Earlier this month, the Mars Volta announced that the unfinished original recordings for their 2003 debut album, De-Loused in the Comatorium, would be included in a new career-spanning vinyl box set. If you missed out on the massive 18-LP La Realidad de los Sueños, fear not, as the rarities will also be given a wider digital release.
The recordings, now known as Landscape Tantrums, will arrive April 23 via Clouds Hill Recordings, with single "Intertiatic ESP" landing on March 26.
Clouds Hill's Johan Scheerer, who produced La Realidad de los Sueños, told Rolling Stone of Landscape Tantrums: "Anyone listening to these tracks will get a glimpse into that time, into [Omar Rodriguez-Lopez's] soul. It is a central part of the band's history, the recordings prove just how much this band had to share, even so soon after its founding."
In a separate interview published by the label, Rodriguez-Lopez shared of the rarities, "Some asshole bootlegged the two-track references for this session, but the actual mixes we did back then were luckily preserved and stored in my vault for the past twenty years. So it's super-exciting for my engineer Jon DeBaun and me that it's seeing a release. This was the very first thing we worked on together, and it holds a lot of great memories. And if it's this exciting for us, we imagine it's going to be exciting for the fans."
The label interview also finds Rodriguez-Lopez breaking down La Realidad de los Sueños in greater detail, while also sharing the hurdles he had to clear with former label Universal to make the career-spanning set a reality. The included releases were pressed from vinyl lacquers freshly remastered by Clouds Hill's in-house engineer Chris von Rautenkranz, a much different treatment from the "haphazard and unauthorized reissues" that sell for three-figure prices in secondary markets.
"[Universal] literally are not using the master that came from me, the one used for the original analogue pressing. They have the digital master, from which they made the CD and the digital releases. But you have to then make a completely different master to cut the lacquers. So their attitude was basically, 'Eh, good enough,'" Rodriguez-Lopez said of the previous reissues. "But it wasn't how it was supposed to sound. And De-Loused took us a year and a half to make, so talk about attention to detail — we recorded it twice! And it was a pain in the ass to mix — and I was still making changes in the mastering. So if you've got one of these other versions, it's not anywhere near close."
La Realidad De Los Sueños, which sold out quickly upon its announcement, arrives through Clouds Hill Recordings on April 23. The Mars Volta's most recent album remains 2012's Noctourniquet.
The recordings, now known as Landscape Tantrums, will arrive April 23 via Clouds Hill Recordings, with single "Intertiatic ESP" landing on March 26.
Clouds Hill's Johan Scheerer, who produced La Realidad de los Sueños, told Rolling Stone of Landscape Tantrums: "Anyone listening to these tracks will get a glimpse into that time, into [Omar Rodriguez-Lopez's] soul. It is a central part of the band's history, the recordings prove just how much this band had to share, even so soon after its founding."
In a separate interview published by the label, Rodriguez-Lopez shared of the rarities, "Some asshole bootlegged the two-track references for this session, but the actual mixes we did back then were luckily preserved and stored in my vault for the past twenty years. So it's super-exciting for my engineer Jon DeBaun and me that it's seeing a release. This was the very first thing we worked on together, and it holds a lot of great memories. And if it's this exciting for us, we imagine it's going to be exciting for the fans."
The label interview also finds Rodriguez-Lopez breaking down La Realidad de los Sueños in greater detail, while also sharing the hurdles he had to clear with former label Universal to make the career-spanning set a reality. The included releases were pressed from vinyl lacquers freshly remastered by Clouds Hill's in-house engineer Chris von Rautenkranz, a much different treatment from the "haphazard and unauthorized reissues" that sell for three-figure prices in secondary markets.
"[Universal] literally are not using the master that came from me, the one used for the original analogue pressing. They have the digital master, from which they made the CD and the digital releases. But you have to then make a completely different master to cut the lacquers. So their attitude was basically, 'Eh, good enough,'" Rodriguez-Lopez said of the previous reissues. "But it wasn't how it was supposed to sound. And De-Loused took us a year and a half to make, so talk about attention to detail — we recorded it twice! And it was a pain in the ass to mix — and I was still making changes in the mastering. So if you've got one of these other versions, it's not anywhere near close."
La Realidad De Los Sueños, which sold out quickly upon its announcement, arrives through Clouds Hill Recordings on April 23. The Mars Volta's most recent album remains 2012's Noctourniquet.
