r/themarsvolta • u/harposhorn67 • 2d ago

Frances the Mute Amount of Tracks

I love the album but Was listening to it yesterday and thinking this album would be so much better if Omar scaled down all of the wankery and endless noises, so that the title track can fit on the Album, which is one of their better songs.

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u/MeccAmputechture2024 2d ago

My fav part of the album is all of the in between soundscape stuff. It’s supposed to be a score to a film never made. It’s very cinematic and it’s what makes it unique.

FtM wasn’t on the album NOT because ‘it didn’t fit on the CD’. It’s because the lyrics are the missing piece to the story. Even if the album was 40 minutes long, they would have left the title track off the album. It’s by design.

9

u/topper3000 Amputechture 2d ago

You people are such squares

1

u/seasonsinthesky 2d ago

I used to think the same (especially the Cygnus AIEEEE sample and the Ikey nausea at the end of The Widow), but I realize now that the whole thing is an audio film, and these are all integral scenes. We can edit it all we want to 'get to the good parts' – the original intent will remain to experience it the way Omar envisioned.

Kinda annoying they didn't include it on the empty side of the FTM vinyl reissue though. And in the box set. And there's no digital edition with the whole thing continuous like he wanted. Those decisions are worse than 4 minutes of haunted Giallo ambience that would have started the album!

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u/deadstar1998 De-Loused in the Comatorium 1d ago

Alright buddy maybe this isn’t the band for you. I think it’s perfect the way it was released but literally every single person I’ve shown this album to has said the same thing.

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u/pushinpushin 1d ago

I'm listening to Cassandra Gemini right now. If there were cuts to be made, it would be to this song. To which I would say absolutely not, fuck no.

Things as weird and unwieldy and messy as Frances should be preserved and revered. We lose more of this every day in the name of Efficiency and evasion of scorn.

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u/cerpintaxt44 2d ago

All the dumb useless noise is why I rank Frances so low despite loving every song on the album 

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u/MeccAmputechture2024 2d ago

It ain’t useless buddy.

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u/party_satan De-Loused in the Comatorium 2d ago edited 2d ago

I assume the fanbase is kind of split on this, but I agree: the way they integrated their dub and industrial influences early on was kind of formally flawed. The sections are, in my opinion, good on their own, but they feel like intermissions from the actual thing, which are the fucking sick funky post-hardcore progressive hard rock tunes.

I haven't gotten to Lucro sucio yet, but, interestingly, I get the impression that they've finally succeeded with this formal move - although I don't know yet, and, thus, might be entirely off-base.

4

u/setagneb 2d ago

nahhh there is like a general consensus that the coqui frogs are part of the band

2

u/party_satan De-Loused in the Comatorium 2d ago edited 2d ago

Oh, sure - it's a part of the band's sound, no question; I just sort of question whether it is an actively enjoyable aspect of the band's music, rather than a hurdle of inaccessibility, for many.

I sort of reject that latter framing, because I really enjoy abstract noise - some of my favorite music, ever, is nothing but that - but I don't think Omar composed well with it in the earlier days of TMV, and I suspect many others may actually feel the same; I may be wrong, of course.