Mouse On Mars - Futurist post-techno

Mouse on Mars are among the leading figures in the renewal of the German electronic scene at the turn of the century. Their musical alchemy updates the bold spirit of 1970s electronic pioneers like Kraftwerk, Faust and Neu!, showing a distinctive versatility in arrangements and in remixing.

The band was formed in 1992 by Andi Toma and Jan St. Werner, who met in Cologne but soon relocated to Dusseldorf (the city of Kraftwerk). Their debut Ep Frosch, released on Too Pure, reached the Top 3 of the UK indie chart in 1994, immediately showcasing the band's "crosswise" approach, deftly blending disparate genres from techno to kraut-rock. It was followed by their debut album Vulvaland, which alternates moments of psychedelic trance ("Frosch") with darker, more unsettling atmospheres ("Katang", "Future Dub" and "Chagrin"). Initially regarded as exponents of the drum & bass scene, Mouse on Mars were soon saddled with other labels: futurist grind, kraut dub, doom house.

When their second album Iaora Thaiti came out in '95, Melody Maker coined a new label for them: post-techno, placing the record in the Top 20. The album combines dub, jungle and hip hop with forays into world music and the cosmic sounds of Tangerine Dream. "Saturday Night Worldcup Fieber" is one of its most melodic moments; the drum'n'bass of "Kanu" updates Gong's most bizarre experiments; the dissonant "Schunkel" evokes the Pere Ubu of "Modern Dance"; while "Schlecktron" sounds like a spatial symphony by Tangerine Dream or Schulze "remixed" in a post-rock studio.

A year later, the single "Cache Coeur Naif" quickly became a club hit across Europe. The track, an original electronic cocktail full of verve and freshness, features performances by Laetitia Saider and Mary Hanson of Stereolab, with whom the two Germans had already worked as producers in the past.

The 12" "Saturday Night World Cup Fieber" is the next hit, paving the way for a prolific series of studio experiments. In 1997 the results of their research become more visible, taking shape in their third album Autoditacker. The record moves nonchalantly from the fizziest, most eccentric techno ("Twift Shoeblade", "Sui Shop") to the mechanical dance of "Schnick Schnack Meltmade", from the reggae of "Scat" to the tap-dance of "Tux & Damask", all the way to the "spatial" score of "Sehnsud". Meanwhile, their compilation Instrumentals is also released, marking the launch of their own label: Sonig. From that point on, Mouse on Mars's output is joined by releases from Vert, Microstoria, Scratch Pet Land, F:X: Randomiz and Workshop.

The following EP Cache Coer Naif, which still features contributions from Laetitia Sadier and Mary Hansen of Stereolab, cements the band's reputation on the European club circuit. An even more eccentric strain of music marks Instrumentals (1998), with ambient digressions such as "Pegel Gesetzt" and "Chromatic" alongside more melodic tracks like "Rampatroullie" and "2001".

In 1998 American director Josh Evans recruits Mouse on Mars to create a soundtrack for him. Toma and Werner accept the job and produce the music under the name Glam. From then on the duo begins working on theme tunes for WDR (West Germany Broadcasting), composing soundtracks for Arte, and creating remixes for various artists.

Mouse on Mars are certainly no "studio moles": armed with samplers, computers, synthesizers, homemade effects, and new and old analogue instruments, they tread stages across half the world, occasionally adding a few acoustic elements such as guitar, bass or drums. Their first tour of England (1994) is followed by shows across the rest of Europe. From 1994 onward the trio frequently tours Japan and the United States, racking up numerous sellouts. In order to book more dates, the duo also puts together a powerful two-man show.

After the transitional EP Hot On The Heel Of Pickly Dead Rizzoms, the release of Niun Niggung in 1999 sees the duo break successfully into the Top 100. The record boasts a handful of pop-and-electronics "collages" ("Download Sofist", "Disphotek", "Diskdusk"), blending robotic cadences, android dance moves and post-rock-style dissonance. The video for "Distroia", the single taken from the album and directed by Rosa Barba, is nominated for best national video at the Viva Comet Award.

The fact that the duo receives an award at the Linz Electronica Festival that same year is proof of the fascination generated by their work, which might look pop-, club- or A-Musik-oriented while effortlessly fusing new musical concepts. For this reason, the two also receive the German radio award: the Eins Live Krone Fuer Innovation (crown/medal for innovation).

Since 1999 Andi Toma and Jan St.Werner have also held joint lectures on experimental music at the Technical Institute's Faculty of Design and Visual Communication.

That MOM's music is more a "work in progress" than something fixed and finished becomes clear in 2000, when the band releases a completely reworked version of the album Niun Niggung in Japan and the United States. American magazine Spin places the album in its Top 20 of the year. Several college radio charts follow suit.

Back from their tour of the US and Japan, the group shuts itself away in the studio to record the new album Idiology, surrounded by violins, cellos, clarinets, trumpets and grand piano. The enigmatic drummer Dodo Nkishi sings on several tracks, accompanied by Matthew Herbert on piano. Vert and FX Randomiz, who contribute some programming, violinist Matty Arouse and the talented Harald Sack Ziegler on horns round out the lengthy guest list. The result is a surprising record, a genuine lesson in electronics full of original ideas, starting with the tight opener "Actionist Respoke". "Presence" shows off slender melodic cartilage and a piano-and-voice setting that echoes Robert Wyatt. "First: Break" is an extreme improvisation caught between kraut-rock and rave party. "Fantastic Analysis" is an ethereal instrumental close to certain strands of new age. "Catching Butterflies With Hands" is another assemblage of free-form improvisations.

"Paradical" is a refined exercise in dissonant music. "Unity Concept", printed on the CD sleeve, is recited by Nkishi with little or no backing track. The overall effect is disorienting, deafening and hypnotic at once. But it's above all with this record that Mouse on Mars establish themselves as one of the most original forces on the German electronic scene of recent years.

With the following Agit Itter It It (2002) the Düsseldorf duo treat themselves to a collection of rarities and remixes. Meanwhile, Werner takes part in two side projects, Microstoria and Lithops. Under the latter name he releases two albums, Uni Umit (1997) and Didot (1998).

The easier-going direction of recent years culminates in Radical Connector (2004). For the occasion the band transforms itself into a small orchestra, abandoning the minimalism that had marked their earliest work. The result is a more direct, more "pop" record that winks at the dancefloor, nodding to Air with its off-beat rhythms and psychedelic flavors ("Mine Is In Yours"), but also to Prince ("Blood Comes"), albeit blended and deconstructed as per usual.

Syncopated rhythms with an almost hip-hop feel ("Spaceship", "All The Old Powers") mix with suave, danceable sounds ranging from dub to (post-)techno. The song-form has never been so close to the German duo's trajectory, and in this gradual drift toward pop, they lose something of their anarchic charm.

It's Ipecac Recordings, the label of the eclectic and (artistically) unstable Mike Patton, no stranger itself to digital-electro experiments, that releases Varcharz in 2006. The record, however, is a disappointment. Andi Toma and Jan Werner turn out self-satisfied tracks that bring only minimal variation to their rough-hewn structure. One example above all is the mini-suite "One Day, Not Today", first a chaotic short-circuit of sounds and beats, then an imperceptible industrial undercurrent, aleatory decompositions and a final burst of timbral radiation.

The same goes for the avant-electro sketch of "Inocular", reminiscent of the more detached side of Black Dice, or the heavy distortion stuffed with sluggish goa-trance of "Dçç l", a glittering explosion riding a motorik pulse with digital laptop tricks.

"Hi Finilin" offers up vintage-videogame tones, almost like a cut-up of an Atari sonata and a sampler, but it exhausts its own interest within a few minutes of listening. "I Go Ego Why Go We Go I Go Ego Why Go We Go" lands on old (Cerrone) and new (Daft Punk) French touch, riding a wave of kitsch-retro progressive house revisited in their own way (thickened atmospheres and grooves, background effects and decorations), while "Skik" has a dance-rock beat that's barely danceable, yet works better as a container for disconnected experiments.

In 2007 Mark E. Smith, the domineering patriarch of The Fall, summoned Jan St. Werner and Andi Toma for a bizarre project under the name Von Südenfed, Tromatic Reflexxions, built around a kind of punk-funk pushed toward electronics, over which the gap-toothed English singer spits invective with his usual sharp edge.

Six years had to pass before the duo resurfaced in 2012. The new work, titled Parastrophic, marked a new label partnership, this time with Monkeytown, owned by their friends Modeselektor, and sounds like an attempt to escape an obvious lack of inspiration with a masterstroke, the unexpected move, the ace up the sleeve or the sleight of hand: but it's actually the clumsy offspring of a duo seemingly left without a sound or a formula, one that disowns itself and everything it has offered up until now, veering off into a multitude of directions entirely beyond its own reach. And so we find ourselves navigating through flows of glitchery sweeter than Hudson Mohawke ("The Beach Stop", "Syncropticians" and "Imatch"), unusual funk-tinged rhythms that feel totally out of place ("Metrotopy"), delirious hip-hop skids straight into Prefuse 73 territory ("Chordblocker, Cinnamon Toasted", "Baku Hipster") and clumsy leaps into the most predictable techno ("Wienuss", light years from Deepchord) and even into a house sound that seems like a halfway point between Stylophonic and the Chemical Brothers of "Push The Button" ("They Know Your Name"). The closing "Seaqz", a sort of imitation of LFO, is perhaps the only salvageable moment on an album that delivers an even more pronounced and clumsy collapse than its predecessor, one we can only hope remains an isolated, one-off misstep.

These last, scarcely inspired works from St. Werner and Toma are certainly not enough, though, to dent a nearly two-decade-long career – built on the recovery and reassembly of genres and trends that have since become cornerstones of electronic music – during which Mouse On Mars have managed to write some of the most interesting pages in the history of German electronic revivalism.

Contributions by Michele Saran ("Varcharz"), Matteo Meda ("Parastrophic").

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