Mouse on Mars

I've never thought much at all about the idea I encountered that day,
defamiliarization, though it certainly comes up in certain ways in all
kinds of things that I do. But, as for Mouse on Mars: today they
sounded to me like the paragon example of
postmodernism-as-defamiliarization, defamiliarizing enormous chunks of
all dance music. Paragon, not just because they're so thorough about
it, but because it all sounds so natural and easy. That seems to me to
be a strange thing to accomplish simultaneously.

And sound seems so plastic on the record.

Personally, I like Iaora Tahiti and Instrumentals the best, but the last one was good as well -- developed many of the ideas from Niun Niggung (orchestration + IDM, semi pop structures), and was more enjoyable to boot. However, my wish is that they would spend more time producing and remixing more mainstream artists.

for a while in the late 90s, MoM seemed really exciting, the glitch aesthetic used to do pretty much what josh describes above, deterritorialize large chunks of dance and pop music into fragments. actually, not so much "fragments" as intense, close-ups into the heart of the beats, melodies, tones. little technicolor flareups that instead of just being window dressing formed the heart of the songs themselves. also, their trampling of dance music was fun in a way that so little IDM was (maybe aphex twin at his best..."girl/boy song".) lately though, they've just seemed tired. i'm not sure if it's lack of inspiration on their part, being burnt out on idm on my part, or the fact that more and more glitch merchants are also letting a little color and spark into their work. i hope they mend; dom's suggestion of remixes sounds like a good idea.

http://www.now.com/mp3tv/feature.now?javascript=dhtml&fid=2263736&cid=1688988

the first mouse on mars cd i ever bought was "cache coeur naif," which was a really nice introduction to their sound. "instrumentals" (comp tracks, i think, so a little scattered) and "glam" came next, both exceedingly nice, and i just kept buying them after that. "iaora tahiti" is nice but sounds like they're still working on ideas they would later master.

i really like lithops, too - the "blasmusik" 7" and "uni umit" are both delicious.

I do love Mouse on Mars...always been a little lonely in my admiration of them, actually, which is probably why I never started a thread on them here. I never get the impression that anybody cares about their music as much as I do.

They seem like a pretty unique proposition in the electronic music scene to me, merging technical sophistication (sweet arrangements, sound design, etc.) with playfulness, a good pop sense, and a "try anything" attitude (the prog vocal stuff on Idiology vs. the glitchy laptop drift of Instrumentals). Their biggest pluses are the musical humor and willingness to go pop, which stretch back to the beginning. Idiology was one of the few albums I've heard in the last few years that made me think, "Wow, music just might go in a whole new direction."

I had a neat experience when I was interviewing Jan for Pitchfork where a musician's perception of what he was doing lined up very closely with my own take on his stuff. I think of Mouse on Mars music, more than most bands/artists I can name, as being its own little world of sound, with internally consistent rules, vocabulary, etc. The constraints MoM put on their music, and their way of building their tracks, happen to overlap with how I want music to be.

Listen to the Cache Coeur Naif EP, recorded in 1996, and it's amazing how much something like "Schnick-Schmack" sounds like REALLY GOOD microhouse pop in the Herbert vein. And then they throw in a track like "Glim" at the end, with that build & those amazing starburst explosions going all through it. Just on those 4 tracks there, they demonstrate a lot of range.

I think they fail pretty badly sometimes. A couple of those noise tracks on Idiology are just obnoxious. But I like that they experiment with different moods, textures, etc., trying to see what things will fit with their aesthetic.

I think they probably improved some with time, but my favorite era is '96 to '99 or so, when they were mixing it up between dance pop (Autioditacker, Cache) with the ambient stuff (Glam & Instrumentals.)

I think it's about 25% music, 75% album art on this. There's more "colorful" programming on the more electronic Niun, that's part of it.

Re the sleeves -- the cover art of Idiology hurt the recognition of the album some, probably. I think a really colorful sleeve w/ more pop design would have complimented the album more. Or at least given it a shift in perspective that would have been interesting. The way Endless Summer did w/ its cover art and title. That can real steer the reception of a record, esp. w/ more abstract music (this observation on loan from Gareth.)

yes, melody is such a horrid little thing, isn't it? can't imagine why anyone would even consider such a thing. death to melody! long live pretentious glitchy tripe!

Well, how about more time than just with Stereolab? I thought the stuff they did with them on D&L was best sounding stuff on the record, plus Cache is cool. I get the feeling they could make a lot of people sound good by just showing up.

Something in those furry statically-charged surfaces... maybe the reverie some folks seem to find in Boards of Canada is what I have with MoM. I have Glam on vinyl and I think it might be my favourite LP in the world.

No. When I went to AMG to see it, I was greeted with a familiar reviewer though. From what I gather, it's more them than Flur.

onate, usually when I like to listen to autechre (haven't been listening in a while) the sense of tracks unfolding machinically seems to be what does it for me.

but can yr computer speakers do justice to the sound if you download them. I'm not a fan or anything (nevah got anything by them) but i'm just wondering abt that.

Don't sleep on Lithops, either. Jan's (I think) solo proj--less beat-oriented, it's all about making machines sing. Very nice.

i haven't heard much m.o.m, i tried to get into idiology at the cd store listening post but it wasn't happenin'

< /trife >

hahahahahahaha. Personally, I haven't heard any electronic music that's come as close to being as rhythmically advanced/interesting/bad-ass as Autechre (see: the second track on Peel Sessions 2, much of Confield & Chiastic Slide, Gantz Graf).

I also think they have some very nice melodies, though often not at the same time as the hardcore rhythmic stuff.

To be honest it's also what's driven me away, I'm with the above poster on buying practically everything over the last decade or so, but in my case I'm ready for a change. All I ask is one handraiser, one well-arranged piece of mayhem that can hold my attention for more than half a minute or so, and since we're talking about an album, no more of the filler that made idiology such a disappointment by the third or fourth listen.

Who are the vocalists?

I loved the first two tracks on 'Idiology'... it came out so quickly after 'Niun', and so many of the tracks were so crazy / sloppy that I just took that album as a fun transitional blowing-off-of-steam from (which they obviously slaved over) and I didn't hold it against them.

This new one though, it's a statement...

blowing-off-of-stream from the previous record (which they obviously slaved over)

Got the new one today. reactions from those who have it already? "Instrumentals" bores me a bit tbh, but "Rost Pocks" & "Idiology" are fab. One of those acts where I'm actually wary of hearing more of their records in case they don't match up to the same standard.

Mmmm "Send Me Shivers" is doing it for me at the moment :)

Subtly processed female vocals = big weakness of mine, I don't really enjoy Sophie Rimheden though, but adore Ellen Allien. Should I really be buying disco records?

MoM are as bad as Autechre for zero-critical-agreement on what is their best work. I'll probably try 'Glam' next I think.

This one is such a dissapointment. I think I'm going to sell it.

Search

Rost Pocks
Idiology
Instrumentals
Vulvaland
Niun Niggung

find/download - 'Untitled States Of'

Destroy

Radical Connector

(Yet to hear 'Autoditacker'& not too bothered tbh, want to hear 'Glam' eventually. Probably sleeping on Iaora Tahiti unfairly).

Radical Connector is one of the best records of the last 10 years. Thank fuck it doesn't sound like you think it should.

I love MOM usually, I just happened to find it a predictable and sonically boring record.

I'm intrigued you have such a strong reaction though. Care to defend it some more? I'd be interested to read another perspective on it, I didn't find the reviews at the time hugely englightening.

I'm sorry I don't know your history :-/ I can understand your ire if that's what you thought I was saying.

I don't think it was a huge change of direction was it? It just didn't work for me very well YMMV obviously. 'Predictable' only in regards to their previous work. From anyone else, far from it.

I just heard that mp3 and the structures reminded me vaguely of Idiology + playfully odd hip-hop over the top. It sounded 'fun' and inventive (and funky) similar to how I'd expected RC might have been. I hadn't imagined any specific sound or linear 'progression' like that, they don't do much of that do they? :-)

and Sonny, I'm pretty certain there are plenty of worse directions they could have gone.
freak folk fer instance ? jeez, so melodramatic.

pity MoM, such asinine 'fans'.

I only meant the final product sounded un-comfortable (stilted, forced, 'meta', the most 'IDM' (in a bad way) record they've done).

I'm sure they had a blast making it but it didn't come across in the finished product for me. Which is most untypical.

Maybe I am projecting, who really knows? I didn't however come here to continue slagging it off in some "me right/you wrong" fashion.

That said, I'm obviously not stimulating much in the way of meaningful conversation about it either so I guess I'll leave it!

Thanks for the reply upthread btw. What is your 'history' here in a nutshell, or a link? curious.

But all this seemed to mean was smoothing away the most jarring, spastic edges in their music, incorporate more 'pop' conventional funk rhythms & plain verse-chorus-verse structures. Even the best tracks like the one with Niobe on just didn't go anywhere, compared to their usual ever-shifting tunes.

As for previous work there are vocals on - Actionist Respoke, Doit, Die Seele Von Brian Wilson, Cache Coeur Naif, Schnick-schnack for starters.

Or to put it another way, compare/contrast with Delay's Luomo project, which went for the sensuous feel of house first and only later added the strong 4/4 whomp. Mouse on Mars go straight for the whomp but don't seem too concerned with or even aware of how the music should feel. I'm not sure if this makes the album bad or just odd; it's one of those albums which I feel quite conflicted about while listening to it.

Fandango and Tim pretty much nail what falters with the new record. Their ability to shift genres was one of the things that drew me to them, but what kept me coming back was the way they always maintained that [x] element that makes them sound like them. Radical Connector sounds like MoM doing pastiche, for the first time in their career, rather than really inhabiting a genre.

Brad: Yes, it is honestly my opinion that this was the worst direction they could have gone in. I like it O.K., but it just seemed like a very boring thing to do in 2004 -- as if their pandering to the pitchfork set who just discovered that it's okay to like pop music. I was disappointed because I think those people are dense and I think one of my favorite groups can do better than them. Something folkier would have been great, despite any trends, because the folk elements in Niun Niggung and Idiology were interesting and distinctly their own -- which realy illustrates how they used to lead trends but fell behind with the last album.

But I guess you have your own opinion about what works for them, even if you're a dick about it.

i also am one who feels this is their worst record, and feel "conflicted" listening to it for some unapparent reason. I can say that live, they had their vocalist/drummer centre stage pounding away, smiling, and i was just hankering for more knob twiddling and scattered beats/waves/whatever from the other dude. after idiology i bought radical connector without a thought, and i've not listened to it since. the new single (i heard after buying) i find extremely annoying. but it's only an opinion (personal reasons are unavoidable!) brad, and i dig that any of their albums can and are favourites to different people.

saying that, i'll take Instrumentals over anything else they've done.

-- Brad Laner (b...), April 30th, 2005.

Tne minute I first heard a MoM track I thought myself a fan cos I just loved the music. After that I several albums and they were all awesome, especially Idiology. When I heard RC it was the kind of gentle letdown that comes from a good release following back-to-back mindblowing albums. It was like playing Mortal Kombat III for the first time, thinking "Yes, this is cool, but sweet Jesus on a bicycle MK II was so much better than MK I - and so much better than the new stuff.

I like RC but I don't listen to it much anymore. If it wasn't MoM i probably wouldn't give it much of a chance anyways.

I thought it was fun, especially so to hear AGF in hip-hop producer mode even if it does (perhaps, inevitably) end up coming out a little tigerbeat6-ish.

with Connector they backgrounded the densely detailed squirky pure electronics that occupied the soloist position on previous records, and put all the detail work into the manipulation & editing of the vocals.

vocals are demanding, they have to be much louder than anything else in the mix to sound right, and when the focus is on them it kind of keeps the music from disruptively shifting around as much as earlier MoM -- Connector is much more straightforward. For me, the vocals are simply not to my taste & I miss the left turns; that's my problem. The jam at the end of "Spaceship" really grew on me & I'm still buying their next record on sight.

These guys were fantastic tonight at O2 London. So fun..

Ugh seriously is this band ever going to tour the US again? The last time they played, Ratatat and Junior Boys were opening for them

and when are they going to release new material? any idea what they're up to??

man, autoditacker really needed some time to marinate with me. listened to it tonight and i have to say it's probably as good as the first two.

THERE IS A NEW ALBUM

and it's out there..

well its a mini-lp

http://www.residentadvisor.net/images/news/2012/mouse-on-mars-wow.jpg

I wish I'd been here in 2002 when the real discussions were taking place about this group. They've been my favorite for many years now, I consider them to be far and away the most important and best act going. There are very few people who understand this!!!

Parastrophics is my favorite album from this year, even if it isn't as good as the old days (Autoditacker, Idiology).

I'm going to read through this whole thread and regret not being here to say, "YES, I AGREE!"

Looking forward to the "mini-LP."

Yo wait... guys... the mini-LP isn't the "new album." That's Parastrophics. It's a full length and it's astoundingly brilliant. Their best album since Idiology, or Radical Connector for people who came to them through that.

As for me, I love absolutely everything they've done from Yamo to Noisemachinetapes to Von Sudenfed to Microstoria+Lithops. Not sure if I'm missing anything there. Maybe GOFLEX.

I don't know if it's that my taste is just on a higher level than most, or if the band is just well tuned to my individual sound-interests. Personally I think time will show, and in 20 or 30 years it will be a lot easier to tell that these guys were doing something completely unique. Kind of like how Radiohead fans find out about CAN and realize the truth. About as contemporary as it can get, on some of their prior releases and at times on Parastrophics. Completely different strata.

Lol, dojo, I love Mouse on Mars and it's great to see someone so passionate about them, but I don't know if it's that my taste is just on a higher level than most is a statement likely to get you crucified on ilx.

hahaha guess I should give parastrophics another listen since it didn't do much for me and now I'm a little worried about my taste levels!

I'm a pretty huge fan of their stuff up to idiology but that one never fully clicked despite my trying really REALLY hard to like it. kinda gave up after that.

^ same here. my taste level confirms that the pinnacles of Autoditacker and Glam have yet to be matched.

Autoditacker is their best, Glam is slightly overrated if you really understand why MoM are the BOMB.

Being crucified is my specialty. Haha. I've seen repeatedly people who supposedly love electronic music but always go completely silent when MoM is mentioned. I have a habit of letting people hate me. It's for their own good, right?

Idiology is I think their most "important" album. It's the one where they push their aesthetic to its furthest limit. Not in terms of noise, but in terms of concept. They manage to create hyper-futuristic pop music while also having a certain... Schoenbergian purity... unity of structure and sound. It's utterly new. Perhaps just as new to the "song" form as Schoenberg was to the classical form back in the day. They deconstruct every level of the sound object world... from the concept-sound to the sound-sound to the production-sound to the melody-sound. LOL. They reduce pop music to an avant-garde art form with just as much validity as any given Beethoven or Mozart. The possibilities become endless.

Not only this but their melodic sense is always really enjoyable, their live show is perhaps the ONLY one which manages to blend live instruments and experimental electronics properly, and their philosophical interest adds a further dimension to the sound.

MoM's new internet only label, 'Recommended Records' -- have they no shame?

I always knew that green sock on the cover of their 'Diskdusk' single was a Henry Cow reference

http://www.mouseonmars.com/rr/

so far it's germanic beat scene shit that sounds amazing but is a little stiff, IDM-y, and scattered for me...so, very MoM.

So far "deef" (release rr-001) is alternating Stock, Hausen and Walkman-isms with icily well-produced 2003-style IDM which can't quite decide whether to be melodic or glitchy, but it's possible this post says more about my lack of more recent/relevant reference points than deef

anyway, definitely hoping to keep track of this new netlabel project thing, thanks!

Ha, cheeky bastards. Loving Parastrophics now I've actually got around to hearing it, btw.

Has anyone seen them live this tour? I caught them last night and it was stellar.

I really wish I could replace all the album versions w/ recordings of what they did live last night

Saw them last week... Was low keyed and frentic, and surprisingly fun to watch despite being pared down to its "classic" set-up (ie. no Dodo the drummer), and selecting only 2012 tracks.

ugh i missed them

me too :(

Ya I really wish they'd played more old stuff (or any at all tbh) but on the flipside it makes me wanna relisten to WOW

this is adorable

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uGUVbkwWL_0

"give an artist 10 minutes in the studio and see what they come up with" sounds so much more appealing than the reality of "give an artist 10 minutes to just noodle and jam and fart out whatever they can for 10 long minutes"

It's all true!

http://www.iflscience.com/space/there-really-giant-mouse-mars-0

new album tomorrow guys

big fan of the first three but for me more mouse on meh at this point

what!!!

Ideology and audio tracker are their peaks

Fuck Varcharz was really good even tho the 20 glitch tracks at the end were a bit wtf

GLAM

Autoditacker just completely rules. Incredible sounds/melodies/configurations of textures.

^ absolutely

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qCo2oyVttWA

Autoditacker just completely rules. Incredible sounds/melodies/configurations of textures.

mmm hmm. funny how their sound became harsher & more rigid as they became more like a live band. their material from this period really sounds alive to me. like, I picture dense ecosystems & various organisms going about their day when I listen to it.

t'Quietus review:
http://thequietus.com/articles/24375-mouse-on-mars-dimensional-people-lead-album-review

This is rad

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=izSPpFNuBcs

The new one is pretty amazing, on first listen. Somehow, it's like a footwork version of Laughing Stock - https://mouseonmarstj.bandcamp.com/album/dimensional-people

yeah it's great! their best in years.

the new one's super southern fried, which is nice - i mean they've toyed with slide guitars before on Ideology and Iora Tahiti but this one is way more organic and "live" feeling, albeit still pushed through their sonic blender

One of the best records of the year easily. Each track bleeds into the next like a proper record which feels rare these days. Like the track after foul mouth uses the vocal samples from the former as an arrangement. It’s a southern jAZZ techno record, solid gold

did they ever do another electropop record like radical connector? i haven't listened to any of the ones from the past decade but that was always one of my favs

but yeah glam > audioditacker > everything else

Rompatroullie just came up on shuffle. Man, what a brilliant track.

Just a fantastic record. Sound shapes constantly shifting dissolving and being reborn in completely unexpected but perfect configurations.

Respect to this band for that new record - it is like one long track - similar to what they did on Varcharz with all those glitch tracks at the end making the album reach something like 40 tracks. also the behind the scenes videos on how they made this record are super inspiring, using mobile apps that can record absolutely anywhere

but yeah audiotracker remains their best, likely has the best melodies -iora tahiti is also great. Idiology feels like where the avant garde rot set in, starting to take themselves a tad seriously. Lithops is even worse

"Lithops is even worse"
nah.
Jan spat his ideas in perfect form early on (see "Didot", "Uni Umit", "Queries" comp - which are all FLIPIN AWESOME & pretty much testify that Jan did most of the heavy lifting in Microstoria) but diminishing returns up to "ye Viols", where I got off the bus. i'm old now so MoM/ Lithops now fall into "can't be bothered to keep up with" category

the new album is one of my favs of the year and their best in like, what, a decade? 15 yrs?

Does the new album have them singing? I'd be intrigued to come back to what used to be my favourite group after 15 years, but the vocals ruined Idiology and Radical Connector, and after that album with the rock singer I just gave up on them.

Yeah the new albums is very good, especially the brilliant opening suite.

it does feature singing but it's all guest vocals and (notwithstanding that) it's all very "vocals as another instrument" rather than focused around toplines.

Ok, I guess I should give it a try... Guest vocals don't sound as bad an idea as their own bland singing.

Check it out Tuomas, it is very good

tuomas what do you think

man Dimensional People is a weird fuckin' record

another one in five weeks

https://exclaim.ca/music/article/mouse_on_mars_are_diving_deep_into_ai_with_their_new_album_aai

the preview track is pretty wild. not only that but apparently you can get a "slightly damaged" vinyl copy of Dimensional People for $10 on their Bandcamp - the damage is just a crunched up corner on the jacket

Rompatroullie just came up on shuffle. Man, what a brilliant track.
Favorite MOM moment.

You can vote for The Latent Space from the new album in the 2020 EOY poll. Just saying.

new album is uh...rather interesting. a lot of it sounds like a cursed version of the Von Sudenfed album. kinda meanders a bit and idk how I feel about the spoken word bits but a lot of this is pretty fun given the rather dry subject matter. may be one of those "five years ahead of its time" kinda albums

y'all are sleeping on this. super uncanny valley feeling to it, with a lot of sounds and voices that try to be 2 or 3 things at once. very much like the "this person does not exist" stuff where it seems legit until one odd sound or break makes you think "wait a minute here". doesn't sound like it's just imitating AI, I think a lot of it actually is. outside of PROTO I don't think I've heard an album like this before. when the dance grooves start about halfway in it gets really fun.

I loved the last album, I still need to check this one out

Ditto. Once I’ve got through all my Bandcamp Friday acquisitions (and am done with Todd), this is definitely next on the list.

maybe this will motivate some of you: half of this sounds like "Telephasic Workshop" to me

I've listened to this a few times now and I think it might be very, very good.

absolutely loving AAI

Total agreement from me.

it's very good. it has in common with Dimensional People that it feels long-form and ambitious, which makes me less likely to go back to it then the breezier late 90s stuff that made me fall in love with them. But once I make the commitment it definitely comes through

honestly after many spins I think their Top 5 are the three most recent + Ioara Tahiti and Autoditacker, idk in what order though

I would need Glam and Von Südenfed (unless that doesn’t count)

the track "Resume" on Dimensional People is so cool. the spoken word bit is from Swamp Dogg, the guy who is the patron saint of every bad album cover group on Facebook. a fucking virtuoso of the genre and he damn well knows it too. he references the hit "Baby, You're My Everything" from 1965 which got me to look that up. I really think this record (the MoM one) is on another level. each track is wildly different but they all keep sampling & referencing each other. you could probably write a long essay about how all the stuff on here connects. that post upthread..."it's a proper record"...very otm. lots of fun too.

btw yes I do think Von Sudenfed counts as a MoM album. did MES have a hand in the music or arrangements? probably to some degree but it's like...Radical Connector pt. 2.

Would anybody be interested in a new Mouse on Mars Album even if it was recorded 29 years ago?

— Mouse on Mars (@MoM_official) June 15, 2023

Especially if

following

its streaming in 20 minutes:

https://mouseonmars.bandcamp.com/live/bilk-listening-party

really enjoying thise

yeah its really nice. second half so far even better than the first

Bilk is now on streaming services. I am really struggling to accept that it is from 1994; also it is amazing.

hell yeah, thanks for the heads up, this rules

so this is their new album? preview track sounds a lot like Hallogallo

https://mouseonmars.bandcamp.com/album/spatial-no-problem

Loving this. Second track is called "Hallo Shiva", which would have been an equally appropriate title for this preview track. Whatever the case, more motorik please

Getting a Can - Flow Motion vibe from this one

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-j0PtgYTP_w

makes me realize how much I missed hearing Hawaiian guitar on a Mouse on Mars record

I'm so ready for this record.

relistened to their entire catalogue in anticipation of the new one. I get why people prefer their 90s work...its definitely the "nicest" sound they've had, plus I think their work was somewhat definable which can be good as a listener...but I think Niun Niggung is the album where they really explode creatively. and then Idiology after that, an album that's just really all over the place, barely even 'electronic' for a bunch of its running time (outside of a couple tracks where they turn into Venetian Snares???)...I think at this point they really committed themselves to making music that didn't sound like anything else. I get why the Radical Connector period turned a lot of folks off, it's like their response to Discovery and the direction popular EDM was heading...but again, they do it in such a unique way. I love that there's such a barely disguised sense of humor to all this stuff too.

imo their two strongest albums are two of their most recent. Parastrophics took me quite a while to really get into but its such a bonkers record. It's like all these elements of EDM and funk and technopop and hip-hop getting sucked into this vortex. and the final track is such a jam. then you have Dimensional People which again took me a while to get into but it really clicked once I realized what, exactly, they were doing...I believe they solicited a bunch of samples from anyone who would respond, and then committed themselves to building something around all of it, as much of a musical nonsequitir as it wound up being. AAI I think isn't quite as good, maybe due to the concept, maybe because it's too long, but even that has a lot of very cool and intriguing things going on.

another thing I've realized is that that they're consistently 5 years or so ahead of their time - not to say they've ever predicted trends in pop music exactly, but when it comes to brainy electronic music they've always been well ahead of the curve

glam, audioditacker, and radical connector are still my favorites but i haven't really kept up

came through the post today. really looking forward to getting some time to listen to it! (had a quick run through the first couple of tracks - all in order so far)

the liner notes dwell quite a lot on the “why is here? working with us?” question, and i must admit that’s my predominant question after a first listen. do the things here really go together?

the rather constrained reggae sounds on Fire Dali (i think) make me want listen to the golden unrestrained clarion sounds on a big youth track. a predominance of jungle toms isn’t always welcome, and how they work with the voice and utterances seems a bit abstracted, in parallel rather than finding its hidden meaning… i’m not sure…

however, the final track, which is playing as i write this, is splendid in this respect, wheezing, woozy and funereal, and making me want to have another go round and reassess.

i wonder whether the looooooong production process was MoM grappling with these things, and whether something got a bit lost in the process.

but they did find themselves in the studio together, so i’m happy to embrace the serendipity and let it unfold, as they find and lose each other in tracks. one nice aspect of that rather separated feeling between voice recordings and music is that he seems to haunt the music, which is entirely appropriate.

that said fire dali is v good.

does it shed any light on *when* all this came together? It sounds like it was recorded in 2019, so technically before their last album...curious why it took so long to release, and what they've been up to in the meantime

yes, 2019.

(credit has 'Produced by AT & JSW 2019-2025')

I mean obv covid happened and LSP died in '21. but my overwhelming sense from the liner notes and the tracks is that they didn't really know how to make sense of it all, or how to connect between what they do and what LSP did and represented and was. My immediate feeling is that you can hear that struggle in the music as well, which sometimes overwhelms LSP, sometimes drifts away from him, sometimes feels like it's forcing itself to fit their idea of him, and doesn't really know how to work him into it all. I think it's possible to be quite relaxed about that, and listen to that process taking place, these two poles sparking sonic electricity between each other, and creating the concepts that enable them to communicate in the same musical space, but i'd be very interested to read a proper interview. I'm sure I'm doing them a gross injustice because they obviously know far more about what they're doing and how to do it than I ever could, and I may be projecting more onto it all than can be justified. and after all there may have been all sorts of estate shenanigans etc.

i get the sense as well that they really wanted to do justice to this mythic guy - an impossible task obviously - and maybe his death also placed extra pressure on the process.

i'm very interested to hear what others here think, as i never really trust my own ears in these matters.

I’m keen to check it out when I have the headspace - it sounds like a similar process to the Von Südenfed album in some ways

they reference that, and it seems it may have been the reason for the album occurring in the first place (eleni poulou is thanked, and i wonder if she had a hand somehow).

liner notes for those of you streaming today:

Spatial, No Problem.
--Louis Chude-Sokei

They prepared as much as you can for the arrival of someone who had attained mythic status while still very much alive. They spread word among their network of musicians hoping to gather as many sonic possibilities as the city would allow in such a brief time. Still, Lee "Scratch" Perry's arrival at Mouse on Mars' Paraverse Studio in Berlin, December 2019, was a surprise. Dates kept fluctuating. Schedules kept shifting. There was also that infamous unpredictability.

Some suspected he might not actually be coming. Berlin was full of rumors as befit a city heavy with desire. Still, they gathered with instruments and ideas and waited. It was probably around that time that word about this visit began to spread among other musicians in the city, particularly those who worked in genres touched by the legacy of this Grammy-winning enigma.

If he was coming, which one of his personae would arrive? The Upsetter, Pipecock Jackxon, The Super Ape? Maybe Inspector Gadget, or The Firmament Computer, or just Scratch from "chicken scratch," the title of one of his singles from 1965. And what to do if and when one mask blended into the other?

Behind these masks was Rainford Hugh Perry, often described as one of the single most important figures in the history of Jamaican music. Producer, engineer, label owner, performer, his impact traced ska to rocksteady to roots reggae, to sound systems, to dub, to Bob Marley and Junior Murvin and Max Romeo and The Congos and so many other legends. Generations passed through him and his ears. And beyond them his influence included punk, funk, electronic music, hip and trip hop as well as his own uncategorizable career as explorer of words, sounds and esoteric concepts. Such a man could only be imagined through science fiction, surrealism, bush magic and what some still call Afrofuturism.

Even if it was just one of those empty promises or magical fantasies that sustain much of the music industry, the chance to meet or perform with him was too great to miss. Especially in Berlin, a city where because anything can happen, people just wait and so nothing often does. In a city like this a rumor of this caliber was a gift.

The first question was why he was coming in the first place. Reasons were vague then and remain so now. Rumors of a record label connection. A backstory about a friend who'd worked with Mouse on Mars on Tromatic Reflexxions, their 2007 collaboration with late post-punk legend Mark E Smith under the name Von Sudenfed. The friend, Elena Poulou, was Smith's wife and former keyboardist of his iconic band The Fall. She would have known Mark E. Smith was a Perry fan. The Fall had done at least two covers of songs by the Jamaican icon years back, "Why Are People Grudgeful" and "Kimble."

Pause here to imagine a collaboration that might have been. Close your eyes and open your ears to the very idea of Mark E. Smith and Lee "Scratch" Perry on a record together. Two gnomic poets of surrealist mumblecore. Two artists with a shared disdain for common sense and collective knowledge. Both called madmen as often as genius.

At some point this legendary figure made the decision to collaborate with Mouse on Mars. But did he really know who they were? That was the second question, also still unanswered. Had he heard their music? Berlin was the capital of white techno guys obsessed with Black music who would have sacrificed their ears for this opportunity. So why them?

All the group knew was they had been chosen. And that he came to work on a full album, not another of the one-off singles he seemed to be delivering non-stop in his final years. Recordings that immediately after his passing made too much of being the "last" of Lee "Scratch" Perry.
A million "last" records. With his relentless energy there may be a million more. But this was to be a full collaboration. Perry wasn't a voice for hire like on some of those far too many tracks he did over the years that reeked of financial necessity and/or restless, sometimes lazy habit. This was to be a statement.

Maybe it was the "Mars" thing. Perry's influence on dub and electronic music is as well-known as his obsession with outer space. Or it could have been the words, what they meant but just as important, how they sounded. Mouse on Mars! That was the kind of thing he might have said on the microphone in one of his free associative poetic rants. Or, he could have just had a thing for rodents. His Swiss backing band were The White Belly Rats, after all, and he'd done a few tracks over the years featuring mice and rats. "Bionic Rats," and "Three Blind Mice," come to mind.

It could also have been voodoo or dada. The former was always present in his rants and rhymes, but as methods of mixture and collage, both are at work in his music. The same can be said of Mouse on Mars. If it wasn't Dada, maybe it was Dodo, the duo's longtime collaborator, drummer extraordinaire, Dodo NKishi. Because immediately upon arriving, Perry wrote on the studio wall, Dodo God! This happened before he'd met or even been told about NKishi who arrived at the studio to discover his humble self divinely ordained. As far as anyone knows, the slogan remains on the studio wall to this day.

Dodo God!

Perry wasted no time. He opened his traveling suitcase and brought out knickknacks, icons, images, stickers, talismans. With pens and markers, he wrote slogans and ideas on walls and surfaces. This was no surprise to anyone knowing Perry. His graphomania was legendary as was his tendency to reimagine all the spaces he occupied, turning them into an ongoing, all-encompassing installation. There were flutes in the speakers. Food on mixing desks and computer surfaces presumably to transfer the energies of organic matter into the sound. Stickers and photos and images everywhere. And he encouraged the musicians to do that as well, turning the studio into a Gesamtkunstwerk, a total work of art.

This isn't exaggeration or cliche. His legendary Black Art Studio was so decorated, as are its ruins in Jamaica. So was his home and studio wherever he touched ground. Rumor has it that the same goes for hotels and studios from Kingston to Einsiedeln, Switzerland the town he lived in for 30 years. From the 1990s Perry had been doing art installations based on this tendency or habit or genius for marking up walls and remaking space. This album was clearly an outgrowth of that work. This tendency or habit or genius culminated in an exhibition from April of 2024 to January of 2025. It premiered at the original home of Dada itself, the Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich.

Dada God.

Perry also transformed the studio with sound. Chanting, singing and mumbling in rhythm, communicating in murmurs, coughs and sly glances. Doing rude and loving damage to words. The musicians followed him, recording all the time. Migrating from room to room; in the stairwell where the echoes entranced him; in the bathroom; in the kitchen he marked with the strong scent of fish stew; in the music store across the street where he made glorious noise on a rare synthesizer; with every musician that played or tuned their instruments or engineers and tech specialists running so many input and output cables that the place looked like a mangrove swamp. From early in the morning to nighttime this ancient figure pushed them to keep up while always making space for each person and their sound.

For all their technological sophistication, Mouse on Mars operates with an overriding sense of the absurd. There was kinship in this. Perry would sit back laughing, coughing (and coughing), enthralled by unpredictable sounds. Giggling at jokes older than anyone in the room. What came out of this was a total collage, genre-less blends held together by organic textures, by dirty old imaginative future spaces and man jokes and moments of sober reflection; by electronic bashment vibes and mournful hints of New Orleans second line brass. And through it all, a voice cracking with age and wear but emphasizing the length of the road traveled and the shortness of time before its end.

*****
Dodo God.
Dodo drummer.
Dada drummer.

Dada was named by a drummer – the German Richard Huelsenbeck, known as "the Dada Drummer," because when he performed at The Cabaret Voltaire, he used drums and percussion on stage. Dada was not God, he tells us in *Memoirs of a Dada Drummer*, but it was "the desire for a new morality." This desire emerged among a scene made up of landless folks, migrants, exiles and refugees, all opposed to World War I and desperate to be liberated from the cultural and social systems that made war and had made all of them. Dada was the antidote to themselves as much as it was to a homicidal, colonial Europe.

Such freedom required a liberation from history and knowledge, from what claimed to make sense. The best way to achieve that, for Huelsenbeck, was through sound. Particularly the sound of words, blurred and mangled, loud and abrasive, intentionally offensive and stripped of formal meaning; twisted and turned upside down as weapons against logic since logic led to the trenches.

Because he was not entirely free from his racist, colonial European self, Huelsenbeck called his soundwork, "Negro poetry." Negro as in wild, undisciplined, primitive. Negro as in a white fantasy projected onto those who were in fact less free and who existed outside the boundaries of equality.

Umba umba! Those are the indecipherable sounds The Dada Drummer used to close his performances of imaginary Blackness. Umba umba--words meant to sound African, meant to stop thought. Africa in his view being a freedom from thinking.

But this racial weirdness where whites project their fantasy of blackness through sound is a big part of the history of Western popular music, from rock and roll to reggae, dub, techno and house. This is not news. Freedom and liberation remain the surplus value extracted from black sound, which in turn requires a lack of freedom to generate its value. That's the most Dada thing ever.

Lee Perry welcomed these contradictions – you can't get more umba umba than a "Super Ape." Rather than avoiding them he encouraged everyone in the studio to take them further. Conventional thinking, common sense was a problem. He shared that with Huelsenbeck. But from a Jamaican worldview the use of made up, so-called African wordsounds to contradict colonial or Eurocentric thinking came from the Rastafarians. It was their belief that sound had the power to alter, extend, reverse the meaning of words. Not library, but truebrary to rid the archive of its racist lies. Not oppression, but downpression to rid the term of its sonic misdirection. Not meditate but i-ditate, to rid spirituality of the plague of Western individualism.

"Word, sound and power" is the Rasta concept at work as we hear him destroying and remaking language in real time. At work also is the other (dub) version of the concept used equally often, "Wordsound have power."

The Dada Drummer would have stepped back in awe.

Perry's wordplay is as important to his legacy as his innovations in the studio. Cracked and strained, scarred and stretched, his voice and the history that made it demanded the invention of its own space. That was the challenge during those days and nights in the studio in Berlin and in those years following to produce the album. To chart a space created by German and Jamaican colonial histories but to transform them with and through sound. To create a somewhere zone between Dada and Rasta.

Rasta, but not reggae. There are still mysteries about Perry's decision to come to Berlin and work with Mouse on Mars, but one thing was always clear. What they created together would not be reggae. Perry was too much a part of reggae to disavow it, and the weight of that legacy is present in every track they recorded. He wanted to explore something different from anything he'd done before. Where could a voice that had been everywhere go now? He was drawn into the soundworld of his "German Professors" in to the group's blend of motorik rhythmic elements with free improvisation, digital glitches, dada poetry and the dubby "voodoo" he always insisted haunted our machines.

Sound is God.
Nada Brahma.
God is space.
Hello Shiva!

Mouse on Mars had space on their mind. Inner space, outer space, cultural space, dub space, dada space. There was a blending and mixing of spaces in the studio, a patchwork of histories and utopias. Sound allowed that, escape and discovery at the same time. So did Lee Perry's words, blurred, reversed, repeated, echoed.

Once upon a time Mouse on Mars asked Lee "Scratch" Perry about space. Jamaican fish stew was in the air. Specifically, they asked of his familiarity with the recording technics and techniques of Spatial Audio and multi-channel sound diffusion. He had to be familiar with it given his lifelong participation and innovation in sound reproduction and virtual spaces. His response was wider than all of that and as enigmatic as they had come to expect.
"Spatial," he said, grinning, "No problem."
And this was just the first chapter…

Rockcurry – 3.28
Andrea Belfi – Drums
Dodo Nkishi – Percussion
Andi Toma – Guitar, Bass, Electronics
Jan St. Werner – Electronics, Keys
Lee Scratch Perry – Voice

Hallo Shiva – 4.48
Andrea Belfi – Drums
Dodo NKishi – Percussion
Regis KinRe Molina – Saxophone, Flute
Hilary Jeffery – Trombone
Svenja Binz – Recorder, Choir
Uma Barba, Eric D. Clark – Choir
Andi Toma – Guitar, Bass, Electronics
Jan St. Werner – Electronics
Lee Scratch Perry – Voice

Economic Train – 5.51
Kresten Osgood – Drums, Percussion
Dodo NKishi – Percussion
Regis KinRe Molina – Baritone & Alto Saxophones, Flute
Hilary Jeffery – Trombone
Eric D. Clark – Keys
Darrin Wiener – Modular Synth
Andi Toma – Electronics, Percussion, Field Recording
Jan St. Werner – Electronics, Vox
Lee Scratch Perry – Voice

Spatialee – 8.14
Regis KinRe Molina – Saxophone
Hilary Jeffery – Trombone, Trumpet
Andi Toma – Bass, Electronics, Percussion
Jan St. Werner – Electronics, Keys
Lee Scratch Perry – Voice

Fire Dali – 6.17
Andrea Belfi – Drums
Dodo NKishi – Percussion
Regis KinRe Molina – Saxophone, Flute
Kresten Osgood – Percussion, Keys
Louis Chude-Sokei – Field Recording Black Ark
Andi Toma – Bass, Percussion, Electronic
Jan St. Werner – Electronics, Keys
Lee Scratch Perry – Voice

Yayaya – 5.25
Uma Barba – Choir
Andi Toma – Slide Guitar, Guitar, Bass, Percussion, Electronics
Jan St. Werner – Electronics, Keys, Percussion
Lee Scratch Perry – Voice

To The Rescue – 3.56
Andrea Belfi – Drums
Dodo NKishi – Guitar
Andi Toma – Bass, Slide Guitar, Electronics
Jan St. Werner – Electronics, Keys
Lee Scratch Perry – Voice

State Of Emergency – 8.00
Andrea Belfi – Drums
Dodo NKishi – Percussion, Choir
Regis KinRe Molina – Saxophone, Choir
Hilary Jeffery – Trombone, Trumpet
Zack Condon – Alphorn, Trumpet
Constantin Carstens – Electronics
Humphrey Bellwood – Fish Stew
Eric D. Clark – Choir
Hani Mojtahedy – Voice
Andi Toma – Bass, Guitar, Slide Guitar, Choir
Jan St. Werner – Electronics, Organ, Choir, Field Recording
Lee Scratch Perry – Voice

---

Written by Lee Scratch Perry, Andi Toma, Jan St. Werner
Published by Copyright Control

Produced by Andi Toma and Jan St. Werner 2019-2025
Engineered by Andi Toma, Constantin Carstens,
Max Köhrich, Jan St. Werner
Mixed by Andi Toma and Jan St. Werner
Mastering & Lacquer Cut by Mike Grinser
at Manmade Mastering, Berlin
Artwork by Mouse on Mars and Lee Scratch Perry
Art Direction by Rupert Smyth
Liner Notes by Louis Chude-Sokei

Thank you: Mireille Perry, Eleni Poulou, Shahin Ewald

Good posts Fizzles, I hear it similarly. Whatever the story and mythology (which I'm interested in too), I like the record and it has a sense of mystery about it, which would be easy to lose if it were too straightforward or overworked. It also feels very inviting and loose, even if they spent years tweaking or shaping it. I'd love to know how much comes from the original live sessions, it sounds like a lot.

wow total Can vibes on this, love it

guardian interview does suggest business, complications from covid, perry dying + estate stuffand other personal projects were responsible for long gestation.

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2026/may/28/mouse-on-mars?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

ok and this uncut interview does indeed suggest eleni poulou was responsible for setting this up as i can well believe

The sessions resulted in Spatial, No Problem, billed as Perry’s last official album project before his death in 2021. Mouse On Mars were connected to Perry via Eleni Poulou, one-time member of The Fall and ex-wife of the duo’s former collaborator Mark E Smith.

https://www.uncut.co.uk/features/interviews/the-inside-story-of-lee-scratch-perry-last-ever-album-154830/

https://www.uncut.co.uk/features/interviews/the-inside-story-of-lee-scratch-perry-last-ever-album-154830/

aw man. i'm looking forward to giving this a listen.

i notice LSP is still litigating bunny lee and coxone dodd shit in this album as he wanders round the berlin studio of some enthusiastic but somewhat nonplussed germans and others.

why are people grudgeful?

guardian interview does suggest business, complications from covid, perry dying + estate stuffand other personal projects were responsible for long gestation

Also just the time it takes to go through many hours of sessions, which totally makes sense. And a band I'm in put out an album today that took 15 years to finalize, so I understand any and all delays.

absolutely. a friend is working on a well-known musician’s posthumous album, and it’s all hard, time-consuming work!

spinning it now and I think it's awesome.

the thing I noticed going through their discography is that they had a pretty unique sound until the 21st century, at which point every record was sort of a concept album. seriously take any two of these records (Ideology, Radical, Von Sudenfed, Varcharz, Parastrophics, Dimensional People, AAI, this one) and there's no way you'd identify any them as coming from the same people. except perhaps Radical Connector and the Von Sudenfed one.

so I think this concept really works for them. they've reimagined themselves from the ground up many times and have virtually no musical crutches, so it sounds like what they did was take LSP's voice and just go, okay, what kind of music goes with this? and knowing MoM's influences they immediately jumped to Can and other krautrock, plus stuff like My Life in the Bush of Ghosts.

I agree with Fizzles that Perry's voice doesn't quite jive with everything else. but this music wouldn't exist without him. reminds me of the Eno + Hyde albums where they both seem to go "okay we don't have a lot of musical common ground so lets just do something fun". and it is super fun. they've always had that side to them but not across a whole album like this. I dunno if I could identify this as Mouse on Mars...there are almost no electronics on it at all...but there are bits that remind me of Idiology

Loving it.

Excellent post frogbs

yeah, great post. i never really thought of it this way but i was extremely into that warm, gloopy old sound, struggled with idiology when it was released, and haven't really engaged with what came after that, which generally seemed kinda daunting, and well, conceptual and abrasive from what i sampled. at least in comparison to the old stuff. but i really should go back and i’m excited to start with this new one.

yeah good posts everyone. fizzles thoughts intrigued me. i'm finally giving this a listen and i really like it. i can see how lsp's vocals would be quite a challenge but i really think the music they've made nails it. it's a beautiful album and so unique.

in a way it's also a tribute to can? but similar to how it transforms lsp's presence into something that is informed by lsp but completely its own thing, it does the same thing with can, particularly holger and jaki. and i think sometimes it presents lsp as an alternate dimension damo.

anyway i'm pleasantly surprised that this is hitting for me. i can't say i've spent very much time with mouse on mars in 20 years.

so it sounds like what they did was take LSP's voice and just go, okay, what kind of music goes with this?

i liked this way of putting it, frogbs. i've been enjoying it, and discovering how my perception shifts as I re-listen. it's a good album to explore in that way. everything quite attenuated, but communicating across the gaps.

i hope this doesn't ruin it for anyone but the chord progression in "state of emergency" reminds me of a slowed-down "hell" by squirrel nut zippers lol, like there's some hot jazz in it. in the album overall there is a lot of richness in the percussion and arrangements, a lot of really psychedelic magic going on, but there are also some fundamental hooks in all of the tracks and some pretty basic if elegant emotional coloring. the one element that turned can into the sound of primivitve madness was karoli's extremely gnarly guitar playing imo. mom don't go for that kind of chromatic blues anywhere. the chords maintain a basic tonality. lsp has a kind of truly gnarly and out there presence. i find it moving to hear him in this kind of context where everything is really rich but the appeal of melody and harmony is there too.