Omar Rodriguez Lopez @ FowlersLive (15/12/11)

Wed 21st Dec, 2011 in Gig Reviews

When he’s not spewing out maniacal riffage for the internationally acclaimed Mars Volta, Omar Rodriguez Lopez likes to pluck a few musicians from his Los Angeles stable and play face-meltingly weird music to catatonic audiences the world over.

Tonight at Fowler’s Live, he’s with Volta-stalwart Juan Alderete on bass and newcomer Deantoni Parks on drums, performing compositions from the twenty or so solo albums he’s released since 2004 debut ‘A Manual Dexterity’.

The thrill of watching Lopez is that he’s so damn expressive, capable of switching between fuzzed-out afrobeat to jangling salsa to abrasive punk in a moments notice, often challenging our perceptions of genre, of pop music, of listening in general. The drawback is that he can occasionally have a bad night, and it’s clear from the get-go that tonight, things are not looking or sounding good.

Maybe it’s Omar’s transcendental brand of genius to subject us to such a stultifying live mix (warbling diarrheic bass, flat lifeless drums), but even by his own avant-garde standards, the sound being produced by the ORLG is rarely pleasant or particularly interesting. Alderete’s bass amp sounds like it’s seconds away from exploding, drowning Omar’s washy guitar effects in an atonal hum. Drummer Parks, who cut his teeth in Brooklyn’s 90s dance-punk scene, alternates between gentle exploratory cymbals and monotonous drum solos, often losing time in the process and thus killing any remaining dynamics.

It’s monotonous, repetitive stuff, rendered unlistenable by Fowler’s unconscionable live-mix. Certain areas of the room get a better deal than others, but by and large, tonight Fowler’s sounds like the rehearsal room for teenage Volta wannabes. Omar remains one of the world’s most essential musicians, and he still has that amazing Latin shuffle on stage, but tonight he flounders, choked on the resin of his own prolificacy. But then, that’s the whole point of musicians like Omar, we’re never sure what to expect. Perhaps next time he’s in Adelaide, he’ll blow our minds apart.