The Record That Did Not Want To Be Born'
Prog-rockers blame Ouija-like game for bad-luck spell, album delay.
Source: MTV

If you thought the concepts behind the Mars Volta's last three records were, well, odd, just wait — you haven't heard anything yet.

The band's 2003 debut, De-Loused in the Comatorium, revolved around the tale of Cerpin Taxt, a man who tries to kill himself by overdosing on morphine. The inspiration for 2005's Frances the Mute came from an anonymous man's diary that chronicled the author's search for his biological parents. And 2006's Amputechture tackled topics like U.S. immigration and possessed nuns.

But the band's forthcoming LP, The Bedlam in Goliath, takes concept records to a whole new level. Due in stores January 29, Bedlam deals with a present Volta guitarist Omar Rodriguez-Lopez — who also produced the LP — gave frontman Cedric Bixler-Zavala after returning from a trip to Jerusalem.

"He took the trip a little while ago, and he found a sort of curio shop ... [it's] kind of hard to believe that that would exist over there," Bixler-Zavala said. "He brought me back ... what you'd call a Ouija board in the States, and we started playing with it ... we used to get the band to play it a lot after we'd play shows in the middle of nowhere, with nothing to do." Making a reference to "The Exorcist," he added, "And we kind of stumbled across our own version of Captain Howdy." While the gift never had an official name, the band referred to it as "The Soothsayer."

"It serves the same function as a Ouija board, but it's just a little more archaic," Bixler-Zavala elaborated, adding that the band discovered a number of poems attached to the board. "This version of it had a sort of love triangle that was attached to it — the poems we found with it sort of described a mother-daughter-and-other-man love triangle, and what I came up with from it was we were being contacted by at least three people on the board that would come up as one person. We wrote down a lot of the messages they gave us, and we used it in the lyrics, and we also tried to fasten the lyrics into sort of like a good-luck charm, by putting positive elements into it. We used a lot of elements of Santeria [an Afro-Caribbean religious tradition] to kind of give us a protective skin when the record does come out."

The more the band played with the strange game, the stranger things started to get. The singer said he started "meeting different people through the game, and I was getting different mixed messages from it. After a while, we started having a lot of bad luck happen to us, and we kind of got rid of the thing, and in the process of using it, we discovered a lot of weird things about it."

When the band's focus for the LP shifted to the strange board game, "the studio we were working in flooded, and then our main engineer had a nervous breakdown, which caused us to almost have to start all over again, because he knew where everything was. I had foot problems, and I ended up having to get surgery." The singer says he's had foot problems for some time because of the shoes he had been wearing. Surgeons had to break some of the bones in his foot, shave them down, and since then, Bixler-Zavala has had to re-learn how to walk.

"We got sunk into a hole financially because of our drummer problems, and having to get a new drummer mid-tour when we were out with the Red Hot Chili Peppers," he continued, referring to the roster upheaval that eventually saw Thomas Pridgen filling the role. "We just started getting a lot of bad luck with it. We were kind of not allowed by Omar to speak its name while we were making the record, for fear of bad mojo."

After a while, when the guys' luck didn't improve, they decided to get rid of it. Rodriguez-Lopez buried the object and was sworn not to tell anyone in the band where he had hidden it.

"Because such a strange impact was left by using the board, we decided to make a record based on ... the stories we were getting from the things or spirits we were contacting," he continued. "The album is basically a sort of ... it's like the 'Ghostbusters,' when they want to catch a ghost, they throw out this little trap on the floor, and they open it. [The] record serves as a bunch of little traps, so when the record comes out, people will have those traps, and they can play the game and try to reverse the bad luck we've had come from it. It's our way of creating a little infernal machine, but we've reversed it, for good luck."

The bad mojo, along with "small details that are a little more private and embarrassing," derailed plans to release the album — which Bixler-Zavala called the "record that did not want to be born" — in September. Despite the bad luck the game wrought, the album's vinyl version will feature the band's own version of the same game, inside the gatefold — so now, everyone can play.

And what does Bedlam — which includes "Aberinkula," "Metatron," "Ilyena," "Tourniquet Man" and more — sound like? The singer said longtime fans can expect typical Volta on this new record — epic songs that run well over 10 minutes, huge guitars (some provided by Chili Pepper John Frusciante), and loads of experimental instrumentation.

"It goes in different directions and has different moods, but for new people who know nothing about us, there are those shorter songs, and I think that might appeal to some people," he said. "It was never done in any sort of, 'Let's get on the radio' intention, but it does help, I guess. The whole album is completely interactive for the listener, and there's something concrete to sink your teeth into. There is a story there, even if it is vague sometimes."

The band plans to hit the road in support of Bedlam early next year and has a New Year's Eve gig planned for San Francisco's Bill Graham Civic Auditorium — for the bash, the Mars Volta are requiring fans to wear costumes. Bixler-Zavala said fans can also expect the album's first single, "Wax Simulacra," soon. Originally, the label wanted to introduce the LP with the track "Goliath," but the band wouldn't have it.

" 'Goliath' is about nine, 10 minutes long, and the end of it is so interesting, we didn't really want it to be used as a single," he said. "It kept getting butchered and came off really bad. If you edit our songs and you take away all the extra stuff, then that song might've just sounded like Wolfmother — and we never want to compete with that. They're their own thing, and we're our own thing."
"Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art." - Andy Warhol


Skeleton FilmWorks

Stefen

No Jon Theodore and there is no Mars Volta. He's the only reason to listen to this cheezy band.
Falling in love is the greatest joy in life. Followed closely by sneaking into a gated community late at night and firing a gun into the air.

Gamblour.

Quote from: Stefen on November 05, 2007, 11:24:40 AM
No Jon Theodore and there is no Mars Volta. He's the only reason to listen to this cheezy band.

Agreed. Can't imagine what it will sound like without him. Don't want to know, really.
WWPTAD?

Pedro

Quote from: Gamblour. on November 05, 2007, 04:06:51 PM
Quote from: Stefen on November 05, 2007, 11:24:40 AM
No Jon Theodore and there is no Mars Volta. He's the only reason to listen to this cheezy band.

Agreed. Can't imagine what it will sound like without him. Don't want to know, really.

Can't say yet, but my guess is that the songwriting will still suck.

MacGuffin

Mars Volta Pride Themselves On Being Difficult, Prepare For Onset Of Bedlam
'We have the ability to attract and repel at the same time,' frontman Cedric Bixler-Zavala boasts. 'Otherwise, you're just going to be, like, this Neil Diamond act.'
By Chris Harris; MTV

One of the biggest criticisms of the Mars Volta — at least those waged against the band by people who can't even begin to comprehend what the Volta are all about — is that they're too "out there."

They have also been called "overly complicated," and some have even accused the band of trying too hard to be anomalous. After all, the Mars Volta's records aren't commentaries on unrequited love, like half of what's being churned out by the emo pack. They've tackled a variety of topics, like morphine abuse, failed abortion attempts, U.S. immigration and possessed nuns. Likely to stoke claims that the band's themes can be overwrought is the subject of its forthcoming LP, The Bedlam in Goliath (in stores January 29): a Ouija-like board game, discovered in Jerusalem by guitarist Omar Rodriguez-Lopez, that irrevocably altered their lives.

The criticism doesn't bother frontman Cedric Bixler-Zavala, who, along with Rodriguez-Lopez, left seminal punk experimentalists At the Drive-In to form the Volta.

"That just goes to show that people didn't understand us in the first place, and they had no business being there," Bixler-Zavala said. "It makes us feel normal when people think we're being too arty or whatever. ... I would feel weird if I wasn't able to be longwinded, or have information-overload on our songs.

"See, that's when I know we're on to something," he continued. "Even when fans don't like certain songs, I know that's good, because they probably want [the band's best-known song] 'The Widow' over and over again. So, I know we're doing something right, even if we can upset hard-core fans. We have the ability to attract and repel at the same time, which I think you should embrace. Otherwise, you're just going to be, like, this Neil Diamond act."

"The most common critique is that we're trying to be difficult," commented Rodriguez-Lopez. "And, it's like, 'Everyone's like that.' Who do you know that just has one mode, all the time? We go through all sorts of mood swings, and within an hour, within a day, you find yourself angry, happy, sad; you find yourself on halftime, you find yourself on full throttle. So, all of that goes into the music — that's our therapy; that's our fantasy land."

But the story behind Bedlam is no fantasy at all. It deals with the Ouija board, which the bandmembers dubbed the "Soothsayer" and say connected them with three different spirits: two women, and one very overbearing male.

"It's a classic story of a man speaking over the females, and the females looking for someone to have the courage to speak about what led them to the solitary confinement of the prison-like state of the talking board," said Bixler-Zavala. "The way I read into the poetry attached to [the board], we think the female spirits [were] telling us this classic story that is a modern story in Muslim society of 'honor killings.' All of the lyrics — actually, about 80 percent — came from these traditional poems we'd peeled off the board, and the lyrics are the best slogans, demands, and one-liners [the spirits] gave us."

It wasn't long before the members of the Mars Volta began to suspect the Soothsayer was something of a black cloud that hovered over them, and they even used elements of Santeria, an Afro-Caribbean religious tradition, to protect themselves from it.

"The male spirit in the board kept trying to sabotage us," said the singer, adding that the band's studio flooded twice, its gear was destroyed, and the engineer who was hired to oversee the studio process suffered a nervous breakdown and hijacked the studio tapes. "We had people go to his house to get them from him," Bixler-Zavala said.

Since the album will be spreading the spirits' messages, does the band worry that the Soothsayer's bad luck will infect the rest of the world? "I'm not afraid," Bixler-Zavala said, "because, to me, [the male spirit is] one of the many people who have said 'no' to me. Great — line up, take a number."

The one thing the Mars Volta are looking forward to this year is getting back on the road. They've just come out of their longest dry spell in 15 years, and all that time at home has got them feeling antsy. While they're not sure about plans for an American tour, the band hopes to hit "everywhere and anywhere" during the coming year, Bixler-Zavala said.

As a point of clarification, the singer and guitarist explained that the guys have no say in picking singles from their records — that's their label's choice. Most often, what happens is the label picks one of the band's epic, 10-minute numbers, and lops off a huge chunk of the song to make it radio-friendly — like with "The Widow," for example.

"We haven't cared in the past when they've butchered one of our songs, because essentially, they're making a trailer," said Rodriguez-Lopez. "We made our movie; you make your stupid trailer. And people will say, 'Oh, maybe that's a nice film,' and then they come, and maybe they walk out [when they realize] it's nothing like the trailer."
"Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art." - Andy Warhol


Skeleton FilmWorks

Stefen

The new album is terrible. Jon Theodore's presence is sorely missed. His percussion was the best thing about this band. Now it's just silly seeing these two midgets dancing around on stage like they're possesed while they play terrible music.

First two albums are really fantastic though.
Falling in love is the greatest joy in life. Followed closely by sneaking into a gated community late at night and firing a gun into the air.

Gamblour.

Yeah, I was talking to my friend (the only other person I know who listens to TMV). I was telling him that the first two albums are really, truly something innovative and amazing to hear, but now it's just sloppy sloppy. The new drummer isn't the worst part about the new album, the kid has some chops and he can really play, but he reduces their sound to Mike Portnoy sounding prog. It's the fact that Theodore was probably the only rational voice in the band (probably why he left), he really tied the room together. This new kid plays into the histrionics and absurdity of the "sound" they are "trying" to "create." It's unlistenable. Even on Meccamputecture, they had some sort of sound that was likable, if shrouded by ridiculously long streams of noise. Now it's entirely noise, their music doesn't make me feel anything but confused. Again, even Frances the Mute was on to something, in its experimentation.

Oh and by the way, all that crap about the Soothsayer in the article, whatever fellas. It's a Ouija board. It's fake. I feel like that's what their music is to me, if I try hard enough I get some meaning out of it, but then I step back and realize it was just me doing that. There's nothing here.
WWPTAD?