TREMULANT EP

When this first came out back in 2002 it must have seemed like a tantalising harbinger of what was to come. After all, At The Drive In's main men Omar and Cedric had walked out on their own creation to put together the Mars Volta. And I can imagine that if I'd been following developments at the time, I might have become quite fond of this little record.

Unfortunately, I've come to the Tremulant EP as a committed fan of TMV who already had De-Loused and Frances in his pocket, and as such, it really doesn't offer me much. The trio of songs Cut That City (which has the odd passage of sounding just like Rage Against The Machine), the mellow Concertina (a beautiful dreamy baroque ballad that explodes from time to time and which would have been one of the best songs on De-Loused) and the hard-funk epic Eunuch Provaceteur (which also has its moments) all feature ideas that would be developed more successfully on the band's full-length debut De-Loused In The Comatorium.

I will say that Concertina is one of my favourite TMV songs now, but I can't in all honesty describe this as anything more than a collector's curiousity. It occupies an unusual position in that only established fans of the group would really want it and yet it will definitely come as a deja vu sort of disappointment to most who have already heard the first two albums. I certainly wouldn't recommend that proggers looking to check out TMW begin here (De-Loused is my preferred suggestion). ... 39% on the MPV scale