Drive-In duo makes prog leap

To many in the rock world, the breakup of At the Drive-In two years ago was the loss of a force capable of moving the music forward.

The band’s singer, Cedric Bixler, and guitarist Omar Rodriguez didn’t stop moving forward with that change, though. The upcoming album by the pair’s new band, the Mars Volta, shows them taking the arresting, jagged elements of the old group into challenging new territory -- with aesthetics that have little, if anything, to do with what’s being heard on rock radio these days.

“We don’t ever have things like that in mind when making music,” Rodriguez says. “It’s been more about let’s make something catchy to ourselves, something that will keep me interested in wanting to play the song live and not forget about it once it’s recorded.”

For the guitarist, that’s meant bringing in some out-of-the-box influences.

“My musical influences are the same they’ve been for a while,” he says. “But I’m able to showcase them more with this band -- primarily salsa music, the music of my people, that’s the biggest root of anything I do. Beyond that, of course, there are bands like Gang of Four, Miles Davis, the Mahavishnu Orchestra, Genesis, a lot of dub reggae.”

The untitled album, tentatively due June 3 as the debut release from the still-unnamed label headed by former Capitol Records President Gary Gersh, will likely remind some of such prog rockers as Pink Floyd, King Crimson and Yes with its complex, shifting musical structures, as well as Led Zeppelin for some of the guitar dynamics. And the band’s not shying away from such comparisons: It hired Storm Thorgerson, creator of the cover art for most Floyd and Zeppelin albums, to do the cover of this one.

Of high-profile contemporary acts, perhaps only Tool and System of a Down regularly display similar musical ambition. But the album, produced by Rick Rubin, also has complex emotional content. The lyrics tell a fictional story inspired by the suicide a few years ago of a close friend who had been a key figure in the musicians’ formative days in El Paso.

“At this point, we felt it would be great to take his experiences in life and mix them in with a lot of fiction and time travel and quantum leaps and Fellini landscapes and make a story out of it,” Rodriguez says.

Rubin believes that although the music is outside what seem to be mainstream tastes, this album will find a passionate audience.

“It was really about it being as good as it could be and hoping that something that’s really good and special will find its place, which can and does happen,” says the producer, whose recent clients have included the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Audio- slave, System of a Down and Johnny Cash. “Going back to System of a Down with their first record, I never imagined them getting on the radio but just knew it was good.”

The Mars Volta will be opening Chili Peppers U.S. and European shows in the spring before touring through the summer to support the album. There’s discussion of possible special concerts in which the band would perform the album as a whole.

O.A.R. dips into major-label world

It was just months ago that the members of reggae and roots-rock jam band O.A.R. declared that it was doing just fine without major-label help and would continue as an independent. After all, the Ohio-originated band had become a consistently successful touring act and had sold a respectable number of its four albums.

Well ...

O.A.R. has signed with Lava Records, the Atlantic Records-distributed label that’s home to Kid Rock and Uncle Kracker, among others.

“The skeptics will look at that, and it seems the first, easiest words in rock are ‘sellout,’ ” says singer-guitarist Marc Roberge.

But Roberge wants to assure his fans that the move was not taken lightly. In fact, the band members rejected numerous aggressive pursuits by major labels in the last year. But they were intrigued by a low-key approach from Lava President Jason Flom.

“He said, ‘I’m not going to [lie], I’m not going to change the world, I just want to get the music out to more people,’ ” Roberge says. “He didn’t bother us, wasn’t calling us all the time. So when we decided we wanted to get the music to more people, he’s the only one who seemed to get it. We’re not out for hits. But we want to take our stuff and see how far it could go.”

O.A.R. is recording a new album with producer John Alagia, who has worked with the Dave Matthews Band. The trick for Flom is to turn the band’s mostly college-age following, which routinely records concerts and trades the recordings on the Internet, into a more conventional record-buying mass. The album, “In Between Now and Then,” is due May 27 and will include three live bonus tracks to be recorded during a Feb. 18 concert at New York’s Irving Plaza.

Says Flom, “The challenge now is to make the leap to follow in the footsteps of great artists like Dave Matthews, who have maintained their integrity while making great records that millions of kids can enjoy.”

Small faces

* Ludacris not only has a new album, “Chicken & Beer,” coming this summer, as well as a co-starring role in the “Fast and the Furious” sequel, but he’s also working with new singer Shawnna, whose debut album, “Worth the Weight,” is due April 15 from Island Def Jam. Ludacris and Shawnna are recording a track that will be an Internet download available for a limited time and accessible only when purchasers of the album put the CD in a computer CD-ROM drive.

* Omaha electro-pop band the Faint has turned down numerous major-label offers, but is doing a one-time teaming with Virgin Records subsidiary Astralwerks Records for an album of remixes of songs from the band’s “Danse Macabre” collection. Paul Oakenfold, Juan Maclean, Tommy Sunshine and Radio 4 are among the remixers who have been commissioned for the project, due in the spring in conjunction with a band tour.

* An intense and timely version of Bob Dylan’s “Masters of War” featuring former Geraldine Fibbers singer Carla Bozulich is on “Crying Out Loud,” an upcoming album by the otherwise instrumental Scott Amendola Band. It’s due Feb. 25 from L.A. independent Cryptogramophone Records. Fibbers guitarist Nels Cline is also part of the band, which is scheduled to play the Temple Bar in Santa Monica on March 2.