Earbuddy: Mouse on Mars - Parastrophics Review

Gorilla on Jupiter? Don't sell yourselves short, guys...

Mouse on Mars - Parastrophics (2012) – 8.8 / 10.0
Monkeytown

To be fair, and in the interest of full disclosure, for being such a fan of Mouse on Mars, my exposure to the all-over-the-map German technocrats Jan St. Werner and Andi Toma is relatively new, like, weeks new, just hopped on the bandwagon new. I have read the name Mouse on Mars on different blogs and in magazines for years; many, many years, as it turns out, because the duo has been making music for the better part of two decades (their debut, Vulvaland, was released in 1994). The band’s name evoked an image of stark, alien isolation, and evoked a kinda creepiness, like it would be a little chilly for this bred-on-indie and pop kid, as I assumed they plied in ambience and drizzly electro-atmospherics. Which is not to say they never do, but a few books I prematurely judged by their covers later (1997’s Instrumentals and 2001’s Idiology, in particular) and I counted myself as a MoM partisan, no looking back.

What really impresses most about Mouse on Mars’ discography, is their plurality, leaving damn little off limits, keeping in mind, that before Parastrophics, I had really sorted through (read; listened through multiple times) maybe two, two and a half MoM records, coming away shocked and impressed at the density and sheer mass the band fuse together, often on one track, not to mention on any entire, given long-player.

Parastrophics, then, continues this traditionless tradition. Like America’s own Flying Lotus’ avant-garde hip-hop, Mouse on Mars transcend meaningless labels like IDM or post-techno (barf!), and make some serious and seriously heavy pop music, with nearly limitless technological tools and easy-handed craftsmanship. There are the heavy bangers on the album (‘Metrotopy’, ‘Polaroyced’), as well as left field abstractions like ‘Chordblocker, Cinnamon Toasted’, an especially vertiginous track, that could seemingly induce inner ear spasms if not full-on nausea, under the right conditions; with its thunderous, buzzy lower end- no small feat, and not a criticism, by the way. What really matters, is that Mouse on Mars, on Parastrophics, never fail to blur the line that so easily divides commerce and entertainment from art. The album’s fluid grace and powerful virtue has kept me awake and alert enough over the last week or so of listens to prevent me from kachunking head first into my keyboard at work, drooling into the collection of chip crumbs and dust mites that no doubt rule the intersections between the keys. Parastrophics, to its unending credit, stimulates the synapses in the best possible way, and will no doubt grace the single digits of many year-end lists, mine included.