Omar Rodriguez-Lopez – Se Dice Bisonte, No Bufalo

Did someone say free-jazz was dead? Sleeping? Well, ok, it’s not like I’ve actually heard anyone say that, but whatever happened to freak-out music?

Sure, we are in an age of musical fusion – genre-busting minstrels abound in both the mainstream and out on the margins, but for the most part I yawn with boredom. Perhaps I am suffering musical overload, or I am just not on the pulse of what’s happening above and below ground (I’m a bit obsessed with 1960s free-jazz and oddball exotica at the moment), or I could just be a little slow to grasp things. Hell, I am still trying to absorb the more interesting work of Beck and the Beastie Boys from the 1990s.

Apart from various hardcore and folk scenes tethered to Reagan-era politics, the 1980s were pretty much a write-off for me.

The myriad of jam-bands, disco-groove, and hip-hop-crossover outfits of the 1990s did their best to push the envelope, but the mass-media marketplace wasn’t particularly interested in promoting them, and the best of it surfaced during the recession years, which made the development of sustainable music “scenes” difficult.

I took a break from my new exotica fetish just long enough to go back into my library and pull out some MC 900 FT. Jesus. It was good timing. Mark Griffin’s work reminded me of a road that didn’t see enough traffic in the 1990s – a road where the music is made by serious musicians (Griffin’s trumpet playing has been compared to Miles Davis) who don’t take themselves too seriously. You can catch MC 900 FT. Jesus spinning wax on Thursdays at Lee Harvey’s in Dallas, Texas.

By the time we launched into the 21st century, I had pretty much given up on quirky, open-ended, exploratory music.

Then along came bands like System of a Down and The Mars Volta with their mosh of hardcore and world music – time signatures tossed around like confetti at an old-time wedding. Somehow System of a Down made it onto the radio (not for long mind you), but The Mars Volta remained in the margins, albeit with a huge cult following.

According to Matt Fink at AMG, “[Mars Volta] wasted little time branching out into elements of hardcore, psychedelic rock, and free jazz … The Mars Volta immediately impressed with their willingness to eschew conventional logic and push themselves into new artistic directions instead of opting for the more marketable sounds.”

Marketable sounds? If you are a musician who sits around thinking “will this sell?”, I’d say pick a new career. Thanks to the stranglehold of a vertically-integrated corporate media hegemony, the likelihood of making a living as a musician now is so slim that marketing should be the last thing on your mind when you wake up in the morning. Make the music first, then worry about how you are going to make a living.

While my slow-poke senses have been trying to catch up to the likes of bands like System of a Down and The Mars Volta, along comes “Se Dice Bisonte, No Bufalo“, the new album by Omar Rodriguez-Lopez on the Gold Standard Labs label.

I only happened to bump into it accidentally while surfing around for some live Mars Volta to download, but I know I had seen it on sale at HMV, so it is out there. Hopefully it is making waves in the mind of some 16-year old musician somewhere.

You can enjoy this free (and tasty) MP3 track: Boiling Death Request a Body to Rest Its Head On from goldstandardlabs.com. Since I know you will be impressed, you can head over here to buy the CD.

OMAR RODRIGUEZ LOPEZ
Se Dice Bisonte, No Bufalo

Jon DeBaun, Cedric Bixler Zavala (vocals)
John Frusciante (guitars)
Money Mark Ramos Nishita, Marcel Rodriguez Lopez (Clavinet) Juan Alderete De La Pena, Omar (bass guitar) Jon Theodore (drums) Adrian Terrazas Gonzales (percussion)

One of four albums written and recorded by Omar Rodriguez-Lopez whilst living in Amsterdam in 2005, Se Dice Bisonte, No Bufalo was conceived simultaneously to The Mars Volta’s Amputechture and Omar’s soundtrack to the forthcoming Jorge Hernandez film, El Bufalo de la Noche. Consisting of 3 vocal tracks and 7 instrumentals, the album includes the original studio version of the song “Please Heat This Eventually” (without the vocals of Damo Suzuki). Another song, “Rapid Fire Tollbooth”, has been a feature of The Mars Volta’s live set for the past few months. Omar has expressed his intentions for TMV to rework the track on the upcoming full-length follow-up to 2006’s Amputechture. Omar performs the majority of the compositions solo, although the album also includes performances by Cedric Bixler-Zavala, Marcel Rodriguez-Lopez, Juan Alderete de la Pena, Adrian Terrazas-Gonzales, and Money Mark Ramos-Nishita. Album art is provided by longtime collaborator Damon Locks of THE ETERNALS.