Send "Omar Rodriguez" Ringtones to your Cell 
| Pitchfork |
 Omar Rodriguez-Lopez makes most of his peers look like slackers. In addition to five albums with the Mars Volta, each a hyper-detailed slab of acid rock in their own right, the guy's released more than 20 solo albums and collaborations over the past seven years, ranging from meandering journeys through electronic ambience to noodling saxophone-driven fusion jams to frantic riff-heavy hard rock. On Telesterion you get a very large dose of all three modes. And yet, even as wide-ranging summary of Rodriguez-Lopez's last decade of activity, this compilation only offers a hint of the scope of his project.This is not necessarily a bad thing. Rodriguez-Lopez's creative outpouring has often felt from the outside like productivity-for-its-own sake rather than someone building a well-curated body of work. Like the Mars Volta's endless-seeming multi-part epics, going overboard is sort of the whole point with Rodriguez-Lopez's solo career, both in terms of the sheer number of records and their musical indulgences. This is grand and outlandish and virtuosic stuff, less about writing songs than locking into crazed and complicated grooves while everyone else (including the singer) wails overtop. The best of these records are still aimed squarely at the cult already wanting to hear Rodriguez-Lopez and his admittedly talented band of collaborators show off their chops, get deep in the pocket. Some of these records have even alienated fans, though, especially the ones that fully abandon the fractured funk of heavy 1970s jazz-rock (at which Rodriguez excels, even if it's a very minority interest among modern rock fans) for experimental sound-manipulation (which sometimes feel more like private sketches than anything the public might actually be interested in). So a compilation like Telesterion should be a much-needed chance to both edit out weaker stuff and allow curious Volta fans an easier in. Right? Well, yes and no. If it's easier to get to grips with than listening to a few dozen individual albums, Telesterion is still in keeping with dude's general mission in life. A vast and unwieldy thing, offering two and a half hours of sound to digest, it's in no way a user-friendly greatest hits. There are songs, even hooks, in this mass , but they're clearly not the main draw for artist or fans. Some tracks, like "Sex, Consolation for Misery", are little more than extended guitar solos, though if you've got a low tolerance for shameless displays of instrumental virtuosity then you're probably not the intended audience. The experiments, like "Deus Ex Machina", which sounds like recordings swiped from Latin American radio and subjected to all sorts of studio trickery, still make up a good percentage of Telesterion's running time....full text |
| Chartattack |
| Omar Rodriguez-Lopez is on a Zappa-esque pace in terms of career output, so his retrospective compilation album Telesterion — two double CDs clocking in at an epic two-and-a-half hours — is par for the course. The songs were culled from The Mars Volta guitarist's 25-album solo and collaborative career. As usual, they'll test the attention span. There's some terrific stuff here, but also plenty of material that probably wouldn't have made the final cut of most artists' albums. Telesterion — and Rodriguez Lopez's solo career — is made of proggy, sometimes jazzy psychedelic guitar and moody synth rock, and also dabbles in dub and Latin (mariachi) sounds. The guitarless "Polaridad" (Tychozorente, 2010) dishes the dub, while "Deus Ex Machina" (A Manual Dexterity, 2001) unleashes the Latin with distorted vocals provided by Rodriguez-Lopez's father. Songs like "Population Council's Wet Dream" (Old Money, 2008) — specifically the mind-burrowing guitar riffs — and the groovy, stress-relieving funk of "Melting Chariots" (The Apocalypse Inside Of An Orange, 2007) represent the terrific. And Ximena Sarinana Rivera provides Dido-like vocals on several cuts, including the soft guitar ballad "Viernes."...full text |
| Adequacy |
| With a solo catalog that spans not even 10 years yet boasts more than a dozen (and counting) albums of original material, it seemed sort of inevitable that songwriter and guitar demigod Omar Rodriguez Lopez would try his hand at tidying up more than 150 tracks worth of volatile experimental rock and whittling them down to a judicious collection of only 37 of his choicest cuts. So it is with Telesterion, Rodriguez Lopez’s first-ever attempt to bring some clarity and concision to a career defined by confounding songwriting, unorthodox performances, and breakneck diffusion. It’s a tough assignment to parse the work of any prolific artist, let alone one like Rodriguez Lopez, who, in addition to appearing on more than 50 individual releases since 1996, is not averse to eyebrow-raising song titles like “Elderly Pair Beaten with Hammer” and “Hands Tied to the Roots of a Hemorrhage.” Couple this with a fluency in the Spanish language and guitar theatrics that sound like the unholy union of Bill Frisell and Frank Zappa, and you’ve got an intimidating charge set before you. Telesterion does what it can to make sense of the chaos, but packaging almost 40 songs on a 2-disc compilation is still plenty antithetical to the succinctness of most greatest hits compilations; Omar Rodriguez Lopez Plays His Hits, this ain’t. Thankfully, the man makes his intentions a little more conspicuous, stating, “Everything I do is a celebration. The idea of this album is a place where people can get a general understanding of that ritual.” From this angle, Telesterion is a successful endeavor, though tunes with monikers like “Half Kleptos” and “Rapid Fire Tollbooth” don’t exactly beg for screams of fervid elation. Still though, if sifting through Rodriguez Lopez’s body of work – note for brooding note – isn’t in your game plan, this sinewy collection of heavy metal riffage and harrowing post-rock will get the message across just fine....full text |
Omar Rodriguez lyrics
|
| ||||