Album: Cryptomnesia
Artist: El Grupo Nuevo de Omar Rodriguez Lopez
Genre: Progressive Rock
Year: 2009
Label: Rodriguez Lopez Productions
ATTENTION!: If you want to listen to me reading the review, go to the links section at the bottom of this post and look for the media player.
(Disclaimer 1: In the recorded version of this piece, I said that The Bedlam in Goliath was released last year. It was actually released two years ago now. Whoops.)
I briefly threw my lot in with The Mars Volta two years ago, around the time of their fourth album, The Bedlam in Goliath, and then later decided that I needed to think things through more before I declared my admiration for a band I’ve only known a couple minutes… Now I think about it, I should probably apply that theory to woman as well… but I digress. The Bedlam In Goliath effectively got me into The Mars Volta, as the album I had heard before that, Frances The Mute, was a bit too daunting with the 32 minute long suite that closed it. I don’t really know what it was now that made me feel so enamored by Bedlam. It’s a good album sure, but I feel I was a little too foaming at the mouth in my review of it. I blame this on a few things, my wish to piss off an ex-girlfriend, my misguided beliefs that I alone could topple Pitchfork (oh, the hubris) but largely, I think I was just being stupid. Still, I do own five Mars Volta albums and enjoy them on occasion. I also hold that Omar Rodríguez-López is a fascinating, if not always rewarding, musician. However, I promised myself that I would be more wary of Rodríguez-López and his band in the future.
Rodríguez-López is ridiculously, perhaps even, disgustingly prolific. Last year alone he released an album by The Mars Volta, five albums under his own name and this one by El Grupo Nuevo de Omar Rodriguez Lopez. Trying to keep up with the man is like trying to sprint after Usain Bolt, impossible. I don’t know what mad demons he made a pact with, but the blood on the parchment must have spelled out Workaholic. I found out about this album around the time I stumbled on Rodríguez-López’s Wikipedia page and read his impressive discography, but what lead me to the album was the involvement of one of my favorite drummers: the infamous Zach Hill. I remembered clearly stating once that The Mars Volta would be better with Zach Hill as their drummer, and this album seemed to me to be the heavens opening and blessing me with exactly that. Zach Hill balancing out Rodríguez-López? What could possibly go wrong?
“Sigh.”
I really, really should know better.
I usually don’t have to worry with Hill, all I have to know is that if he’s drumming, it’s going to be good. And the drumming is good; it’s the rest of the album that confuses the shit out of me. First of all, this album is under the band name El Grupo Nuevo de Omar Rodriguez Lopez, which is a mouthful to begin with, but really, it should be under the name The Mars Volta Light because three of the five band members are also of the Volta. The other two are Hill and former Hella member Jonathan Hischke on synth bass. If The Mars Volta is truly the collaboration between Omar Rodríguez-López and Cedric Bixler-Zavala then what’s the point of forming another band where the core of the music are the same two people? It just doesn’t make sense to me. Rodríguez-López writes all the music and Bixler-Zavala writes all the lyrics? Sound like the Volta to me. And they clearly are his lyrics; you can’t mistake that kind of surrealism for anyone else.
More problems. The album, rather than being a collection of stand alone songs, runs together into one 36-minute whole, with no real breaks in between tracks. More than that the songs on the tracks are difficult to locate due to the inclusion of bizarre samples, audio experiments and interludes, which makes the album seem even more schizophrenic. On top of this, I was wrong: Zach Hill doesn’t make The Mars Volta better: he just makes it busier. You’d think that having a smaller line-up would make for a less confuzzeled album, but somehow, these five musicians manage to take up just as much space as the entire Volta. There is effectively no room to breath on this album; it’s all claustrophobic explosions of Prog Rock bombast. Finally, this album represents a sort of failure to me. A great idea: Zach Hill and Rodríguez-López together on the same album, which was met by lousy execution.
To add to the already great confusion, is my final verdict on the album. I don’t hate it. I don’t like it very much, but I don’t hate it. Because, occasionally, the band will get their act together, kick out the bullshit, samples and gallons of pretentiousness and just play, and, despite being busy, it’s good. There are moments on this album where genius shines through, problem is that those moments, already few and far between, are hidden in a sea of samples, interludes and the aforementioned gallons of pretentiousness. It probably says something that my favorite moment on the album was when Bixler-Zavala starts screaming “I won’t get Tourettes if you won’t get Tourettes” over and over again. I don’t know exactly what that says, but it says something. In the end, the album is interesting, both in the good and bad sense of the word. I’ve done all I can, except one thing: Zach! Consult me next time before you lend your vast talents to a track called “Paper Cunts.”
Listen to me reading the review and a song from the album here:
Here's some links you can check out (if you dare:)
Myspace For Rodriguez Lopez Productions
Bizarre Band Website with Link to Purchase
What are your thoughts on "Octahedron"? It's an odd piece to compare with the rest of the material Rodriguez-Lopez flooded the world with this year.
ReplyDeleteI'd need to listen to it again to be sure, but I remember enjoying it considerably more than this. I'll get back to you on this.... eventually...
ReplyDeleteThats a great record - love it. Most important guitarist of our generation?
ReplyDelete