The Mars Volta - Tremulant (Preorder 04/11/24)

The Mars Volta - Tremulant (Preorder 04/11/24)

Label: Clouds Hill -  - 4250795602545
Format: 12"
Country: UK
Released: 4th Oct 2024
Genre: Prog Rock
Style: Prog Rock

Description
Tremulant From the very beginning, The Mars Volta was conceived as more than simply a new vehicle for Omar
Rodriguez-Lopez and Cedric Bixler-Zavala. The group was to be a rebirth, a redrawing of their creative frontiers, a

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repudiation of the stylistic provincialism that had ultimately spelled the end of their previous band, At The Drive-In, a year
earlier. So, as The Mars Volta’s debut release, 2002’s Tremulant EP had much to accomplish within its three tracks and
19 minutes: to define the group’s ambitions and their possibilities, to sketch out a limitless horizon for their future
adventures, and to shake loose the macho following they’d accrued with At The Drive-In’s final, breakthrough LP
Relationship Of Command, the dudes in the moshpit who just wanted to slam-dance to post-hardcore riffs. Tremulant put
this uncompromising ethos into play from the very off, first track Cut That City opening with two minutes of amplifier hum,
synthesiser scree and drum-machine pulse. “That introduction was immediately going to weed out all the posers,” says
Cedric. The music that followed, meanwhile, announced The Mars Volta’s visionary new sound, an embryonic version of
everything that would follow. The fearless rhythms drew from the traditional Caribbean and Latin music Omar was raised
on, its staccato guitar riffs accompanied by Ikey Owens’ infernal organ stabs, Eva Gardner’s canny bass-lines and Jeremy
Michael Ward’s inventive sound manipulations, its frenetic, restless panic-rock given to exultant breakdowns, like Omar’s
beloved salsa. Cedric, meanwhile, was stretching beyond the fiery bark he’d established with At The Drive-In, singing
more than screaming, and singing often in Spanish. The centrepiece, Concertina, is more ballad than brawn, pushing
Cedric and band beyond any hitherto identified comfort zones. “It was the first time I was really trying to sing,” Cedric
remembers. “[Producer] Alex Newport would listen to me do a take, and just say, ‘No, do it again.’ There was no fudging
it, like in punk-rock. I just had to try again and again, harder and harder, until I nailed it. But I remember hearing the final
outcome, and being so excited by it.” Here was a group reinventing their musical lexicon in real-time, their grasp
exceeding their considerable reach, their sound unlike anything else happening within the underground scene they would
swiftly transcend. “To me, the EP was a combination of Throbbing Gristle, Mahavishnu Orchestra, King Crimson and
Bjork,” says Cedric, though even this eclectic clutch of references hardly does justice to Tremulant’s genre-emulsifying
sprawl, segueing from splenetic punk-salsa pell-mell to meditative, dubbed-out drum machine symphonies with unerring
confidence. More than just a portrait of the band in its germinal state, Tremulant captured a Mars Volta that would never
exist again, being their sole release with their original bassist. In addition to sculpting the group’s low-end, Eva – who’d
studied ethnomusicology at UCLA – aided the untutored Omar as he grappled with the complexities of musical theory,
and helped the group synthesise one of their guiding influences, the incendiary Afrobeat of Fela Kuti. “The EP is a
promise of what could have been,” says Omar, noting that Eunuch Provocateur and Cut That City possess a groove
unique within the group’s discography, “because Eva was so deep in the pocket.” By the time Tremulant was released –
on their own label, at their own expense, part of an ongoing effort on Omar’s part to prove what they could achieve under
their own steam – Gardner was gone, and The Mars Volta were about to undergo another crucial metamorphosis. And
while, in context of everything that followed, the Tremulant EP might seem like a dry run, a prologue, a pre-echo of what’s
to come, it remains an adventurous, confounding and brilliant release in its own right, signalling that The Mars Volta’s
unfolding quest would brook no limits and consider no compromises. Beyond this point, there be dragons – but for the
fearless, here was an opportunity to climb aboard and take flight.

Tracklist

Side A
1. Cut That City / 2. Concertina

Side B
1. Eunuch Provocateur