OMAR RODRIGUEZ-LOPEZ & DAMO SUZUKI - PLEASE HEAT THIS EVENTUALLY

The first of two interesting amalgamations by Omar in 2007. This one, with Can's Damo Suzuki is a 25- minute piece of which a trimmed and vocal-less version was featured on the following full-length release. This is a good piece but it is way too long and Damo's vocals really don't help at all. Omar's solo albums have one of two characteristics: either they are varied and experimental works that didn't quite fit with the Volta's material, or they are a series of Volta-esque lines repeated over and over and over while each instrument gets a chance to solo several times, never really moving from where they started. This piece falls into the latter category. It's less of an incessant jam because of the lyrics, but it can be quite redundant. Damo's vocals are funny, even in a good way, but they are not something you want to hear often. Of course the individual riffs themselves are excellent, but they are just beaten to death by repetition. In this work's defense, some of the parts of this song's second half are quite cool and aren't given a place on the abridged instrumental version and they should have been. All in all, it's more worth your while to get Se Dice Bisonte, No Bùfalo, because it has the key parts of this piece, without the vocals and nine other good tracks. I would still give this a shot if you have the opportunity to hear it without paying for it - it's a cool track - but don't buy it in haste.

This is where Omar Rodriguez Lopez's solo work starts getting really interesting for me. While his previous efforts were unquestionably experimental and interesting in the way you could see the seeds being sown for some of The Mars Volta's work that was soon to follow, they'd often feel bloated and as if too many ideas were being tackled simultaneously without enough time to properly explore or expand upon some of them. In this regard, Please Heat this Eventually feels like the antithesis to a lot of this, instead just feeling like a tightly focused, yet insane piece of music, oh, and Damo Suzuki is here too! Really, at its core, not much actually happens in this ep, those few things that do are totally off the wall, but this still feels very tightly regimented in many respects. This is particularly true for the rhythm section, which stays almost entirely consistent from start to finish and acts as a backdrop to the awesome jam session ahead. I really love the way that the various instruments phase in and out to craft a cohesive, yet ever-shifting soundscape. I particularly love whenever the saxophone will come in and bring a distinct free jazz flavour to the table. Omar plays in top form here, leaning really heavily into his intense, frenetic grooves and simply not stopping, being a huge element of the pure fun energy that this album is comprised of. What really caught me off guard with all of this however, was the way Damo Suzuki complements this insanity so perfectly, really channelling his performance from Peking O and sounding completely unhinged as he's rambling and screaming total nonsense. Heavily underrated album in Omar's discography, definitely at least worth a listen.