Well executed avant minimalist stuff from Motion, a one-man project whose 40 minutes of barely-there atmospherics bring to mind an early summer evening, near silence except for the sometimes-distant, sometimes-near whirr of metallic insects, organic buzzes, shimmering soft clicks, warm bass tones, lush as velvet. All at a pace slower than heartbeat. Like I said, barely there. In a good way. I'd recommend this to fans of Taylor Deupree's 12k label who released this record, and fans of the Raster Noton label.
So really what is the difference between Motion and Oval? You tell me, cuz I can't hear any difference. Twelve tracks of variously pitched glitch samples collaged into delicate structures that occasionally hint at something which could be a melody.
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Geez, Rachel Evans is really developing into quite the electronic songstress. Over the past four years or so, her Motion Sickness Of Time Travel has grown from her exploratory bedroom synth-drones into impressionistically sparkling electronica born from the retro-futurism of Harmonia and Delia Derbyshire, with tinges of deconstructed electro, through the druggy, rounded basslines that gird a couple of her tracks on this new cassette on Old Frontiers. "Cut Away" sprinkles bright glissandos of kosmische synths on top of those strange basslines with Evans' wordless voice drifting through the mix in piles of reverb. "Rising" tonebends sad, little melodies amidst a burbling, step-sequencing, arpeggiated fizzings, and star-burst electric blossomings. "In Our Dreams" cycles in a satellite orbit with terse, deep-space bleeps echoing into a shimmering reflection pool of blue-green ambient wash, whose driftscape is wrapped in Evans dubbed-out / washed-out breathy vocalizations. So nice. Twenty-one minutes on this cassette, in a pressing of 100 copies.
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When does she ever sleep? Even during a year-long project in releasing monthly albums in homage to the full moon, Rachel Evans / Motion Sickness Of Time Travel has found the time to also release a handful of mighty fine cassettes, including this one, Alpha Piscium, on her ever impressive Hooker Vision imprint. A simple melodic phrase waltzes through the introduction of the tape, dissolving and re-emerging amidst the moon-lit pools of oscillating, spritely ambience. More jagged radiophonic percolations snake amidst Evans' free-floating vocals which drift through all of her electronics with the phosphorescent eeriness of fireflies in the night sky. On the two part "Ikebana", Evans dissolves the tension from her arpeggiated step sequencing and tremolo patterns amidst lepidopteric flurries of meandering psyche-synth melodies which might as well align themselves with those baroque, deep-space improvisations from JD Emmanuel. The B side continues on her path of lysergic inner-mind navigations of flanging synths, oblique bass-tone melodies, haunted vocalizations, and downright beautiful psychedelic electronic explorations. Already out of print at the source, so there are the last copies we'll be able to get...
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THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
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We're slightly behind in listing these, as the Seed Moon correlates to the full moon for the month of April (or perhaps just the fourth lunar cycle of the year); and as it stands, we only have a few of these super limited cd-rs anyway. The year-long Ballade series is running through all of the full moons as noted in the farmer's almanac, with Motion Sickness Of Time Travel offering her dreamtime interpretations and impressionist visions for each of particular moon. As she started this series a little over halfway through 2013, this marks the eighth in the twelve part series; and so far, each stands as a single 50+ minute track of her spacious kosmische synth+voice excursions somewhere between JD Emmanuel, Iasos, and Klaus Schulze. On Ballade For A Seed Moon, she drips elegant, sparkling synth glissandos upon an oceanic wave of analogue, kosmische blissed-out ambience with her hushed, dreamy vocalizations interspersed in equal measure. One of the airiest and most effervescent things she's ever done! As noted before, we have super limited stock; and it's already out of print at Hooker Vision.
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The sixth in the year-long series from Motion Sickness Of Time Travel dedicated to the North American naming tradition of the full moons. The snow moon is ascribed to February full moon, and her rumination on this particular moon is wintery without being gloomy. There's a crystallization of sound through her kosmische synth sequences, trilling melodies, moon-muzik spells, and ethereal vocalizations that captures the snowblinding radiance of the sun casting its rays through the icicles that hang from her Georgian farmhouse. We've got only a handful of these with no chance of a restock. Limited to 50 copies.
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SORRY.The Ballade monthly cd-r series from Motion Sickness Of Time Travel's with each release thematically linked to the farmer's almanac names of the full moons, is finally nearing completion. The Strawberry Moon (also known as the Honey Moon) corresponds with the lunar cycle that lands in June, which for 2014 happened to be a Friday The 13th, for those astrologically / numerologically inclined. Rachel Evans (aka Motion Sickness Of Time Travel) sinks into her blissed-out kosmische synth drone with church organ ethereal airiness and firefly illumined paisley patterns of pleasantly nocturnal ambience. We've always gotten limited stock on this series, and Strawberry Moon is no exception. Just 50 copies exist, so you know what that means...
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Our favorite queen of the cassette - Rachel Evans / Motion Sickness Of Time Travel returns! Oust is her most recent release, just released by the German imprint Sic Sic; and yet again, Evans unfurls a gorgeous collection of bleary-eyed electronic abstractions. This time she tilts in an austere direction, reducing the bubbling percolations in favor of oceanic undulations and woozily sung lullabies all dunked in the reverb pool. The opening track "Black Umbrella" pulls her breathy vocalizations to the foreground above her darkened Schnitzler-inspired syncopations. The second track "Row Of Peach Trees" (certainly an allusion to the native Georgian countryside) begins with a similar vibe through her cybernetic arpeggiations and taut filter sweeps, but over the five minute piece, Evans deftly transitions the austere electronics into a twinkling kosmische sound topped with one of those lovely tone-bent melodies that have become an occasional yet beguiling recurring motif in her work. Again she focuses on the vocalization toward the end of side one of this cassette, reprising those melodies found elsewhere. The second side of the tape waltzes around her bright swells all crystal clear, slow melodies that never sound as cloyingly sweet as some of the new age copyists as of late, but there's much more of a sparkling austerity going on here than at the beginning. Lovely as ever. Very limited stock as with all of the Motion Sickness tapes we get in! Just 100 were pressed.
Probably, the most Conrad Schnitzler we've heard in Motion Sickness Of Time Travel, and you better believe that's a very good thing. The cosmic arpeggiations that Rachel Evans uses to drive the side long track "Initiation" are very dark and squelchy, with the propulsive, '70s cyborg vibe that Schnitzler brought to Ballet Stratique; but with her signature incorporation of a hushed, heavenly voice and solar-flare streams of long synth melodies, the track is very much her own and one of the better things we've heard from her! "Growing Things" is a much airier affair of effervescent electronics that flange through aquatically spluttering sequencing and slowly evolve into the backdrop for Evans' lullaby vocals. Both tracks were recorded on Halloween of 2012, with the first seeming very much in tune with the holiday and the latter being a Spartan response anticipating the grey winter skies of rural Georgia. Just 100 copies were printed of this one, and it's a 32 minute long tape. Don't expect this one to last be around for long.
Rachel Evans brings her humid, oozing synth explorations to Spectrum Spools, which has become quite the launching pad for a wide array of outsider electronics as curated through the judicious ear of Emeralds' John Elliott. The name of Evans' project is lifted from William S. Burroughs' novel The Soft Machine; and with her decentering, liminal drift of half-formed / half-dissolved constructions, she finds herself peering between the kudzu-encrusted fields of her native Lagrange, Georgia and the imagined soundscapes of a primordial Gondwanaland (time-travel for her seems to go backwards in time, not forwards). After close to a couple dozen releases (mostly in the micro-edition format), she's either gotten the doseage right on the Dramamine, or she's acclimated to the queasy side effects of jumping between time and space, as this eponymous record isn't nearly as woozy and narcotized as her previous work. "The Dream" starts out quite dark, with backward-masked slashes that parallel the thickets of razored noise from Current 93's early collage work; but she quickly escapes from these bad vibes into a lengthy daydream of shimmering ambience laced with bright, effervescent sequences and some rather Vangelis-like triumphant synth stabs. "The Center" spins around a latticework of crystalline sequences that blur into massive, oceanic pools of rippling sound, with her voice looped and smeared into an ethereal bliss. "Summer Of The Cat's Eye" is a mellow impressionist piece of synth jamminess akin to Tangerine Dream's wanderings across the keyboard. "One Perfect Moment" is very reverential of John Elliott's work in Emeralds and all of his solo projects, with a sequenced glissando streaming beneath the slow unfurling of bittersweet tonal chords and Evans' pleading vocal delivery. Easily, the most arresting track she's recorded to date, rounding out another fantastic album from Evans' Motion Sickness Of Time Travel.
Rachel Evans has definitely been on a roll recently, with a very steady and very consistent stream of cassette only releases and with a proper slab of vinyl seeming to come out about once a year for her impeccable Motion Sickness Of Time Travel project. While we try our best to get a good amount of stock for each and every one of her records, it's not always possible. Some escape our grasp, some we only can get a two or three copies which quickly disappear as soon as they hit the floor. But, sometimes we can actually get a bunch. This cassette is definitely of the latter, with is thankfully the case with this new one on Constellation Tatsu, limited this time to a more sensible 250 copies, meaning it'll be around for a little longer than usual. Here, Evans presents a split release with her long-time friend Lynn Fister, the Southern transplant now living in the Bay Area who records under the moniker Aloonaluna. Like Evans, Fister pedals in a bleary dream-pop / komische deconstruction with ethereal, and at times witchy vocals that wordlessly orbit the amorphous synth sequencing and fizzing electronics. The Motion Sickness track is a rare instrumental for Evans, with her streaming waves of sparking synthing tones and slippery undulations of drone-pop narcotic. So nice!
Even if they hadn't called their new album Hyper Machine, we expect we'd still have ended up using both those words in our review of this, the latest blast of high energy EBM mechanoid mayhem from the over the top (and somewhat tongue in cheek?) techno duo known as Motor. Formerly on the Mute label, they've jumped ship for this release, which actually came out in Europe last year on the Shitkatapult label, under original title Metal Machine, with different cover art and a slightly altered tracklisting (3 more cuts on this one), just to be confusing we suppose, though exposure to their music is disorienting enough, automatically locking your body into mechanical robot rhythms and assaulting your ears with all manner of distorted zips and zaps, bleeps and blaps, relentlessly punishing beats and varispeed, pitch-shifting dronefuzz, as if every single knob on all their gear is constantly being turned, up and up and up. Mostly instrumental, their sonics seem derived both from video games AND industrial strength grinding tools, like a Teutonic Tron soundtrack. Imagine skweee gone "Sprockets". That's kinda what this sounds like. Nothing subtle about it. Unapologetically techno. None more techno!! In one track, an ominous voice says, "What's that you say? You say you don't like techno? Well ain't that a bitch." Well, we don't like ALL techno, but there's something about Motor that really can't be denied. Join the party! And of course if you liked Klunk and Unhuman, the previous Motor discs on Mute, you'll like this one too for sure.
While some techno knowitalls will probably hate us for saying this, if you were gonna buy just one "techno" record this year (outside of those in the Pop Ambient style on the Kompakt label that we love love love), then Motor's Hyper Machine is IT.
Normally the way to get me (Allan) to listen to, let alone like, a record *isn't* to tell me that it's got elements of techno, acid house, and/or Hi-NRG dance music to it. Comparisons to various '80s industrial/club culture icons like Front 242 and Nitzer Ebb are also not terribly enticing, either. Yet this album, with its stark, stylish black and white (and red) graphics and suggestively Kraftwerkian name and title somehow drew me in, and guess what? I ended up really digging it! (No, not dancing to it, though I'm sure people will.) The dozen, almost entirely instrumental tracks on Motor's full-length debut may be a species of techno/house music, but they're sufficiently raw and ominously droning to appeal to me as a pure listening experience... the relentless 4/4 energy here is simply brutal, and this disc is thick and heavy with machine beats and super-distorted synths, the kind that sound like dive-bombing Stukkas! Sure, it's Sprocketsy but ballsy too, this trans-Atlantic duo (one guy from Minneapolis, another from Paris) making the perfect in-my-imagination Euro techno ideal of computer-jerked motorik electro grooves, tranced-out tones, and video game gibbering...
OK, gotta cut this review short as everyone else here is making fun of what I'm listening to, doing robotic dance moves and making raver glow stick comments, but I know they're all secretly enjoying this as well -- AND I think they're getting their work done faster and more efficiently, too!
(Note: this isn't to be confused with another, different electronic outfit also named Motor who hail from Russia.)
Klunk, the debut from the Sprocketsy electronic duo Motor, was the unexpected dancefloor hit last year here -- that is if AQ had a dancefloor and if you asked Allan what the hit was. Unexpected especially since Allan's not known for his love of club music. Now Motor are back with a new album, Unhuman, and it's got the same distorted techno beat buzz and bleep goin' on, from the jittering funk that is "Bleep #1" to the sinister, more song-y "Night Drive" to the power tool robotics of "Flashback" (other evocative titles include "Drug Punk", "20 Volts Of Steel", and "Sikk"). There's obvious Detroit and Kraftwerk influences, and certainly lots of folks have regurgitated sounds like these since the '80s, but Motor have a special knack for this all right. It's the rigid, relentless, crunching beats, and the synth sizzle... going and going and going... in fact it's hard to write this review as I'm trancing out as I type thisisisisisisisisisisisisisisisisisisisisisisisisisisisisisisis....
Fresh off tour (including a stint opening for industrial icons Nitzer Ebb), these guys are proud of their live, "punk" energy. It's stressed that Motor are a real band not purely the product of a computer or a DJ spinning stuff. As a result they've perhaps incorporated more melody (and vocals, sometimes scarily processed) into the mix this time 'round, but the more machine-like, brutal aspects of the debut haven't been disposed of either, so Allan says thumbs up on this one as well. Definitely get this if you liked their debut as much as he did.
Mou, Lips! is the work of Andrea Gabriele formerly of the Italian project Tu m'; and here, Gabriele ventures into the digital headspace of pixel-point abstraction with smartly placed hints of a pop sweet tooth. His tone-bent digital errata and languid samples of intimately plucked classical guitar, blurting trumpets, maudlin French horns, and scratchy violins from old '78s return to some of the finer moments of post-pop electronica that Sonig and Mille Plateaux were championing many years ago. Untree is a quirky and playful album which lends itself to sounding like Terry Riley being redone by Lithops and / or Vladislav Delay.
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Classic collection of legendary disco jams featuring producer Tom Moulton's golden touch with tracks by folks like Grace Jones, Isaac Hayes, Eddie Kendricks, BT Express, etc. Disco gold!
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Languid, slightly epic electronica from Scottish duo trying to attain the dramatic intensity of Massive Attack. Mixed results. Boy/girl vocals. Portishead vibe. On Matador!
Last year we reviewed a disc by the evocatively named Kilimanjaro Darkjazz Ensemble, who we described as "equal parts DJ Shadow's Endtroducing, seventies horror movie soundtracks, late night jazz and super sluggish blown out trip hop" which is exactly what it sounded like. Long languid musical excursions through some dark rainy late night film noir wasteland, ghostly moaning horns, skittering minimal percussion, haunting strings, all tangled into super cinematic musical drama. Another band, who if there was any justice, would be the ones scoring big Hollywood thrillers instead of Danny Elfman...
Anyway, we recently learned that the�Kilimanjaro Darkjazz Ensemble had an alter ego, a more metallic dark side, called, appropriately enough The�Mount Fuji Doomjazz Corporation, we were pretty much sold after just hearing the name, so evocative of some mysterious 'star chamber', holed up in a secret underground bunker, tucked in some cave in the mountains, where mysterious hooded figures work alchemical magic creating mysterious and monstrous 'doomjazz'...
Supposedly, this Kilimanjaro offshoot was meant to sound a bit like SUNNO))) or Earth, albeit run through with bits of jazziness and smoke-y ambience. Well, it's not quite that heavy, but it is a bit, definitely heavier and darker and more ominous than the KDJE mothership, a sort of drone-y dark ambient drift, long stretches of low tones and distant horns, of rumbling guitars and thick washes of swirling low end. Actually it sounds more like�Kilimanjaro Darkjazz Ensemble with all the jazz sucked out, leaving nothing but a blackened husk, a skeletal landscape of bleak blissed out shimmer, and slow creeping nightmare melodies. In some ways it sounds like a jazzier, more ambient, less primitive and ritualistic version of the Taj Mahal Travellers... A couple tracks do rev up to a full on SUNNO)))-y dirge, with the guitars threatening to engulf the dark ambience beneath it, but they never truly explode into actual sludge drenched doom, instead, they sort of drift darkly, roiling like a sky full of thick black clouds... It is most definitely doomy though, just not in the traditional sense, the sounds here are more Lustmord, Nordvargr, Bohren und Der Club Of Gore, Cold Meat Industries, with some more melancholy melody mixed in, disembodied reverbed guitar, the occasional almost-jazzy creep, it's more a sort of ambient slow core, wait a minute, "slowcore ambient doom" might be exactly the descriptor we were searching for.�
Definitely recommended for fans of any of the above mentioned bands, or anyone into�slowcore ambient doom!
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The first record from this post dubstep duo was a bit hit around here, ditching much of the big bass and deep bass wobble of harder dubstep for something more chilled and soulful, all atmospheric and dreamy, plink plonky rhythms driving sweet smears of come-down string wash bliss, but to be honest, for some of the dubstep fans here, it was a little bit too soft, a little bit too light and soulful, which is precisely what makes this new one so weird, and so good, in that MK seem to have moved back to a sound that's harder, and darker, the beats more gristly, the atmospheres minor key and a little bit menacing, and while vocals on electronic records sometimes scare us, the vocals this time around are amazing (much of them provided by the genius King Krule), but even opener "Home Recording", wraps a gauzy sonic haze and some chiming spidery guitar melodies over a weird hissy dubby beat, which underpins some moody soulful vocals, shimmery and slithery, and darkly groovy, the gristle and hiss occasionally peeling back, revealing some pulsing almost housiness beneath, before slipping right back into that staticky skitter.
"You Took Your Time" introduces us to King Krule, his heavily accented sung/spoken vocal, wound around a skeletal beat, wrapped in swirls of woozy synth, and what sounds like accordion (!), a haunting electro ballad, that's soon joined by shuffling drums, and sinewy basslines, eventually busting into something much darker and more driving, KK's vocals getting raspier and more aggressive to match, but as fierce as it gets, remaining plenty woozy and laid back.
From there on out, the vibe remains dark, and a little shadowy, but the sounds and songs are all over the place, "Break Well", is all sequences synths, and percolating melodies, soaring swirls of high end shimmer, the beat not dropping until the last 60 seconds, accompanied by a super catchy melody, and a woozy, ultra funky bassline, most bands would stretch a part this catchy out into a whole song, but here it's just essentially an outro! "Blood And Form" sounds a bit like a super lo-fi Tricky, a weird muffled militaristic drum beat pounds away beneath glimmering FX, some soulful crooning, wild tangles of horn like melodies, while "Made To Stray" is all hushed murky skitter, but soon blossoms into some echo drenched electronic poppiness, with more soulful vocals, again, the hook swooping in right near the end of the track.
King Krule pops up again on "Meter, Pale, Tone", crooning over wheezing organs, cool tribal drumming, slipper basslines, a backing track that almost sounds like a dubstepped Icicle Works, dense and driving, super hypnotic, making us wish Mount Kimbie and King Krule would make a whole record together. The rest of the record flits from big block rocking beats, to murky dubbed out synth house slither, crackly pulsing industrial, laced with old school dubstep wobble, deep digidub pulses, Andy Stott like processed vocal ambience, and more hushed vocals, again, the vibe sort of downtempo and Tricky-ish, albeit a bit more woozy and dizzyingly produces, to what sounds like a Kompakt like groover that gradually morphs into a murkier dubbed out version of some lost eighties new wave pop song, which is how the record ends. Perfect!
Equal parts J Dilla, Flying Lotus and Actress, the full length debut of London-based "post-dubstep" duo Mount Kimbie is easily our new favorite night time listens. With stoned soul edits, heavenly string washes, wonky ping pong rhythms, underwater electronic atmospherics and an off-kilter but hazy production, Crooks and Lovers is all about the post-club come down. Chill and subdued, often dreamy and strange but super immersive and narcotically propulsive. The kind of sound that wraps around you, compels you along into its strange slippery rhythms, before finally lulling you into a beautifully warped hypnogogic sleep state. Highest Recommendation!
Working under his Mount Vernon Arts Lab guise, Drew Mulholland had the good fortune to perform alongside Coil at the Megalithomania festival in London, thoroughly impressing them with his drug addled electronic psychedelia, so much so that Coil offered to put out an album. Mulholland showed his appreciation by referencing Coil's legendary dabbling in occult magick in his choice of the slightly altered mystical moniker Mount Vernon Astral Temple as well as within the music itself, producing Musick That Destroys Itself as ritualist pieces centered around occult numerology, which as far as we can tell has something to do with the palindrome of the date February 2, 2002, and a purported 'time machine' which exists in the Brompton cemetary(!). If you've dug Coil's recent experiments with analog synths or the tripped out, ring modulator work-outs of Acid Mother's Temple, Mount Vernon Astral Temple's cosmic jams of dense electronic percolations and gaping reverberations will definitely be the perfect soundtrack for your next pagan ritual or secret ceremony! Strictly limited to 1000 copies.
Brendon Anderegg and Koen Holtkamp are the men behind these Mountains. The two met in Chicago in 1999 and now live in Brooklyn; yet despite their urban living, Mountains long for the great outdoors. The big sky of Montana. The thunderclouds of the Arizona high desert. The forests of upstate New York. In their effortless blur of elliptically strummed acoustic guitars and elegantly sculpted ambience, Mountains celebrate the natural world, as leaves, rain, dirt, and snow all seem to speak through their beautifully monochromatic compositions.
Choral happens to be Mountains third full album and their first for Thrill Jockey. It also stands as their best album to date and even surpasses the almost universally beloved Field Rituals solo album by Holtkamp on Type. The brightly rendered guitar which gilded Holtkamp's solo record features prominently in the mix for Choral, but it has been tempered with gaseous effects and post-shoegazing processes that swaddle the guitar chords with equally rich drones and electrified mist. Melodica, analog synth, piano, hand bells, something that sounds like a hurdy gurdy, even more guitar, and found object scrabbing a la Jewelled Antler make their way through the soft focus blur of the digital treatments, which give evidence for comparisons in equal measure to Fennesz and Cluster. As the shimmering tones of finger-picked guitars trickle out of the slow pulsing drone of the title track, Mountains conjure images of the bright orange sunlight saturating wind-blown leaves at sunset. Halos of light burst around each glistening layer of sound, but there is a bittersweet aura to many of the melodies that slip beyond their transcendent ambience, as if the summer sun they portray in their songs is soon to be lost to the blustery winds of Autumn and the cold nights of Winter. The maudlin atmospheres continue on the insistent acoustic guitar chords of "Telescope," a near perfect bliss-out instrumental, on through the broken-hearted bells and deep tonal flutter of "Melodica."
If there's any justice, this will be universally hailed as one of the best records of 2009. And for vinyl freeks: the lp version of Choral enjoys two additional tracks not found on the cd!
This 4 track ep is unfortunately out of print, just a few weeks after getting released into the world. While this will undoubtedly cause consternation for many, the few who will be fortunate enough to grab this record will have a treasure in their hands. Mountains are the NYC duo of Brendon Anderegg and Koen Holtkamp, both of whom have a couple of solo recordings with Holtkamp's Field Studies album on Type being the most recent. The A side tracks most clearly reflect where Holtkamp took his solo work, with shimmering acoustic guitars spiralling in tricked out electronics that buzz, sing, chime, and fizzle into a minimalist patter of hallowed drone set against their elliptical finger picking. Very nice. But the B side pieces are where Mountains really shine. These two tracks had originally appeared on some micro-edition 3" cd-r thing that probably even disappeared even faster than this 12" will. Here, their guitars slowburn with the constant roar of post-shoegazing luminescence, set languid with a melachonic air. Belong would be a close reference, but there's a lot more sun-flecked shimmer than you get from Belong's narcotic wash. It's beautiful stuff, no matter how you look at it. Limited to 500, but these are the last copies we'll ever get...
It took us a while to give this a listen as we didn't want the beauty of its pastoral green cover to let us down. Luckily when we finally gave this a listen we realized the sounds contained inside were just as rich and pretty. There is something so delicate and perfectly paced about this record. It unfolds at its own confident pace and when it ends you just kind of want to do it all over again. A duo from the east coast, Mountains so successfully merge acoustic instrumentation, electronics and field recordings to create a layered sound that is not only just totally beautiful but also feels as if there is something under it all that keeps you really interested and attached to every unfolding moment. With a tenderness that rivals Colleen and an aesthetic that reminds us of the shimmering beautiful side of Fennesz, "Sewn" is a record that totally rises above the pack of pastoral electronic tinged records we've seen come out in recent years (which is important, as the trend recently has to been drizzle a little electronic squiggle over generic pop or folk, suddenly transforming it into something AVANT!). To make this album Mountains traveled away from city life into upstate New York and recorded in remote areas of Connecticut, and in their travels they totally captured that feeling of water running through creeks, rain dropping on grass, and what it feels like to be away from it all, soaking up your surrounding and maybe even getting a few moments of total clarity. So nice!
Previewing German indie-electronica superstars Mouse On Mars' upcoming "Idiology" full-length (coming out April 17th) is this 3 track ep, which presents three versions of the song "Actionist Respoke": album version, MoM remix, and MoM with Herbert (Dr. Rockit) remix. Limited release, and only on cd.
A collection of unreleased oddities and remixes from the Cologne duo. Frustratingly, the cd version omits the live "Introduce" featured on the 7" which comes with the vinyl edition, and adds two tracks not featured on the vinyl! Argh! "Rustc" is a lovely,
German duo break out with another smart, minimalist electronic music album, not as heavy with their previous albums' electro influences as with the techno/house beats. But don't let any of those words scare you, this is some of the best of what's currently out there.
Laetitia and Mary from Stereolab join these German pop-electronica guys for 2 songs. There are 4 pieces total on this domestic release, 2 more than on the Too Pure import.
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The Japanese import of the once only lp... as with most Japanese imports, this does come with 3 bonus tracks! To those of you who bought the vinyl cos we told you there would be no cd, we apologize. This came as a surprise to us too.
Finally, reissued domestically, this is Mouse on Mars' BEST ALBUM, so if you've never heard them before, we recommend you start here. "Iaora Tahiti" is full of melodic, incredibly catchy pop-like hooks dropped in the midst of joyful minimalist electronica. I cannot get over how smart these two guys are. For fans of Oval, Stereolab, Tortoise, and even The Cure. Highly recommended.
Mouse On Mars' aesthetic may be far from punk rock, but they have employed punk's calculated rebellion against a canonical text, authority, or figurehead. Both "Idiology" and Matmos' recent album "A Chance To Cut Is A Chance To Cure" mark a reactionary trend within electronica to dismiss the clean, cold digital sounds that have permeated the genre (see the "Clicks and Cuts" compilations
Mouse On Mars are still smart enough to keep this album from devolving into the vapid surface music of more mainstream acts like Thievery Corporation or Chemical Brothers. There's plenty of overt wackiness and happy-go-lucky clumsiness to make their best house grooves stumble with a charm that's hard to beat.
Yes! Finally on cd comes this repress of Mouse on Mars' "Instrumentals" record, previously limited to only 1300 copies on vinyl. I'm sure you can guess how fast those sold out. This is murmury, low key, exceedingly melodic music from one of the groups that DEFINES the genre today, along with Boards of Canada and the Aphex Twin in his mellower guises, by setting a high standard and then gleefully asserting its own familiar, recognizable stamp. Already-converted Mouse on Mars fans will know this one specific burbly underwater sound effect that Mouse on Mars uses a lot -- thank god that, in today's electronica world where everyone wants to be a DJ but barely anyone has original ideas, where it seems every artist is filching from the same box of preset effects and samples, no one's ever had the tactlessness to steal this sound. It's completely Mouse on Mars' own. Recorded between 1995 and '97, these are NOT throwaway tracks collected in one place for the sake of convenience. Totally lulling and pleasant, with enough gorgeous groove to please even those of y'all whose electronic tastes are limited to stuff like Thievery Corp and Chemical Bros.
Mouse on Mars would definitely not be at the top of my list for a group that needed a live album, not because they aren't great live [they are!], but because it just seems like a band where most of the magic happens behind laptop screens wouldn't translate especially well from computer to live venue to cd. And indeed, many of the intricacies are lost here. However, Live 04, has more energy than a lot of their studio releases, thanks to their live percussionist, Dodo Nkishi, and partially because of the intermittent cheers of the crowd. Tracks are from several live shows throughout MoM's 2004 tours.
Import of new Mouse On Mars full-length. Verdict: totally great!
We've been digging so much electronic music that's been coming out in the last few years, but we'd be lying if we didn't say that we still miss that golden era of the early/mid '90s when our love of electronica first really blossomed. A time when electronica albums were challenging and unpredictable. When you didn't know what sound/style Aphex Twin would explore next, or what twists and turns Squarepusher would take, or which frequencies Mouse On Mars would glide in and around. Well it seems like Mouse On Mars are really one of the last bands standing from that heyday of IDM. Over the years they've stayed true to their vision of always evolving, exploring and redefining. They could take you to the most sun soaked blissed out space on one record, and then drill & thrill you on the next, and then turn all abstract and fractured on another.�
We weren't sure what to expect with this new outing, and that's probably how they like it. What they've come up with though is one of their most expansive and eclectic albums yet, one that doesn't stick to one simple motif, yet somehow feels succinct in its schizophrenic tendencies. It's a prime example of their ability to take the wildest twist and turns in each and every direction while introducing elements of their trademark squeaks, squelches, and knack for sophisticated and strange melodies. We've been blasting and digging this so much.
Mouse on Mars mark their 10 year anniversary with Radical Connector, a follow-up to 2001's Ideology. It's a three-year collaboration with their awesome drummer Dodo Nkishi, who's live contribution you may have witnessed on tours past. The tracks expose even a little more feeling and less didactic dance beat creation than on previous releases, though they maintain MoM's consistent sophisticated exploration of smart stuttering electronic beats and melodic glitched-out samples produced with a sense of humor and intelligence they carry through all their projects, be they audio or visual.
Very nicely done compilation of five long out of print EPs that Mouse on Mars, the German duo who play -- depending on where you're coming from -- either the most accessible, fun, pop-oriented experimental electronica out there, or else it's some of the most experimental dance music you ever heard. Laetitia Sadier and the late Mary Hansen of Stereolab make several guest appearances. Spanning 1994 to 1997 (IMO the best Mouse on Mars years), the EPS are Frosch, Bib, Saturday Night Worldcup Fieber, Cache Couer Naif, and Twift. Highly recommended! The tracks work very well as a cohesive full album.
These German electronic music wonders follow up their Autoditaker full-length with this import four-track single, which includes a remix by (yes, BY) the High Llamas. Those of you who saw Mouse on Mars open for Sterolab will know what we mean when we say these 2 guys (one of whom is also involved with Microstoria) harbor a deep appreciation for all genres of electronic musics, past and present, as evidenced by their set's subtle, proficient, chronological progression from electro to house to drum'n'bass. So smart. Head and shoulders above the rest.
With each album Mouse On Mars have consistently tried something a little different. The German duo follow up their 2004 full length, the almost dance-pop leaning, unexpectedly vocal-laden Radical Connector, with this gregarious IDM mover'n'shaker. Their newfound chunky aggression is surprisingly well-suited on the usually obnoxi-noiso Ipecac label (the vinyl still a Sonig import, tho). Still despite all of Varcharz's jutting shards and bassy shots to the solar plexus, the tracks maintain a groovy, engaging approachability. Actually their muscle-flexing comes across as quite fun, not at all frightening.
