Arañas en La Sombra is the thirtieth studio album by Omar Rodríguez-López as a solo artist, and his fourth release in the 12 album series initiated by Ipecac Recordings.
The record features tracks that were originated during the early years of The Mars Volta, with contributions from original band members Ikey Owens, Eva Gardner and Jon Theodore, as well as a guest appearance of John Frusciante.
“Arcos del Amor” is based on the drum track taken from “La Tiranía de la Tradición”, the song from Omar’s 2007 album Se Dice Bisonte, No Búfalo.
Tracks 3-9 appeared among leaked music files in August 2013 as instrumental pieces. Between listeners and TMV singer Cedric Bixler-Zavala himself, the collection of unfinished songs…
…were named “The Ramrod Tapes” or “Revenants”, which covered different eras of Omar’s output and various Mars Volta songs in stages of development such as an early “Vicarious Atonement” from 2006’s Amputechture and the original basic tracks for “Molochwalker” with Thomas Pridgen in 2008 which finally appeared on 2012’s Noctourniquet.
“Primitivo y Bárbaro”/”Semillas de Hez” features a percussion breakdown which first appeared on an original unreleased recording of The Mars Volta’s “Roulette Dares” in 2001.
“Extravagants Dientes” is an alternate recording of “Cásate Colmillo” which first appeared on the 2011 compilation album Telesterion. At that time the song was credited as being taken from the unreleased album titled The Somnambulists. A third, instrumental version had been among those tracks included in the 2013 leak. All three recordings have quite noticeable differences as basic tracks may have been re-recorded or mixed at various times. Parts of this song were sometimes played live by The Mars Volta during the improvised sections of “Take the Veil Cerpin Taxt”.