Release Date: 29 November 2024
Format: EP Vinyl
Label: Clouds Hill
£16.99
The Mars Volta Tremulant Limited Vinyl EP
Overview:
Tremulant From the very beginning, The Mars Volta was conceived as more than simply a new vehicle for OmarRodriguez-Lopez and Cedric Bixler-Zavala. The group was to be a rebirth, a redrawing of their creative frontiers, arepudiation of the stylistic provincialism that had ultimately spelled the end of their previous band, At The Drive-In, a yearearlier. So, as The Mars Volta’s debut release, 2002’s Tremulant EP had much to accomplish within its three tracks and19 minutes: to define the group’s ambitions and their possibilities, to sketch out a limitless horizon for their futureadventures, and to shake loose the macho following they’d accrued with At The Drive-In’s final, breakthrough LPRelationship Of Command, the dudes in the moshpit who just wanted to slam-dance to post-hardcore riffs. Tremulant put
2this 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,” saysCedric. The music that followed, meanwhile, announced The Mars Volta’s visionary new sound, an embryonic version ofeverything that would follow. The fearless rhythms drew from the traditional Caribbean and Latin music Omar was raisedon, its staccato guitar riffs accompanied by Ikey Owens’ infernal organ stabs, Eva Gardner’s canny bass-lines and JeremyMichael Ward’s inventive sound manipulations, its frenetic, restless panic-rock given to exultant breakdowns, like Omar’sbeloved salsa. Cedric, meanwhile, was stretching beyond the fiery bark he’d established with At The Drive-In, singingmore than screaming, and singing often in Spanish. The centrepiece, Concertina, is more ballad than brawn, pushingCedric and band beyond any hitherto identified comfort zones. “It was the first time I was really trying to sing,” Cedricremembers. “[Producer] Alex Newport would listen to me do a take, and just say, ‘No, do it again.’ There was no fudgingit, like in punk-rock. I just had to try again and again, harder and harder, until I nailed it. But I remember hearing the finaloutcome, and being so excited by it.” Here was a group reinventing their musical lexicon in real-time, their graspexceeding their considerable reach, their sound unlike anything else happening within the underground scene they wouldswiftly transcend. “To me, the EP was a combination of Throbbing Gristle, Mahavishnu Orchestra, King Crimson andBjork,” says Cedric, though even this eclectic clutch of references hardly does justice to Tremulant’s genre-emulsifyingsprawl, segueing from splenetic punk-salsa pell-mell to meditative, dubbed-out drum machine symphonies with unerringconfidence. More than just a portrait of the band in its germinal state, Tremulant captured a Mars Volta that would neverexist again, being their sole release with their original bassist. In addition to sculpting the group’s low-end, Eva – who’dstudied 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.
Featured Tracks:
Side: 1
1 Cut That City - The Mars Volta
2 Concertina - The Mars Volta
Side: 2
1 Eunuch Provocateur - The Mars Volta
Release Date: 29 November 2024
Format: LP Triple Vinyl
Label: Clouds Hill
£29.99
Release Date: 29 November 2024
Format: LP Double Vinyl
Label: Cloud Hill
£29.99
Release Date: 29 November 2024
Format: LP Double Vinyl
Label: Clouds Hill
£27.99
Release Date: 03 April 2024
Format: 12inch Vinyl Single
Label: Universal
£35.00
