BURKEPOST BLOG

Omar and Cedric released Octahedron in June, but I didn’t know until I made a rare trip to Amoeba the other day, getting a pittance for unwanted CDs.  If there was any fanfare for The Mars Volta’s fifth full-length album, I missed it.  So here’s a review with little interference.

Octahedron opens with a minute and 36 seconds of droning.  It makes me wonder if that’s why I haven’t heard of it.  Their soundscapes are known to dawdle.  But clean guitar starts slow and nice in a restrained repetition.  Cedric Bixler Zavala’s first line, “Do you remember how you wore that dress?” suggests we might be in for an album with coherent stories – maybe as unified as the first two, and less coded.  The next line reassures TMV fans that this one too will be dark and incomprehensible: “It slit my sight beneath the eyelids.”

Five minutes in, I’m making the funk face, because the drums have kicked into this ballad (Since We’ve Been Wrong) and now the bass is going places, leading, blooming out of early melodies. To me, composer Omar Rodriguez-López’s guitarwork has usually been the best part of The Mars Volta’s crescendos, so that sounds like growth.

Octahedron is a slower album, with exceptions.  The hard rock highlight is Track 6, Desperate Graves.  It has a mini-headbanging chorus, a rare guitar solo, and Cedric’s best use of his vocal range.  The dark imagery of cut wrists and cut wings don’t appeal to me (“When I breathe the heavens can’t hold me/And I can’t believe any more/The light brings/The highest execution/Show me the wings I must cut”), but it doesn’t prevent this from being a great song.  Melodies overpower meaning, in this case, and several times throughout the album.

The third track’s title, Halo of Nembutals, refers to drug for inducing sedation, hypnosis, coma, and death. “Hear my request to be disowned/Of this I ate/Communion shaped/Serpent rays in prism tail rainbows escape.”  Here, too, I’m singing along, enjoying the song, despite the numbing content. In the lapsed-Christian vocals of Luciforms, the protagonist doesn’t want heaven to exist, a tragedy of embracing a devil over angels.  Another of this albums many devils, in With Twilight as My Guide, lives in tunnels and has daughters in our protagonist’s heart.  So there’s lots of regret and lost faith, suffering and fear.  But at the end of the track, it’s beautiful and fragile, “Every body hang like dead leaves/Don’t you hurt these/Branches waiting.”

Teflon is politically-themed, bass-driven, math rock, with an almost-catchy refrain: “Let the wheels burn/Let the wheels burn/Stack the tires to the neck/With the body inside.”  Cedric invites you to consider cremation and killing hostages in the oval office.  Near the end of the song: “One driver in the motorcade is all it takes.”  Is he referring to Teflon Ron Reagan, or maybe a composite smooth president in a cruel world?  The sessions were recorded in August 2008.

I first tried dissecting the lyrics without reading interviews, and I was disappointed with the lack of unity or insight.  Then I read about Cedric’s inside jokes, sarcasm, and absurdity, and Omar’s justification that it’s better to celebrate and look for meaning in dark subconscious fragments than to be afraid of them.  That may be true, and contemplating impermanence is beneficial, and most of Cedric’s melodies may be moving, but the fetishization of darkness is eventually poisonous to consciousness.

Cotopaxi is supposed to be the hit, right?  The song is faster and louder, but it’s also more familiar, and Cedric is too shrill for too long.  Then again, Omar directed an awesome video for Cotopaxi, which makes me like it more.

Second to last, Copernicus is a boring lullaby. It does get more interesting nearly four minutes in, with programmed percussion and a variation in the vocals, then it’s back to a slow chorus that begs for its own end.  The last track, like the first, starts after about a minute-and-a-half drone.  Luciforms is at least a representative track to end with, given that once again, needlessly dark imagery fails to ruin otherwise great rock.

Instruments=9.1

Vocal melody=8.4

Words=4.6;  Angel/Devil Cheese=61%

Hard Rock=30%

Great songs= Desperate Graves, Since We’ve Been Wrong, With Twilight as My Guide.

Avoidable songs=Cotopaxi, Copernicus

Overall=8.08

Composed by Radiohead. Performed by The Interbeings – a virtual band consisting of Joe Lamattina on drums, Michael (henceforth Mikhail) Pessah on bass, and me on guitars and vocals. Don’t forget Lisa Lamattina, who did over-the-counter percussion and videography of Joe.

The visual style of this cover video is informed by Thich Nhat Hanh’s teaching that all things contain all other things. So I am you and we are both that lamp. Please enjoy while breathing in and breathing out.

RECKONER from Patrick Burke on Vimeo.

I shot my sections and those featuring Mikhail, and I edited it all together. Mikhail mastered the mixed audio.

This is a chat I had with Eve Aruguete about her lesbian kissing videos. Her website is reallesbiankiss.com but she also has had accounts on several video hosting sites. YouTube recently deleted her channel for violation of Terms, implying that lesbian kissing is pornographic or obscene.

Kissing Terms from Patrick Burke on Vimeo.

Thanks to Cactus Jimmy Nall for operating B-camera.

What’s that?  You want to know my favorite Sox?  Theo, Big Paparelli, Pap LeBon, Dusty Gazongas aka the Drizzle, Francoma, and Clay Buchholz.

Here’s a snapshot of my pops and me and Fenway during Daisuke’s first complete game shutout, against the Tigers in ’07.

Here’s a New York Times video I just worked on.

http://bit.ly/12WBf6

Zach Wise shot and cut it.  I was the sound guy and assistant editor.

http://bit.ly/12WBf6

We talked to so many interesting fans and heard so many amusing renditions of MJ’s songs.

http://bit.ly/12WBf6

We interviewed about 50 people.  As you can see, we only got a handful in there.  I’ll be cutting an audio collage in the next couple of days.  So keep checking in, please.

Did you click on the link yet?

http://bit.ly/12WBf6

I was too busy recording audio to take pictures, so all I have is these quick self-shots.

PCB in front of the MJ wall

This was Monday, the day before the memorial.  There were several hundred people there, lined up around the corner.  Audio collage forthcoming.

And here’s a technical synopsis from Zach, the NYT producer who really made this thing.

Also, I was psyched to see this new ending:

New ending makes pcb wicked happy.