Radical Research Podcast

A journey through a wilderness of Nembutals and Luciforms, The Mars Volta’s fifth album offers up a radical departure from the itinerant mania of The Bedlam in Goliath, to explore the inscrutable, dream-like vistas of the interior mind. Though songs like “Teflon” and “Cotopaxi” puncture the reverie with their rhythmic brawn, Octahedron is governed by an acquiescence to the spacious, liminal dimensions of the dream-state. Festooned with the surrealist art of Jeff Jordan, Octahedron travels the paths of psychic borders and the distorted geographies of the human mind put under the pressures of the absurd. We invite you to descend with us into this quiet miasma. Note I: Hunter mentions in this episode De Facto, the dub/Latin band featuring Omar Rodriguez-Lopez, Cedric Bixler-Zavala, Ikey Owens, and Jeremy Ward, who operated from 1998 to 2003. Incidentally, Ward provided the muse for the first Mars Volta full-length, De-Loused in the Comatorium, following his untimely death. Note II: John Frusciante, lynchpin