Musically speaking, Mouse on Mars are like that kid who can’t keep still. In a good way.
But perhaps now is a perfect moment for that nervous energy, that quirky, disruptive approach to sounds. It can be refreshing colliding with the duo’s endless, too-much-coffee-when-saying-yes-to-projects collaborations, and anarchic playful love of noise. Because the anxieties of music can leave people creatively constipated. It can drive people to either a chin-stroking disdain for audiences at one extreme, a sort of retreat into abstract sounds with fear that anyone might feel a physical urge when listening, or buttoned-up commercial conformity at another.
This would all be noise if it didn’t have direction and reflection. But Mouse on Mars manage to be disinhibited with their creativity, while still being thoughtful and focused on what they’re doing. And that’s why it’s been great to get to know them.
In any event, Mouse on Mars are turning their 21st birthday as a duo into a crescendo of activity. It’s an acted-out manifesto of their approach to music and collaboration, culminating in events and releases. In short:
1. The WretchUp app (with myself and others) is out.
2. There’s a compilation, entitled 21 Again (listen below) – marking lots of their collaborations.
3. For fans of their past work, there’s a new box set charting their history, via Monkeytown Records.
4. And, oh yeah, there’s a packed 2-day festival, in collaboration with Berlin’s HAU and CTM Festival. (That’s fitting, because if there’s a city right now that doesn’t believe in the concept of “too much” as far as music, it’s Berlin.)
But if you can spare a short block of time, you can understand what this is all about. In 21 minutes, they make 21 tracks, courtesy a project with FACT Magazine. It’s hyper-kinetic stuff, but it’s also still considered (and at one point Jan chides Andi about something he didn’t like). There’s loads of use of the WretchUp app here, too, for a sense of what that feedback thing was about, plus some unreleased iOS stuff – like the forthcoming Elastic Drums drum machine. See also a lot of action in Apple’s Logic and with AKAI controllers and Nord keyboards and loads of loads of toys.
The collaborations from the compilation are to me interesting, in that they combine musical dimensions. With the similarly-prolific and imagination Matthew Herbert:
Making otherworldly landscapes with Oval:
— and in a violently enthusiastic celebration with composer Tyondai Braxton:
If you happen to be in Berlin, you can take in the live two-day event. Co-developer Oliver and I will be there making mayhem with WretchUp.
But you can also catch MoM, Jan and Andi on tour, and in all this other output, expanding now as if something just went supernova. And the place to follow that is here:
