DESPAIR

Being a big fan of The Mars Volta, naturally I'd like to hear all of Omar Rodriguez-Lopez's solo albums and side projects as well. So I picked this up very recently and gave it a spin. Firstly, can I say that I have no problem with artists and musicians who decide to carry out full-on experiments. Some of the finest bands in the history of rock and prog have had experimental and/or ambient side projects to complement their more structured or melodic works. But in doing so it's perhaps necessary to accept that sometimes the experiment will work, and other times it just won't. This is a case in point where the experiment falls short, at least from this listener's point of view. That doesn't make it a failure - if this was what ORL intended then it can't be, and to some listeners (probably not many on this site though) it could be judged a success. What we have, for the duration of the lp, is a low-key ambient drone somewhere in the distant background, with irregular, skittering drumbeats from a drum machine superimposed on top. And that's about it.

I bought this on vinyl and my advice would be, if you're going to buy this you might be better off with the CD. The reason I say this is that for most of the record I thought the needle was stuck, such was the level of endless repetition. But I resisted the temptation to get up and give the needle a gentle push and sure enough, it wasn't stuck at all. It's just that this is what this album sounds like, all the way through. Although perhaps even with the CD you might start to think your CD player's malfunctioning. But it's not. And by the way, my vinyl copy is on white vinyl, and in my experience any coloured vinyl tends to be more prone to sticking than regular black vinyl - but the needle didn't stick at all.

Fans of extreme left-field ambient/electronica might get into this, but it's certainly not prog. A real disappointment for me, and I can't see myself listening to this one too often, but it won't stop me from buying other ORL releases. In fact, I also bought 'Megaritual' this week and although I haven't yet posted a review of it on this site, it consists of some extremely well played guitar and sounds not unlike the Mars Volta but without vocals - it's a superb album which I'd recommend very highly. If you're going to buy any recent ORL releases, avoid 'Despair' and go for 'Megaritual' instead - probably as good as 'Apocalypse...' and coming close to TMV's albums in terms of quality.

When Omar was drunk one day, he decided that creating this monster can be quite a good idea. It is not, sadly, but I can understand that year 2k9 wasn't completely fine for everyone. Or maybe only certain months, period of weeks, because some his other releases from the same year sounds good, or even great.

This is dark, but dark as void. Cold, but as empty tomb, where you're not enjoying the fun, because it fails to terrify you. This ain't progression, nor experimentation, because this is just circling around one tone. Let me state that all tracks sounds basically the same. And I don't mean that they are let's say all symphonic, or all upbeat (like "the same" when talking about other albums), but they're alike. There's no difference between them and it's quite sad. This album doesn't provide anything interesting, not even for fans. Who would enjoy this after all, except those who likes to suffer from terrible sound. Again, I don't mean terrible as in Extreme/Death Metal, because EDM can be quite interesting and some may see perfection in it, something that even I can understand (and sometimes see myself). But this is blasphemy. Trap for bold listeners, who venture to explore new realms of prog, only to find this ugly, abandoned, one eyed, filled with body tumors and crippled child that haunts waters of "Prog" label it carry because of other albums.

1(-), because this is absolute opposite of what I can like. Or enjoy. Or consider interesting. Or Proggy. Or even listenable.

Another noise based album from ORL and this one is definitely more palatable to me than his collaboration with Jeremy Michael Ward, even if I still don't think that his attempts at noise are that engaging. The main reason for this is the approach taken with Despair feels far more focus on crafting atmosphere rather than the more abstract sensibilities demonstrated with Jeremy Michael Ward. The dark, ominous atmosphere this has ends up making it a more tolerable listen to be put in the background and one that feels considerably more focused and cohesive as a whole experience with less instances of these disruptive eruptions of feedback that do nothing but kill what little flow there is. I definitely think there's something to this album, as there are moments of genuinely compelling atmosphere throughout, but on the whole this is just way too meandering to justify its length and is another noise experiment that doesn't fully pan out.