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Taken from SPIN (Jan 16, 2024)
Hear Unreleased Omar Rodriguez-Lopez LP, Is It the Clouds?
Ten-track album appears on Mars Volta member's new box set of solo material, Amor de Frances
by Ryan Reed
Omar Rodriguez-Lopez (Photo credit: Stefan Schmidt) |
Omar Rodriguez-Lopez, co-leader of experimental prog band the Mars Volta, recently announced a massive box set of his solo material, the 57-LP Amor de Frances. The career-spanning collection includes two unreleased albums-one of which, Is It the Clouds?, SPIN is premiering below in full.
The 10-track record-which features the first material he recorded in 2018, after "taking a big break from recording"-showcases the songwriter at his most compact, exploring shadowy art-pop and sparse acoustic balladry. In a statement, Rodriguez-Lopez says the music originated from a place of grief, though the final tone is a bit more nuanced than you might think.
"The record has a lot to do with the passing of my mother, but it is not as brutal as it would have been if I had done it back when she actually died," he says. "The sound of the album is pretty uniform, but the record has a bipolar feeling. That's the paradox that is on this record, you're losing the place where you came from, and while thinking that this will destroy you, exactly the opposite happen: You finally feel like a human being for the very first time. To have finally have this feeling was the last gift she gave me."
Clouds Hill |
Is It the Clouds? is available on Amor de Frances and as an upcoming standalone vinyl LP, out Friday (Jan. 19). Additional info and pre-orders are available at the Clouds Hill website.
The box set follows a flurry of Mars Volta news. In 2022, Rodriguez-Lopez and Cedric Bixler-Zavala released The Mars Volta, their first album under that name since 2012. They followed last year with Que Dios Te Maldiga Mi Corazon, a full acoustic reworking of the self-titled record. In October, Clouds Hill Films premiered Omar & Cedric: If This Ever Gets Weird, a documentary about the duo's decades-long creative bond.
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