German Electro Comes to NZ: Mouse On Mars

Mouse on Mars formed in 1993 when Andi Toma and Jan St. Werner (of Köln and Düsseldorf, respectively) met at a health food store. Mouse on Mars rock like hell. Bring your dancing shoes.

Mouse on Mars is one of the few electronic bands to stand the test of time. Constantly reinventing themselves, they have taken electronica to new heights with a unique blend of sound annihilation, fragmented melodies and an impassioned hatred of conformity.

For over a decade, Andi Toma and Jan St. Werner have sweated over burning consoles to create a new musical language, only to twist it again into thousands of myriad distortions. Mouse On Mars' sound links them to the club-music scene, as do their many remixes and collaborations with members of the dance-music world. Yet their association with the formalized and utilitarian world of dance music is ironic, as the band’s raison d’etre is to place electronic flies in any aural ointment they choose to muck through.

A series of 11 albums and numerous remixes has come off as primarily intent on dashing expectations, from the ambient-house ectoplasms of 1994’s Vulvaland and 1995’s slightly more structured Iaora Tahiti; to the flighty and funny electronics, spluttering horns and acoustic-guitar samples of 2000’s more 'organic' Niun Niggung; to the forest of sonic porcupine quills that is Idiology.

Radical Connector (2004) further granulated the MoM aesthetic into nine vaguely pop-oriented songs, ever heavier on the beats and increasingly hinging the tunes on the vocals and drumming of longtime collaborator Dodo Nkishi. Varcharz (2006) entirely recorded at Mouse on Mars’ St. Martin Ton Studios in Duesseldorf is their most live sounding and diverse studio album to date. Varcharz is spiked with catchy pop references, anarchic rock derangements and manga-style pathos.

Event listed by Goethe

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