Basket 0

Votre commande est qualifié pour la livraison gratuite You are €85 away from free shipping.
Plus de produits disponibles à l'achat

Produits
Ajouter des notes de commande
Est-ce un cadeau?
Sous-total Gratuit
Voir le panier
hors taxes et frais de livraison

Votre panier est vide.

The Mars Volta - Tremulant EP [2024 Reissue]

€24,95
Format
L'article est en stock Dépêchez-vous ! Faible inventaire L'article est en rupture de stock L'article n'est pas disponible

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 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.

Tracklisting

Side A
1. Cut That City
2. Concertina

Side B
1. Eunuch Provocateur

Released 4th October 2024

Shipping & Delivery

Drift gladly ship all items Worldwide using Royal Mail Tracked®, FedEx and DHL services. There is a shipping calculator available in the basket. Read More

Click & Collect

Available on all orders from Drift. Select the Click & Collect option during the checkout process. Read More.

UK Free Shipping

We offer free delivery on orders of £85 and over, sent within mainland UK. To qualify for free delivery, your order will be sent as one dispatch. Read More.

Global Shipping & Tax

If you are based outside the UK and EU, all prices will appear without tax at the checkout. Drift is IOSS registered and collects tax on all EU orders at point of purchase. Read More.

Earn [points_amount] when you buy this item.

[{"variant_id":"49871655895324" , "metafield_value":""}]

The Mars Volta - Tremulant EP [2024 Reissue]

€24,95
                               
Votre commande est qualifié pour la livraison gratuite You are just €85 away from free UK shipping!

MUSIC A new homepage to help you find exactly what you're looking for...