With the recent release of of yet another video-teaser for her latest music project, a review of Melissa Auf der Maur‘s work as of late may be in order.

One has to admire Melissa Auf der Maur and her work ethic.  When she released her first solo album back in 2004, she toured with it hard, proving it to be a labor of love.  It spawned a relatively fair amount of success, and helped to bolster her fan base.  Followers of her blog will even note and praise the more artistic side of her personality and skill set that were given the opportunity to flourish since her departure from her short-lived stint with the Smashing Pumpkins.  She has produced art, blogged poetry, and worked on various miscellaneous odds-and-ends.  But what happened to her music career?  What happened to her?  Yes, her mainstream presence has been fairly quiet over the past several years, but for good reason.

In 2005 Auf der Maur in fact began writing material for her second solo effort, entitled Out of Our Minds, and began recording it in 2006.  Unfortunately the paradigm shift that the music industry has been experiencing over the past decade made a victim of her record label, Capitol Records, sucking away Auf der Maur’s work in its downward spiral.  Eagerly wanting to move forward with the progress of the album that was written, recorded, but not yet mixed, she engaged in a year-long battle of logistics and legalities with the label in an effort to get this musical project out of their hands.  It took years, but it happened eventually.  While this battled lived out its days, the album’s core concept of a spiritual journey of the mind as it parallels a confluence of several areas of time & space, was being further fleshed out by Auf der Maur.  She in fact wrote, produced, and acted in a short concept film meant to accompany the new album.  View the trailer below:

OOOM Trailer from MAdM OOOM on Vimeo.

The film has been described by Auf der Maur as a cross between “Twin Peaks” and “The Twilight Zone”.  In the process of making it, she spoke of a whole world that needed to accompany the messages being delivered by these mediums, so in fact, a graphic novel was produced as well.  The graphic novel and the short film were based on the album, which was based on a song (the title track of the album), which is mired in the notion of “traveling out of our hearts and into our minds standing by”…Auf der Maur’s words, not mine.

Auf der Maur has reported that she has spent the past year setting up an infrastructure that would enable her to release this album and its extended project by herself, as her past experience with more standard mainstream record labels would presumably downplay the artistic angle of her work.  She’s claimed she doesn’t just have a record to sell, but a whole “package of experiences.  This package is due for release this fall, promotion of which has already begin to spin.  A four-track online EP was released earlier this year, and the film has been making appearances at various conventions, film festivals, and art galleries.

As mentioned above, teaser videos have been produced as well, and are displayed below.

Clues to OOOM I – “Life After Death”:

Life After Death from MAdM OOOM on Vimeo.

Clues to OOOM II – “Chain Crash”:

CHAIN CRASH from MAdM OOOM on Vimeo.

Clues to OOOM III – “Take the Chains Off”:

Take the Chains Off from MAdM OOOM on Vimeo.