The Mars Volta

“Televators“ is the final elegy for Julio Venegas, a close friend of Cedric Bixler Zavala and Omar Rodriguez Lopez, who committed suicide in 1996 by leaping from an overpass into a freeway in rush hour traffic. In this album, Julio is called Cerpin Taxt. The whole album is a fictional account of how Julio/Cerpin spent his last days in a coma. Most of the tracks contain dreamlike images, but in “Televators” we’re pulled back to reality, and the fictional narrative matches real life. Venegas was a visual artist himself, and was a big influence on the imagery of the album. Julio is the subject matter of other two songs: “Concertina”, from Mars Volta’s first EP and “Embroglio”, from At the Drive-in’s first album.