The Mars Volta - Frances The Mute
September 13th 2008 14:57
Ok so sorry it’s been a while. I’ve been busier than a one legged man in an ass whooping competition but don’t worry I’m going to get back into the reviews. In my downtime I’ve come up with an excellent selection of music that’s sure to tantalize your aural senses. I promise the new reviews will be much easier on the eyes too, since I’m now equipped with a flash new version of Microsoft Office that actually has a spell check on it.
So to kick things off again, I’ve chosen an album that’s sure not going to be everyone’s cup of tea. But if you really take the time to sit back and absorb the CD, you’ll come to realize that Frances The Mute by The Mars Volta is truly a spectacular album. The album is based on a diary found by former band member Jeremy Ward (Ward passed in 03’ from a heroin overdose). The diary detailed an orphans search for his biological parents and a collection of people who may have been able to help, subsequently some of the names found in the diary also make up the track listing for the album.
Ok so now that the history is out of the way let’s get into it. Frances The Mute is a chaotic beast of exhilarating transgression, time signatures that quite simply shouldn’t exist, multi lingual lyrics and surgically deconstructed frenzied guitars. It may seem like a lot to take in, but that’s because it is. At only five tracks and a run time of over 75 minutes it’s one hell of an ambitious album that really shows no compromise.
The opening track Cygnus.. Vismond Cygnus is possibly the closest thing I’ve ever heard to musical schizophrenia. Jumping from quiet acoustic guitars to a fusion of funk, jazz and rock only to break down and be reborn into a 29/16 time signature jazz-fusion crescendo and fades away again into a bombardment of ambience. Not all the tracks are like this though, each has it’s own unique identity and sound varying from the haunting space western ballad that is Miranda That Ghost Just Isn’t Holy Anymore to the epic jazz odyssey Cassandra Gemini. Each track fits together cohesively like a chapter in a narrative, and thus so the album benefits from being listened to from start to finish.
If you haven’t heard Frances The Mute before, check it out and prepare to visit a progressive aural soundscape unlike any other. It’s like a madman on acid is conducting the band except he knows exactly what he’s doing and so does the band. It’s truly epic.
So to kick things off again, I’ve chosen an album that’s sure not going to be everyone’s cup of tea. But if you really take the time to sit back and absorb the CD, you’ll come to realize that Frances The Mute by The Mars Volta is truly a spectacular album. The album is based on a diary found by former band member Jeremy Ward (Ward passed in 03’ from a heroin overdose). The diary detailed an orphans search for his biological parents and a collection of people who may have been able to help, subsequently some of the names found in the diary also make up the track listing for the album.
Ok so now that the history is out of the way let’s get into it. Frances The Mute is a chaotic beast of exhilarating transgression, time signatures that quite simply shouldn’t exist, multi lingual lyrics and surgically deconstructed frenzied guitars. It may seem like a lot to take in, but that’s because it is. At only five tracks and a run time of over 75 minutes it’s one hell of an ambitious album that really shows no compromise.
The opening track Cygnus.. Vismond Cygnus is possibly the closest thing I’ve ever heard to musical schizophrenia. Jumping from quiet acoustic guitars to a fusion of funk, jazz and rock only to break down and be reborn into a 29/16 time signature jazz-fusion crescendo and fades away again into a bombardment of ambience. Not all the tracks are like this though, each has it’s own unique identity and sound varying from the haunting space western ballad that is Miranda That Ghost Just Isn’t Holy Anymore to the epic jazz odyssey Cassandra Gemini. Each track fits together cohesively like a chapter in a narrative, and thus so the album benefits from being listened to from start to finish.
If you haven’t heard Frances The Mute before, check it out and prepare to visit a progressive aural soundscape unlike any other. It’s like a madman on acid is conducting the band except he knows exactly what he’s doing and so does the band. It’s truly epic.
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Comment by Daniel Mason
This one still remains their greatest release, in my opinion. Nice review. You're starting to improve that vocabulary. (There's an OZ reference in there somewhere.)
Comment by Geoff Egan
Noise Fanatic