CHICAGO — Local stoner Zach Murray, who recently purchased a vinyl glow-in-the-dark copy of The Mars Volta’s sophomore album “Frances the Mute,” is reportedly unaware that he’s been listening to a locked groove at the end of side B for two full hours.
“The sound collages that play in between songs give a rich texture to the album’s overarching narrative. Anyone listening to the radio edits is missing out,” said Murray 45 minutes into listening to a looping 6-second sample of chirping birds. “It’s sad that most people have burnt out their attention spans to the point where they can’t appreciate a beautiful song if it’s over five minutes. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to take a third hit out of this Rube Goldberg-looking bong in hopes that it will top off the shred of lucidity that remains.”
This isn’t the first time this happened to Murray, according to his girlfriend Valarie Correa.
“When he first got the record he told me to come over because I had to check out something called ‘Cassandra Gemini.’ I thought it was a new weed strain he found, but it turned out to be a fucking 32-minute-long song he made me listen to. I thought about breaking up with him after hearing the line ‘behind the snail’s secretion, there’s a dry heave that absorbs,’ but he started getting sleepy after a guitar riff started looping a few minutes later. He suspected something was up but when he eventually walked over to the turntable, he zoned out looking at the needle on the glow-in-the-dark record not hitting the runout groove and eventually fell asleep.”
Mars Volta guitarist and principal songwriter Omar Rodriguez-Lopez confirmed that this is an intended effect.
“Yeah, we knew after the first record that stoner prog guys were going to try to force their girlfriends to listen to this 70+ minute concept record loosely about our recently deceased bandmate in one go without any context,” said Rodriguez-Lopez while burying a cursed Ouija board. “We put the locked grooves there to tucker them out, that way their partners could air the weed smell out the apartment while they slept. Works like a charm.”
At press time, Murray reportedly broke his record player after repeatedly trying to get the decorative etching on the F side of the third record to play a track he insisted was hidden there.