The Mars Volta

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The Mars Volta is an American musical group founded by Cedric Bixler-Zavala and Omar Rodriguez-Lopez. They are generally considered rock, with heavy punk, prog and Latin influences. They are known for their wild live shows, oblique lyrics and heavy reliance on ambient music to establish mood.

Contents

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History

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The beginning

Members of the band At the Drive-In, Cedric Bixler-Zavala and Omar Rodriguez-Lopez, were in DeFacto with audio technician Jeremy Michael Ward since the mid 90s. DeFacto included Cedric on drums, Omar on bass, and Jeremy with various loop, vocal, sound, and distortion effects - a composite of sounds, hinging squarely on tripped-out, instrumental dub. Though DeFacto started as a local band with a rock feel, they were rooted in the realm of dub reggae pioneers such as Lee Perry and Dr. Alimantado. The group also dabbled in electronica, Latin/salsa, and jazz, giving their sound a distinct, timeless quality. The band played local shows around their home town, El Paso, Texas, and released their first album How do you dub? You Fight for Dub. You plug Dub in. Eventually moving to Long Beach, California in 2000 the band added keyboardist Isaiah "Ikey" Owens. Ikey brought a distinct tone to DeFacto that provided a new popularity previously not received. In 2001, DeFacto released their second album, Megaton Shotblast on Gold Standard Laboratories, and received instant success. They were also members of the Group At the Drive-In, which established much of their fan base. DeFacto continued experimenting with new sounds after Omar and Cedric decided to end At the Drive-In (the rest of the band went on to form Sparta), Eva Gardner joined the band, becoming what is now The Mars Volta - a new project they envisioned would fulfill their creative desires. The initial lineup for their first public show at Chain Reaction in Anaheim, California was DeFacto plus Eva Gardner and Jon Theodore. Also, during 2001, the band recorded two songs with Alex Newport, becoming their first demo. They recorded three more tracks with Alex Newport, becoming the Tremulant EP, sparsely released in early 2002. Tremulant was a collection of three songs - Cut that City, Concertina, and Eunuch Provocateur. Stylistically, the EP was a fusion of prog rock, salsa, free improvisation and avant-garde.

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De-Loused in the Comatorium

Following the Tremulant EP, The Mars Volta continued touring and changing band members while preparing for De-Loused in the Comatorium, produced with Rick Rubin. Whereas Tremulant had no general theme (except the prophetic mentioning of its follow-up album), De-Loused was a unified work of speculative fiction that told the story from the first-person perspective of a drug-induced coma. Though lyrically obtuse, The Mars Volta stated in interviews that the album's protagonist is based on their late friend Julio Venegas, or "Cerpin Taxt", as mentioned in the story, who was in a coma several years prior to his awakening, in which he jumped from the Mesa Street overpass onto Interstate-10 in El Paso during afternoon rush-hour traffic. Venegas's death was also referenced in the At the Drive-In song "Embroglio" from their album "Acrobatic Tenement".

At the time of the recording the band did not have a bass player. Flea (renowned bassist of the Red Hot Chili Peppers) played bass on nine of the ten songs on the LP. De-Loused became both critically and commercially their biggest hit, eventually selling in excess of 500,000 copies despite next-to-no promotion, but featured on several critics' "Best of the Year" lists. The band later releases a limited-edition storybook version of the album, available by download from the Gold Standard Laboratories Web site. The book speaks of Cerpin Taxt (sometimes referred to as the album/story's "hero") and his suicide.

While on tour with the Red Hot Chili Peppers in support of their album, The Mars Volta's sound manipulator and contributing lyricist, Jeremy Ward, was found dead of a drug overdose. The band cancelled the tour's second leg and the first single from De-Loused was later dedicated to Ward.

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Frances the Mute

As the band resumed touring De-Loused, they added Juan Alderete on bass and Marcel Rodriguez-Lopez (brother of Omar) on percussion. Work began on their second album in 2004.

In 2005, the band released their second full-length album Frances the Mute. The album was inspired by late sound technician Jeremy Ward, who found a diary in a car he reposessed while working as a repo-man. Each track of the album is loosely based on characters described within the diary.

Frances became an even bigger commercial hit than De-Loused, moving 123,000 copies in its first week and debuting at number four on the Billboard album charts, largely because "The Widow" received a considerable amount of radio air-play. Reviews of Frances were polarized; Rolling Stone called it "a feverish and baroque search for self that conjures up the same majesty and gravity as Led Zeppelin three decades before," while Pitchfork Media called it "a homogeneous shitheap of stream-of-consciousness turgidity." "L'Via L'Viaquez" was later released as a single, stripped down from its original 12-minute length to five minutes.

Perhaps most incredible about the album is Omar's enormous involvement in its creation. He wrote all the instrumental parts (guitar, keyboard, vocal melodies, and drum lines with help from Theodore) as well as arranging and producing the session himself. He used a method that film directors such as Woody Allen used to invoke great performances from bandmates: refusing to let the other members hear each other's parts, or the context of their own part, thereby forcing them to play each part as if it's a self-sufficient song. This is not any indication that the other members of the band lack anything musically or creatively - instead, quite the contrary, as the musicians recorded to the pulse of a metronome.

Omar's production clearly demonstrate a command of both the traditional recording techniques (the overall sound is rich and well-mixed) and experimental studio "whizzery," pioneered by such artists as Brian Eno and Nigel Godrich.

Mid-way through their headlining U.S. tour, former At the Drive-In member Paul Hinojos joined The Mars Volta and left Sparta, claiming: "My time with Sparta has run its course, and simply wasn't fun anymore." He is now their 'Sound-Manipulator,' previously held by the late Ward. Hinojos had also toured with The Mars Volta in 2003.

The band toured the summer of 2005 with System of a Down in support of the album and are organized a line up for the All Tomorrow's Parties festival[1], titled A Nightmare Before Christmas.

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Currently

A new full-length live album named Scabdates was released on November 8th, 2005.

As of 2006, The Mars Volta has been incorporating the song, Frances the Mute, into their sets.

The band is in the process of recording their third album. John Frusciante is said to be involved once again, and this time in a much larger capacity.

"An excerpt of a recent interview with Cedric Bixler-Zavala reveals more details on John's work with the Mars Volta on their next record," according to www.frusciante.net.

"Chili Peppers fans will be excited to learn that guitarist John Frusciante has again been working with the band. 'Since Omar is producing it and recording it,' Cedric said, "he taught Frusciante all the new songs and Frusciante tracked guitars for us so Omar could sit back and listen to the songs objectively. It's great that he wants to help us and do that'."

In addition, a remix album is in the works.

Latest news of the band is they are going on tour to open for the Red Hot Chili Peppers in a late Summer/Fall tour of 2006

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Etymology and Trivia

Cedric Bixler stated in an interview: "The Volta is taken from a Federico Fellini book about his films, what he characterizes as a changing of scene, a new scene to him is called Volta. Y'know, changing of time and the changeover. And Mars, we're just fascinated by science-fiction so and it's something that ultimately looked as in anything I write, its meaning is always up to the listener. As the way we write songs and words, if it looks great on paper then to us it's like painting, so if it looks good meaning the second then people usually have a better interpretation than we ever would." Additionally, Omar has stated that Mars is a reference to the Roman god of war. The is used to disambiguate the band from a group of European Techno artists that previously took the name "Mars Volta".

The music sample that The Mars Volta use to introduce their live shows is the title theme to the film A Fistful of Dollars, composed by Ennio Morricone. The band had also introduced their earlier live shows with the theme from A Clockwork Orange. The group also has a habit of playing the Doctor Who theme at the end of concerts over the PA system.

The backwards vocals at the end of "Eunuch Provocateur" are the lyrics from the song "Itsy Bitsy Spider". Other backwards vocals in the same song can be heard saying "did mommy or daddy ever have to spank you?". These samples come from an old vinyl the band used that contained children's songs.

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Members

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Current

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Previous

Sound Manipulator

Bassists

  • Eva Gardner - Bass (2001-2002)
  • Ralph Jasso - Bass (2002)
  • Flea (Michael Balzary) - Bass (2003) (Bass Guitarist on De-Loused in the Comatorium)
  • Jason Lader - Bass (2003)

Drummers

Keyboards

  • Linda Good - Keyboard (2002)
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Discography

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Studio albums

De-Loused in the Comatorium
<center>(June 24, 2003)
<center>Strummer Recordings/Universal
<center>#40 U.K.
Frances the Mute
<center>(March 1, 2005)
<center>Strummer Recordings/Universal
<center>#4 U.S., #23 U.K., #9 Aust.
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EPs

Tremulant EP
<center>(April 2, 2002)
<center>Gold Standard Laboratories
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Live

Live EP
<center>(December 16, 2003)
<center>(limited edition)
<center>Gold Standard Laboratories/Strummer Recordings/Universal
Scabdates
<center>(November 8, 2005)
<center>Gold Standard Laboratories/Strummer Recordings/Universal
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Compilations

A Missing Chromosome
<center>(July 12, 2005)
b-sides and unreleased tracks compilation - distributed only to radio stations
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Singles

Other

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The Mars Volta Group

According to the band's official website and the sleevenotes of Scabdates, there are 14 more people that are a part of "The Mars Volta Group". It is currently unclear the specific roles of the following people, but they all play some part in coordinating The Mars Volta's live shows. The following are listed below. These people make up the touring group. (Tour Managers, Production Managers, Guitar Techs, Drums Techs, Lighting Directors, Security, Front of House Engineers, Monitor Engineers, and Recording Engineers)

"The Mars Volta Group":

  • Henry Trejo
  • Amery 'Awol' Smith
  • Jesse Isaacs
  • Jerry Riccardi
  • Joe Paul Slaby
  • Dan Hadley
  • Shaun Sebastian
  • Keith Mitchell
  • Jonathan Debaun - Recording Engineer
  • Greg Nelson
  • Steve Taylor
  • Lalo Medina - Tour Manager
  • Paul Drake
  • Edward Parker

(the current line-up of the band is also a part of "The Mars Volta Group")

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External links

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Official Sites

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Fan sites

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Online reviews

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