MOUSE ON MARS
Niun Niggung (Thrill Jockey)
Reviewed by Holly Day

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Mouse on Mars' newest features an even odder selection of pieces than ever before, utilizing instruments as varied as french horns, cellos, saxophones, flutes, and fiddles, rearranged, sped up and played backwards to create these musical collages that touch on jazz, early electronica, dance, and songs that hint at Japanese neo-concréte. While a good part of this could even be labeled as dance music, there is a flexibility to the pieces that most dance music lacks-instead of feeding the listener 24 measures of exactly the same rhythm track and sound effects, the songs seem to change into something else every few seconds-which could actually be very confusing to people trying to dance. Featuring a cast of nine performers (not including St. Werner and Toma), this album goes far beyond the lone synth player musically masturbating in his studio. This is a fully-realized collaboration of professional musicians bringing the best of what they have to offer to the table. It should be pretty interesting to see how they pull this off in the live show.

© 2001 - Holly Day