SABER, QUERER, OSAR Y CALLAR

The second part of Omar Rodriguez Lopez 2012 electronic music trilogy starts off being much more promising that the first album, 'Un Corazon de Nadie'. Indeed, it feels much more entertaining than both 'Un Corazon de Nadie' and 'Octopus Kool Aid', but it's still a very strange minialist recording.

Some interesting (yet strange and simple) keyboard work (alongside with nice little shifts and changes) is found on 'Gentle Umbrellas'. 'Spllbound' has a very dancey drums, it's rather a dance music track than any of experimental rock, whilst 'Fear Eats The Soul' and 'Decided?' start like acoustic ballads with lots of electronic distortion. 'Angel Hair' is another ballad song here, and it sounds like it was recorded on a bad dictophone, then more electronic treatments are coming.

Despite of being definitely not the best album from Omar Rodriguez-Lopez, it still has a bunch of worthy stuff that makes it one of his more interesting releases of past few years.

5/10

An electronic album from Omar Rodriguez-Lopez of THE MARS VOLTA. As with most of his solo albums, this bears little resemblance to that bands body of work. Nothing too groundbreaking is offered here. It starts interesting enough with "Home Lost" but quickly turns uninteresting to my musical taste. I have listeded to this a few times and have yet to make it all the way through in one sitting. I lsten to half and then at another time the other half. The final album cut, "Angel Hair" is also not bad but not enough to save the whole thing. 2 stars only

The electronic era continues with yet another vibey mood piece that puts more significance on the textures and vague bits of imagery mixed throughout rather than a more tangible sense of individual songwriting, this time feeling like a bit of a middle ground between the strange, but bright pop melodies of Octopus Kool Aid and the endlessly dark, murky atmosphere of Un corazón de nadie. The main point of interest here is the way the electronic instrumentation ends up feeling like a bit more of a backdrop to the other elements at play here rather than dominating the compositions in the past, with a far stronger emphasis on the interplay between the fuzzy vocal melodies and drum beats being notable. It's all pretty well played and leads to crafting a pretty mysterious vibe that's worth listening to if you really like that stuff, but I also found that with the exception of the very emotionally charged final track Angel Hair, nothing else here was really something that outright moved me in a way beyond simply finding it pretty cool. This is definitely the sort of album more for the fans than one that I'd ever really consider as a good point to start listening to Omar Rodriguez Lopez.