Work hasn’t stopped behind the scenes here, just the posts about what has gone up recently. I am about to catch it up now. Our resident inventory overlord, The Soul Destroyer, has been sick as of late as well as the short Thanksgiving work week slowed things down recently, but he made quite a few pages before retreating back underneath our house that I am going to catch up on now.

I’m not even sure all of these are even restocks or new to the store, but they’ve all recently passed through by my desk for some reason, so here they are (and possibly again):

VINYL:

AFI – The Art of Drowning
AFI – Answer That And Stay Fashionable
Assholeparade – Embers
Avenged Sevenfold – Avenged Sevenfold
Avenged Sevenfold – City of Evil
Avenged Sevenfold – Waking The Fallen
Big D and the Kids Table, Brain Failure – Beijing to Boston
Bishop – Asylum
Boy Sets Fire – Live For Today
Dave Matthews Band – Big Whiskey and the Groogrux King
Dead Kennedys – Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables
Dead To Me – Cuban Ballerina
Dost, Andrew – Columbus
Druglords of the Avenues – Sing Songs
Gregory Alan Isakov – This Empty Northern Hemisphere
Hale, Mike – Lives Like Mine
Love Me Destroyer – The Things Around Us Burn
Mars Volta – Amputechture
Mars Volta, The – Bedlam in Goliath
Mars Volta, The – Is Anybody There?
Monikers – Wake Up
NOFX – 22 Songs That Weren’t Good Enought To Go On Our Other Records
NOFX – The Longest Line
Perfect Circle, A – Emotive
Perfect Circle, A – Thirteenth Step
Price, Chad – Smile Sweet Face
Re-Volts – Re-Volts
Silversun Pickups – Carnavas
Silversun Pickups – Swoon
Smashing Pumpkins – Siamese Dream
Swellers, The – My Everest
Various Artists – Glory Daze Soundtrack
Various Artists – Mallrats Soundtrack
Various Artists – New Tales To Tell Love and Rockets Tribute

DVD:

36 Crazyfists – Underneath a Northern Sky
Against Me – We’re Never Going Home
Between The Buried And Me – The Great Misdirect (CD and DVD combo)
Japanther – Don’t Trust Anyone Over 30
Propagandhi – Live From Occupied Territory
Tool – Toology

Mars Volta. Omar and Cedric produce something truly unique and original. They blend all the best parts of Rush and Prog with a trippy latin sensibility ala Carlos Castenada. Mind Blowingly good. I love these guys. Luckily I was able to snag a poster for a show they did in Portland.

Mars Volta Poster

This Mars Volta Poster available on Amazon and at ConcertPoster.org  Mars Volta Poster

the mars volta stormed through houston this past thursday, and i was there to catch their explosive live show; one that whittled down the free form jamming of past performances and made for an pure, elemental experience peppered with older material as well as frenzied takes of their newest material off their latest offering octahedron.

recap after the jump:

- sunbear

borrowing my co-blogger’s video camera to record songs for the mars volta’s show at houston’s verizon theater, i checked the battery life on the 2′ lcd and casually asked “how long will this let me record?”. “about an hour’s worth of video, so in mars volta time that’d be…. 2 songs”.

to label the mars volta’s live show as over-indulgent psychedelia, prone to extended bouts of prog-wankery capable of stretching an audience’s attention span to the point of disinterest would ordinarily prove accurate. but this last thursday’s show at houston’s verizon wireless theater revealed a more streamlined, efficient band; their material precision trimmed to pack the most punch; the expected 3 hours of vicious intensity crammed into an hour and a half set. this was a no-frills, bare-bones mars volta, and they were the better for it.

kicking off the night quite unexpectedly with “inertiatic esp” of their 2003 debut album de-loused in the comatorium, cedric bixler and co. seemed to be culling from their roots, material that had only been played rarely. the reaction was instantaneous: from the second ikey owen plinked out the song’s intro on his keyboard, houston knew it was in for treat. and just like that, from the humble, atmospheric overture that opened the show, the mars volta exploded into a fury of volatile rock, manic latin grooves and the showmanship of a band possessed.

the core duo of singer cedric bixler-zavala and guitarist omar rodriguez-lopez played off each other so smoothly, with such synchronization you’d swear the two were telepathic. their relationship extends back to their acclaimed 1993 band, at the drive-in. back then, their performances, reckless opiate-laced frenzies laid the foundation for the mars volta’s live show as it is today. though now playing completely sober and as focused as possible, bixler zavala retained his schizophrenic modus operandi: impulsive microphone swings, impromptu salsa dancing, donkey kicks. rodriguez-lopez on the other hand has evolved into a vehemently proficient guitarist. his time in at the drive-in found him not so much playing an instrument properly as he did creating dissonance: his guitar merely an accessory to his delirious salsa dancing. now a disciplined master of his craft, rodriguez-lopez plays with a skill that would rival that of any guitar virtuoso, his texturing and layering of effects adding to the overall effect of such atmospheric songs as “teflon” and “eunuch provocateur.

this isn’t to say that the other members of the mars volta are faceless and merely satellite players (an affliction any group involving bixler-zavala and redrigues-lopez is prone to). the “mars volta group” as they’re defined in the liner notes for the last three albums are indispensable, each member’s contribution adding to the tremendous sound that is the mars volta. the aforementioned keyboardist ikey owens looming over his keyboard like a faceless effigy, displaying a collected cool that offset the manic front-man. marcel rodriguez-lopez (younger brother to omar) was one talented multi-instumentalist, deftly moving from one latin-based instrument to the next, from maracas to the shekere to bongos. there were even times during “drunkship of lanterns” when he played all three succinctly. juan alderete brandished his solid bass lines for a solo into “the widow” and drummer thomas pridgen had only one setting; “blitz”. the band’s collective synergy and proficiency made for an immense experience where each element was integral to the overall effect of the mars volta.

the night’s setlist perfectly balanced the band’s volatile aggression with their ethereal, spacey material. the indulgent “viscera eyes” was immediately slowed to a crawl for the spectral effects and straightforwardness of “halo of nembutals” only to be brutally bombarded with the frenzied volley of “eunuch provocateur.” the lengthy jams, trippy guitar solos and progressive tendencies were left at bay, sharpening the mars volta’s aural attack into a concise effective atom bomb capable of not only a mind-blowing live show, but decimating the idea of what a progressive rock concert should be.

———————————————————
[setlist]

son et lumiere
inertiatic esp
goliath
cotopaxi
roulette dares (the haunt of)
viscera eyes
halo of nembutals
eunuch provocateur
ilyena
teflon
drunkship of lanterns
luciforms
the widow
wax simulacra

———————————————————

VIDEOS:

check the rest of the mars volta tour dates.

the mars volta on myspace

thanks for reading.

- sunbear

Lovely white vinyl.

The Mars Volta are ruining my life …

Because I can’t write about them without going on FOREVER.

Am 23. Januar diesen Jahres wird Omar Rodriguez-Lopez in Deutschland die Alben “Despair”, “Megaritual” und “Old Money” veröffentlichen. Dabei ist interessant, dass alle Titel des Albums “Despair” nach Filmen von Rainer Werner Fassbinder benannt sind. “Old Money” sollte ursprünglich die Fortsetzung zu “Amputechture” von The Mars Volta werden, jedoch ging Lopez andere musikalische Wege und veröffentlicht das ganze jetzt als Soloplatte. Auf Tour wird Lopez in folgenden Städten zu hören sein:

15.03. Berlin – Festsaal Kreuzberg

16.03. Hamburg – Uebel und Gefährlich

17.03. Köln – Gebäude 9

En halvhjärtad översättning från tyskan av signaturen “doormat” i The Comatorium. Vi får veta att det är påfrestande att jobba med Rick Rubin eftersom man är tvungen att kompromissa så mycket och slutprodukten inte låter som dom. En pik till De-Loused in the Comatorium-fanatiker alltså. En annan rolig grej är att man under gitarrsolona på The Bedlam in Goliath kan höra John Frusciante i högra kanalen och Omar i den vänstra. Spana även in bilden som består av foton som Cedric och Omar själva har tagit.

after joking about cedrics hair there is a quote from omar complaining about people who want rick rubin back as the producer.
he said: “these people just dont know what they’re talking about because to work with rubin causes too much compromisses AND THE PRODUCT DOES NOT SOUND LIKE….US (clear statement i think). instead of complaining they should tell rubin to produce records for musicans who make volta-ish music and then they could all live in a wonderful garden with beautiful flowers and stuff.”
next theme was the roll of mr. john frusciante in the band. omar said that you can hear john on the right and him(omar) on the left channel during the guitar solos on bedlam. omar tought him all solos and because john is on the right channel it sounds very atmospheric, dense and strange. he also said that on amputechture he was just lazy playing guitar and let john do all the work.
the last theme was the story behind bedlam (i will skip that part cause i think you all know it).
there is a very personal statement by cedric why they used that board: “it’s addictive.after years of taking drugs it was a more or less healthy way to have fun.although we’ve lost lots of friends because of drugs and we ask ourselfs ‘what if we could ask him a question now?’ that sort of curiosity let us play with that board.” (get in contact with jeremy??? – a bit sad)
then there are the well known facts of the killer goliath, the papers with the hebrew poems on them, the flooding, technical problems during production and the breakdown of that sound-engineer and of cause the burial of the board.
at the end there is another cool statement by omar: “frances the mute was a monster-record for me. i constantly had problems on a technical level. beside the technical level there was a new aspect with bedlam, in a spiritual, metaphysical and psychological view. things we imagined and things which were really there. it was like living in a nightmare. after the problems with frances i thought i could easily record every record.but then came this one.”

This piece was written for Read Write Poem’s Prompt #6: ‘Get Your Collaboration On’. I was supposed to be collaborating with ‘why paisley?’ (http://why-paisley.com/). She provided a picture for us both to work from. The plan was to later combine the two smaller works into a larger one. I wrote this epic without quite realising that it would make collaboration very difficult, especially in consideration of my partner’s style. Here is my contribution. The collaborated work will appear later. For those who care, it was inspired by Ezra Pound’s poem of the same name, alongside Something For Kate’s album ‘Echolalia’ and The Mars Volta’s album ‘Amputechture’. The picture we used to kick-start our work was pstoev’s ‘On The Road’, from deviantart. The link is http://pstoev.deviantart.com/art/on-the-road-71333147.

She spoke lines, and ministry,
And every arpeggio another stroke,
I set to work a celebration
for all who spake mine tongue.

The city walls seemed much less tall,
And caste-lines seemed to all but fall,
In dreams. And as we talked I found
A truth in breath, and lips, and sound
But as the traffic pressed around
I knew it could not be.
Left, she now.

Still to my geometric mind
Her truths are subdivided lines
And reds and greens and blues

Apollo did now rear his head
And granted leave my dreams. Relieved,
I took the time to breathe again
And drunk I deep the atmosphere
And heard once more that song which lay
In visions grand but far away
And could not stand the pain!

I’ll paint a glossolalia
And in its pretty voids you’ll stand
Unheard and undisturbed.

My breath and mind in stasis lay
Til nightfall came around.
And as I craved her presence she
Was nowhere to be found.
And in this world of walls and lines
Where loves and truths kiss dead goodbyes
I knew no voice would leave me be.

I’ll watch and wait for night’s reprieve
And in the silence,
Remember you on trains.

So now, I sit, and heed the trains,
And lose my Juliet in the chaos.”