Omar Rodriguez-Lopez: Despair auf LP

Fans of The Mars Volta will undoubtedly be aware of Omar Rodriguez Lopez's visit to Israel in 2006, an event with great influence and repercussions on that band's 2008 album, The Bedlam in Goliath. Returning with a "talking board" which he presented as a gift to his songwriting partner, Cedric BixlerZavala, the pair soon found themselves at the center of a series of strange and somewhat negative phenomena resulting, as Rodriguez Lopez has insisted, from the presence of the board as well as the overwhleming darkness of his life during the post-Israel months. Prior to beginning the studio sessionsfor Bedlam..., Rodriguez Lopez recorded Despair, a nihilistic and disturbing meditation on his experiences in and around Jerusalem culled from field recordings and studio experimentation. A nightmarish pastiche of drones, noise, feedback, and unrecognizable audio hallucinations, Rodriguez Lopez has, appropriately, compared the experience of listening to the album as not unlike that of a "bad acid trip". Cryptic titles such as "Liebe Ist Kalter Als Der Tod" and "Angst Vor Der Angst" provide little clue for the non-German speaker of what the various compositions have in store, an intentional suggestion of the disorientation and anxiety housed within the record's grooves. Despair challenges the listener and no will no doubt be devisive amongst Volta fans.