OMAR RODRIGUEZ LOPEZ & JOHN FRUSCIANTE

This brief collaboration between Omar Rodriguez-Lopez of The Mars Volta and John Frusciante of the Red Hot Chili Peppers is a drowsy and occasionally interesting affair. The first track, "4:17 am," possesses a pleasant clean backing rhythm, but everything on top of it sounds like it was recorded in my grandma's bathroom. It's experimental guitar producing a variety of sounds, but it is presented more like a wrecked demo. "0=2," on the other hand, while mathematically questionable, involves a finger-picked acoustic guitar with a light electric guitar providing additional themes and variations. "LOE" begins with a guitar swamped in delay and wow and flutter. Other guitars join over electronic percussion. It ends with a repetitive, distorted guitar riff. One of the more interesting compositions, "ZIM" uses multiple guitars fed through a variety of (mostly warbling) effects, but none of that studio alchemy gets in the way of a clear melody, rhythm, and direction. "VTA" is quite a subdued piece, with more synthetic tones and sleepy guitars, which soon disintegrates into a mess of noisy underwater sounds. "0" is a more conventional guitar instrumental, and more similar to the music of the Red Hot Chili Peppers. "5:45" picks up where the first track left off. I wonder if this duo began recording at 4:17am and finished at 5:45am- a short, almost ninety-minute session of just whatever they came up with. That would explain a lot.

Omar Rodriguez-Lopez is well-known as musician, releasing lot of solo albums besides his main work in The Mars Volta. Lot of solo albums of very different quality. Some of them are really excellent! Another are just blueprints, some jamming or just recorded rehearsals.

Unhappily, this, new one, is more of second category. Shortly speaking, music you can find there, is some raw jamming, some rehearsal moments and raw melodies blueprints, recorded during Omar session with regular collaborator RHCPguitarist John Frusciante. From sound and music quality it is obvious, that this recordings was made at garage conditions and possibly on portable recorder. Sound is plane, mix is terrible, instrumental lines are below any critics.

OK, possibly, main value of this release is some musical ideas demonstrated in very primitive form. It could be interesting for some extra-heavy fans of both guitarists. I can't imagine someone else, who could listen it with interest. Not because the music is bad. Just because there generally is no music at all. Some guitars sound illustrations, short sketches of possible future songs, some sound soundscapes. Nothing that could attract even dedicated (music) lover.

Again, this release is free, distributing from Omar's site, so possibly it could be a nice small present for team of extremely dedicated fans.

For an album that's a collaboration between two great and often very intense guitarists, the sound explored here is something that I really didn't expect to hear by any means, even if I have no complaints about it at the end of the day. Rather than something more akin to a fast paced jam session between Omar Rodriguez Lopez and John Frusciante, what we get here is an extremely subtle, subdued experience that shows both musicians playing off each other in a variety of interesting ways while synths and strange effects are being applied to add further texture to the album. As a whole this is actually a really interesting album in ways that aren't typically explored in your typical Omar album, focusing heavily on a sense of hypnotic repetition where the small variations of a core idea are presented to the listener, with understanding these minor, minimalistic progressions being the main draw and seeing how it all interacts with these background effects that feel almost detached from the core compositions in many cases, but occasionally end up phasing in and perfectly weaving in with all the other scattered elements going on. Definitely not an album that I'd consider to be representative of the sound of either guitarist that plays here, but I don't really see that as a bad thing especially when what's done here feels as interesting and engaging as it does. A soothing, rewarding experience that has a lot more to offer than it might at first seem.