Now for the two sort of weird MoM releases - weird in that they don't fit in the time-line quite.
Instrumentals is collected from a few years, and is 8 tracks of MoM at their more ambient. It's like Vulvaland, but more focused and more their own sound. The pieces are generally long (at least for MoM), and have that sort of hazy distortion over them, which was a big part of the early sound. It's like all of the high frequencies have been sapped away, and the remains thrown in a rock tumbler. I don't know. Good stuff at any rate.
If Instrumentals is a little odd, then Glam is plain bizarre. The story behind this is that the album is a soundtrack MoM were commissioned to do for a Tony Danza film. Apparently things didn't pan out, and Glam wound up getting released through Sonig, and then picked up by Thrill Jockey. I would very much like to see the movie that this is the soundtrack to, and I suspect it wasn't the one with Tony D in it. Another hazed out, fuzzy piece of ambience with the occasional bit of colour sticking through. It doesn't have songs per se, but the atmosphere it creates is quite cool, it might be good for a movie set in the desert, or in some grimy port-town, permanently encased in fog....
Monday, January 12, 2009
Thursday, January 8, 2009
Mouse On Mars Pt 1.
Ah.
Mouse On Mars.
When first getting into electronica, I came across a review of these guys, and their miniature cinematic pieces. At the time I was into less adventurous stuff, and so when I got my first exposure through Idiology, I was, shall we say, not really ready.
But for some reason, a few weeks later I picked up the (ridiculously expensive in NZ) copy of Autoditacker from my local record store, despite my misgivings about the 'house' tracks (at the time I couldn't stand music that had kick drum on every beat or kick-hat-kick-hat bitz-bunce-bitz-bunce).
Now it's a bit of a different story. So I shall give some time to MoM, because they are a fantastic group, who should be thought of the way Autechre and Aphex Twin are.
So:
It all starts with the oddly-named Vulvaland, which came out in 94 on Too Pure. This album is probably more different from the rest of their output than any other. It's almost ambient, with long, warm drone tracks, that don't squiggle and fidget the way MoM usually do. There are hints and suggestions of what was to follow, but on the whole it doesn't make a lot of sense to judge it in comparison to the others, as it is so different. So, in and of itself, this is a very nice album, it sometimes comes across as a less sinister version of Gas, or a cartoon version of Fennesz. Chagrin is the highlight for me, hazy chords, dubbed out sonar pings, and a vocals singing something about grand chagrin. It's quite obvious that there's a strong dub influence on this album, but it becomes that sort of hazy european electronic dub that is exemplified by the Basic Channel stuff.
Iaora Tahiti - I didn't really get this one for a long time, really it was only listening to it now that I saw what the fuss was about. In a lot of ways it is still a bridge album between Vulvaland and Autoditacker, the hazy structure and obvious dub inflection of the first album is still really prominent, but at the same time, the group are fooling around with rhythm a bit more, and there is a greater tendancy towards tighter structure. Some of it seems too close to the 'chillout' style that was going around at the time (the beats are very even, and there isn't a lot to surprise you), but there's definitely some odd stuff going on in the background.
Mouse On Mars.
When first getting into electronica, I came across a review of these guys, and their miniature cinematic pieces. At the time I was into less adventurous stuff, and so when I got my first exposure through Idiology, I was, shall we say, not really ready.
But for some reason, a few weeks later I picked up the (ridiculously expensive in NZ) copy of Autoditacker from my local record store, despite my misgivings about the 'house' tracks (at the time I couldn't stand music that had kick drum on every beat or kick-hat-kick-hat bitz-bunce-bitz-bunce).
Now it's a bit of a different story. So I shall give some time to MoM, because they are a fantastic group, who should be thought of the way Autechre and Aphex Twin are.
So:
It all starts with the oddly-named Vulvaland, which came out in 94 on Too Pure. This album is probably more different from the rest of their output than any other. It's almost ambient, with long, warm drone tracks, that don't squiggle and fidget the way MoM usually do. There are hints and suggestions of what was to follow, but on the whole it doesn't make a lot of sense to judge it in comparison to the others, as it is so different. So, in and of itself, this is a very nice album, it sometimes comes across as a less sinister version of Gas, or a cartoon version of Fennesz. Chagrin is the highlight for me, hazy chords, dubbed out sonar pings, and a vocals singing something about grand chagrin. It's quite obvious that there's a strong dub influence on this album, but it becomes that sort of hazy european electronic dub that is exemplified by the Basic Channel stuff.
Iaora Tahiti - I didn't really get this one for a long time, really it was only listening to it now that I saw what the fuss was about. In a lot of ways it is still a bridge album between Vulvaland and Autoditacker, the hazy structure and obvious dub inflection of the first album is still really prominent, but at the same time, the group are fooling around with rhythm a bit more, and there is a greater tendancy towards tighter structure. Some of it seems too close to the 'chillout' style that was going around at the time (the beats are very even, and there isn't a lot to surprise you), but there's definitely some odd stuff going on in the background.
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