The Mars Volta

Deloused in the Comatorium from the intrepid musical explorers The Mars Volta, renegades from At The Drive In, contained a set of songs about their close friend, artistic mentor and wild man Julio, who... read more as a result of numerous misadventures and over indulgences, spent much time in hospital, slipping in and out of a coma. This accounts for the hospital setting for our design. In his unconscious state The Mars Volta imagined that their friend was being pulled down by his artistic demons or imaginary figures called Tremulants, from whose clutches he was continually trying to escape - when successful he surfaced briefly into consciousness . The light from his mouth is the cry for help, a shaft of daylight piercing his twilight gloom. His head is bobbing (or rolling) in and out of consciousness, and was therefore represented by an egg-shaped sculpture of bronze which could literally roll backwards and forwards, and was clean edged and very ‘deloused’, but with a real skin face...scary huh?

What is there to say about The Mars Volta? An extra ordinary coupling: exotic, extravagant, improvising, unrestrained but as tight as a drum when they need to be - a heady mix of styles woven together... read more at a frenetic pace but interspersed with unexpected longeurs. spun around a story for a film never made for which this, their record, is the soundtrack. One of the aspects of the story was addiction and although it had specific references it also had universal connotations, one of which interested me greatly, namely the idea that the addicted party thinks he’s alright and is in control, knows where he’s headed even though still addicted and therefore probably doesn’t have a fucking clue. I imagined car drivers navigating their way through town i.e., through life, thinking they are steering a safe path but in fact having no idea where they are going, i.e., drivers wearing custom hoods - not hoods to hide their identity but nicely made velvet accessories that simply and surreally prevent them from seeing or having any idea of where they were driving. Since this is a general malaise and not a one-off event, all the drivers in town are similarly hooded and in our picture they can be seen passing each other as if in normal traffic, blithely unaware it would seem of impending collisions. No secret society here, no evil to be prosecuted. but inhabitants in a world of velvet delusion. What you see is what you get, although the hooded drivers can’t see what they’re getting. Soiled suits and old American cars added a slight retro feeling in an attempt to be timeless as per the perils of addiction be it to gambling or to causes or even to nicotine...and so say all of us.

The Mars Volta rejected this cover design. We fell out with them big time or rather they fell out with us over this cover but we never knew why. They asked for about 8 ideas to be taken to completion instead... read more of the usual 1 or 2 then rejected them all, the bastardos The idea for this cover came from the title, Amputecture, as in architecture and 'ampu'as in part of the body (amputation). So the image is of a person whose body architecture is being painted on by themselves - a surreal and contrary task, maybe impossible. Thought it right up the street of The Mars Volta but couldn’t have been more wrong. One of us lost the plot.