Mouse On Mars – Niun Niggung

Label: Domino Format: CD,LP

Mouse On Mars - Niun NiggungMouse On Mars‘ sixth album continues to expand on their almost self-defining genre of energetically marvellously nice Electronica, spinning outwards from the opening processed acoustic guitars into to the humorous-interuptus whoopee-cushion funk of the highly appropriately-titled “Yippie”, and all points silly from there. Neither “nice” nor “silly” are meant a s platitudes – MoMars are decidedly both. Take the skewbald Vocoder loop of “Super Sonig Fadeout” – tumbling samples derived from who knows where make for some music which prompts grinning and chuckles on first listen, and a return to those cheesy but pleasant emotional response on repeated plays. Jan Werner and Andi Toma are in the business of making people happy, and they’re very good at that particular task indeed.

Niun Niggung not only radiates cleverness, but also fails to descend into smugness at any point – a valuable ability in these days of Fin de Siecle ironism. There is no great sense of departure from their established methodolgy, but quite frankly there doesn’t seem much point in messing with such a pleasure-provoking sound. Inserions, tricks and playful perversions of the mixing desk and sampler abound, sometimes bizarrely intruding into the foreground as tempos get messed with and beats avoided or splintered. The string-bent Disco of “Diskdusk” flip-flops into clanking metal and amplifier hum-beats of “Gogonal” for example, before an abrupt (but pretty convincing) sortie off into a refried lope around the houses of Dubspace echo and liquid grooves – audibly putting the pop back into music.

Somehow this is music which takes a willing suspension of disbelief that anyone could be so irreverently abusive of the established norms of rhythm and linear Dance music structure (also found on the explosively near-discordant (up)beats and pieces of “Distroia” or the similarly-stomping Funky chops of “Circloid Bricklett Sprungli”), with a huge great grin on their faces to boot, and have come up with a style which has been the inspiration for quite a few (mostly less successful) imitators. As the muted cornet of “Albion Rose” melds perfectly with the snapping splutters of electronics making a half-randomised leaps over and around the basics of a structure shows, Mouse On Mars are making music which is at once quite radical in its own way, while conforming to the prime directive of the form – entertainment.

-Freq1C-

Leave a comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.