Listen Without Prejudice With Open Ears Volume 1
[ed note: This article was originally published in 1998]
It's a sunny afternoon, and I'm on way from the Düsseldorf Hauptbahnof to St. Martins Studio. I stop in the park for one last listen -- nervous and daunted by the prospects of an interview with Mouse On Mars these strangest of the strange electronic alchemists -- Düsseldorf's purveyors of future dub, outer space lounge, heirs to the Krautrock throne, makers of high flying frequencies, low ends deep enough to pass into sublimination, motoring drones, propensities to childlike conditions of disorderliness and cravers of the mother's womb.
So I'm sitting in the park, and an old man comes up to me and points in the direction of St. Martins Studio and says, "Die Sonne immer scheine" and a bunch of other stuff I couldn't quite understand -- you see, he spoke German with a Düsseldorf accent, and I not being from that part of Germany couldn't quite understand. But it's true, and even the clouds cannot get in the way of this. After much confusion with my map that connects streets that are in reality several blocks apart, I arrive at St. Martin's studio. It's actually more like a commune on the roof of an office/apartment building with an art studio projecting out of it. The Mouse On Mars studio is adjoined with that of an artist's studio. In the studio, Andi Thoma, one half of Mouse On Mars, is recording Stereolab's next album . Everyone's eating, and I'm set up with some soup, chicken, and juice. There's people playing badminton around me, Andi's kid is running around with his firecrackers. He doesn't light them, instead hoping to collect enough that they'll fly him to the moon. I speak to Jan St. Werner, the other half of Mouse On Mars and also collaborator with Oval's Markus Popp in Microstoria, for about an hour and a half out on the roof in the sunshine -- Andi, too busy with Stereolab recording duties, only takes part in the interview for about five minutes. Then we take a break -- there's a barbecue, and immediately after that Mouse On Mars are back inside frying up stork in the frying pan. Later on around sunset, I talk to Jan for about another hour and a half, but run out of tape early on.
First some background. Going back in time for a moment, there was an instance around the turn of the decade when the right membrane of Jan's ear blew. The fire engines had to come, and apparently it was really painful and Jan was bedridden for a while. And then, Jan says, "And then after this, I started to listen differently to music. It was the time I bought my first equipment. I got into a new world of something." But says Andi, "Everything was mono. When I heard this music for the time, I was really wondering, because there was nothing on the right side." "And this was the geniality of it," says Jan. "And I told him there is another side of it," says Andi. And so they fused -- Jan's left side, Andi's right side -- and now they are like Yin and Yang, the difference obscured. When we speak of Mouse On Mars, we must speak of multitude, for it so: they have their left parts, and their right parts, and their side projects, and their parts that seemingly open up onto other multitudes in a metaphysics of sound.
Forgive me for I cannot speak of Mouse On Mars without speaking of metaphysics. It has been well documented that when we are sick, we are not quite ourselves. Time moves a little differently, spatial arrangements must be rearranged. Our minds can extend back into the fifth dimension. It is a little like dying or being born -- these altered states of consciousness. But I will speak more of metaphysics later, maybe not so much in this article, but later in my life.
Jan - We do something, and the actual sound that happened is not very interesting, so we just cut that out. And very interesting stuff can happen with, and it's actually more interesting, because it is like the thing around it, the spirit, the aura. And this is I think something more like homeopathic medicine. It is a certain approach to medical treatment, where you take something and then you take the half of it, and then you take the half of it, and again -- you limit it down to a point where it is no longer measurable, where physically it does not exist. But people found out that even if you do this, where it is absolutely not measurable, it has an impact on you. But what had the impact was such a small dose of something, but the normal medicine school is rejected the homeopathic theory. The idea behind it is that you restrict it that much, that what rests at the end is the body around the actual essence, the room that remains when you take away the essence. It is the stuff around the essence that reacted to it is actually what makes your body react again. It's hard to describe. It is a very strange theory, but it works.
Mouse On Mars make a music of curves, of breaks piled upon breaks, of conflicting and changing time schedules, jokey references, and not so jokey references. To think they have been described as minimalists is an abomination on the face of the everlasting and forever reaching fine reputation of electronic rock criticism. Simon Reynolds described them in an early review as 'maximinimalists,' and maybe its fair enough. But let's go one step further and call them minimaximalists.
"A lot of people do think our music is really minimalistic," says Jan St. Werner, one half, formerly the left half, of Mouse On Mars, "and we are sometimes astonished, because we think there is so much stuff going on. It's complex. On the other hand, I don't like music that is pushing, and so big, and exciting, and really tense, and really powerful. I don't like music that is so strong. Like a lot of dance music is so powerful and so pushing, and I don't really like that."
Jan traces this pushing music to something like the political climate of Germany, a situation he considers in some ways similar to Germany before the Third Reich. Of this political climate, he says, "It is really about persistence, about keeping your place, and defending your place and if there's a problem, you just wait for it to go away again, and you don't move. And after awhile, you become really fat and really successful. And success is the measure of everything, and as long as it is powerful enough and self-confident enough to stand all the crises and the criticism then it is okay, then it gets accepted by society as well. I think there must be a different approach to how things can be persistent, because really I think this leads to war. Like economically, we have a lot of unemployed people, but it's like the Third Reich before Hitler came. There's more people having no job here, but there is no sign of riot, but everything is organized and still going on. But I don't think it's good. Under the surface, everything is starting to become really aggressive. It's about to collapse, but not in a big sense, but in the personal story of the people who make up this state. And this is what it is about politically here. And I don't like it when music goes the same way.
"Once you achieve something, you just try to keep it, to make it safe, to hold it, to build up your house and fix it. I think it's not a good way. This is why it should be changeable. It should consist of parts that can be replaced. And I don't believe that when the system is running, it shouldn't be touched anymore. I think when the system is running, it should be able to be replaced at certain points. It should be improved. It should be able to show itself in a different way.
Like build up something new. Most music really goes the safe way. This is how it is, and you can really use it for whatever you want. You can get high with it, you can dance with it, because it's the best dance record and it really pushes you, and it really has the lowest bass and the highest high hat and the strongest snare drum, and it's just like there's nothing to do with it. It's a finished thing."
It is at this point the Mouse On Mars aesthetic begins -- it is a sound that at its finest is forever open, forever changing, forever shifting, and totally accomodating to the listener rather than oppressive. Their output begins with 1994's Vulvaland released on Too Pure. On the first track, on Vulvaland, they brought in the sound of a stork, the bird that brings the babies wrapped in a handkerchief, and spread it out between the speakers of the charging, motoring workout that is "Frosch."
SAB - So with Mouse On Mars -- does that mean you have the frequencies that can't be heard?
Jan - Or more like the best sound is the one you don't hear, but is the one that all the other sounds around it point on it. The sound that is actually the one that makes it doesn't have to be there, because all the sounds around it are there. And if you would fill this gap, it would be boring. But if you leave it, everyone can feel it or hear it themself. It's an interaction between you listening to it, you hearing it, and you making it. It comes into existence by you hearing it. So it's not really there. It is like dub music. If you dub out a passage, everyone knows what should be there, but what you hear is like nothing. It is a break.
Mouse On Mars are masters of the symbolic universe. This is why they use the stork sounds on the first song of their first album -- an album called Vulvaland.
Says Jan, "Well for me, it was like Vulvaland was where we came from somehow, our favorite place, and then we went out. And the next one, Iaora Tahiti, is more like a pirate record for us, a conquering record, and driving away with the boat and seeing an island. You've left the Vulvaland and went on conquering other areas, and maybe Tahiti. On the first one, Mouse On Mars the name came out of some of the tracks. We didn't even have a name till the end of it. But before it was like nothing. We knew we wanted to do this kind of music, and it happened, and then we had a name. On the second one, we already knew who we were, and what we wanted. We wanted to go out and experience things and adventures, and so I think this is linked this way. But I don't know about the third record, what it will be called, which chapter of the story it'll tell. But again, Vulvaland really fits into the dub thing. I don't think we're really a dub band, but I like the aspect of space and breaks and different time measurement."
SAB - I never understand exactly what the term dub means, in terms of its original function. Could you explain it more clearly for me?
Jan - You dub something, or you overdub something, you put something else instead of it. Or you leave the vocal out. The dub comes from the b-side of a reggae single. The a-side was always the single version with singing, and the b-side you always have the dub version without singing, just the instrumental version. And the people mixed it live on the mixing desk, put away the rhythm and put some reverb or echo in. Or sometimes, some of the vocals remain, but it is not the right version anymore. Like when he sings, 'I believe in Jah,' it just goes 'I bel-be-be-be' and everybody knows what should come, but it is not there anymore. It is just an echo replacing it. And sometimes the whole rhythm isn't there. And sometimes they don't really do it just for like four bars -- sometimes it's just reverb replacing the whole song. But everyone knows what had been there. You establish another measurement, another feeling for the song, another time for the song. You give it another schedule. And this is the good thing about what dub is. We are not reggae people, we are not black, and we feel differently, and we have a different history, and we haven't been thrown out of our country.
Mouse On Mars resemble to me most closely, in terms of aesthetic considerations and not literally sound, dub or space age bachelor pad music -- the music that is forming the basis for the New Spirit, a music of insecurity and mystery. The central tenets then, and not necessarily all of them are employed in every second of a Mouse On Mars song as they don't need to be (we don't aim to resort to the tricks of the trade as Markus Popp of Oval later labels them), are: out-of-wack volumes and sounds in the mix not where they should be; lack of rules; the individual's embrace of the elemental, the unknown, the metaphysical, and the empirical -- the individual leaves the process in parts of the song, surrendering freedom to the sounds, and only comes back to edit them; an embrace of as many instruments as possible, be they electronic or acoustic, and then a blurring of the distinctions between electronic and acoustic through strange effects; obscure referencing and then obscuring the reference, such as the way Lee Perry owes as much to Morricone and the Beach Boys as calypso and roots reggae; and this is something that would be true to dub but not SABPM, a music of responsibility; lots of breaks, no discernible centre to the song; a focus on the sound around the sound; consideration of stereophonic capacities; music that leaves its listenable function intact -- it is multifunctional, adequate for the foreground and the background of the listening experience; perpetually open and unchanging.
On this last point, Jan says, "Music needs to have the ability to change, and to go into different directions, and to change its shape. And even if it doesn't, it should always have the possibility. If you listen to it, you should never feel safe, like in the way you don't have to listen to it anymore. You should always have to stay interested. It's maybe not that much on purpose, but what we think the listener should be is about us. We always need to be thrilled by it, or our awareness has to be stimulated. But also we try not to make too much. Because you can really make a cut-up song that goes into all the directions at once and really everything is in there. There always has to be the tension between what does happen, what does not happen, and what could happen. It's always like this -- Is that you?"
SAB - But everyone understands loss.
Jan - Yeah, okay, we understand it, but it is not really us. It's a different history, so I would never say I really understand dub, because it is a very social thing that is part of the Jamaican musical culture. And then having a break, and trying to live, try to establish a different approach to their own culture. Like maybe just dubbing it, or having a smoke and spacing out, and having a totally different feeling for time and existence, because those people are waiting. It is a culture based on waiting to go back to their country which is Africa and not Jamaica. So all this music is really based on something we can't really feel. They smoke a lot, and they really want to conquer back their country. They were taken away as slaves, and they want to go back as proud men, black men. They develop their own musical culture, their own rhythmical culture, but white people -- they take the technical aspect of dub and include it into their music, and they take the echo or the reverb, or they mix all kinds of things which they think is funny, like what the Orb do or what we do or Rockers Hi-Fi. But I think we do it sometimes without really thinking where it comes from and without really honoring the suffering that is in this music, where it is coming from. But coming back to the dub aspect, this is where dub comes from. But I like the idea of interupting a song, and you know what would happen, but you don't hear it, but you accept it.
Something is ringing in the background, and I joke that it's my mobile phone (I do have one of course, but I don't give away my number -- this is the joke), and Jan says in his best espionage, walkie-talkie voice, "Only sixty more years to run...," and then returns to normal: "Yeah, but this is the idea. It's good when you don't know yourself what is really happening, and I think this is always the problem between what you know and what you don't want to know. I think that if you do fully understand something. If you know the sounds and everything is really clear, you lose your interest. Because then the magic is gone. There is no alchemy. How we work is if you really understand something you try to take over it, or destroy it, or put something new. It's always trying to keep this tension -- not wanting too much, and not doing too much, and not trying everything."
SAB - So that's what you mean by the breaks, and not actual silence?
Jan - No put something else in there. And sometimes it can also be silence, but silence is too obvious. It makes you too aware that something is missing. But it can be silence sometimes. Silence is important for everything. Music is like the silence between two beats, or two events. This is what rhythm is. The silence between two points. And I don't want to become too religious but I think this is interesting, and I think the interesting sounds are the ones you know about, that you can really feel, but they are not actually there. This is the most interesting thing about music.
SAB - I love that when you're in a room -- okay, say it's a song you're very familar with it, and you hear the first 30 seconds of the song, then you walk out of the room, and you're thinking about something completely different for a minute, and then at a 1:31 you think of the song and you can hear it at that point as if you've never missed a beat, and you've long since left the room. So much Mouse On Mars music is unconscious isn't it?
Jan - In a way, we are unconscious of it, but we also feel really responsible for the music. It's not like unconsciously doing something and then not caring, or just doing it. But really a lot of the time, and in the track it may sound completely different in the end, but they go through so many stages, that sometimes the initial spark of where it came from is not in the song anymore. But it took hours or maybe sometimes a day to get rid of it, and replace it by something that is not exactly the same. Like building stuff around it, and then taking the initial stuff out of it.
SAB - And the lack of rules.
Jan - Yes. You always have to see what kind of rules are necessary, where you fell into. You have to see what happened and then you can try to establish your system, how to deal with it. You shouldn't come with prejudices, like 'I have to have the music like this'. We're not composers who write down before what we do in the end. We see what kind of material we have, and what wants to be shaped out of it. We really see a song that has something with its own personality and we really have to stick with it, and guide it the best way. We feel it like something that really has its own -- not only destiny or goal -- its own brain, it is something and you have to feel responsible for it, and guide it. You make it grow up, and you have to let it go its own way. Give it as much as you can, and let go on its own way on its own legs.
SAB - Yeah, it all sounds so metaphysical?
Jan - Yeah, it's true, well to be more practical ...
SAB - Well, it's okay. I like metaphysics. It's not too popular anymore. I always believe in magic and mysticism.
Jan - Yeah, we do too, because you can feel it.
SAB - That's why I don't like authorship too much.This is like all my thoughts coming together -- what I said about Smiley Smile, about being sick, about Vulvaland -- it's like there's this big pool of stuff at the back of my head, and you want to reach it and not be yourself anymore and see what you can pull out. There is just this well of sound back there that you can reach when you're not quite yourself. And that's magic.
Jan - Yeah, maybe you have to be a mystic, or belive in magic in some way, because so many things happen that you can't understand. And if you tried to, you would destroy everything. We're really looking for this spark where something is happening and you don't know what it is, but you just feel it. Something where you get a little excited or you sweat a little bit, and this is what we go for. And when this happens, it is really a point of insanity, a point of nowhere. We don't have any words, and we really try carefully to prepare for this event, and when it happens we try to be as ready as possible so we can record it, and we are both aware of it. We can tell the other, 'What you are just doing, record it.'
So you get the idea. Listen to Mouse On Mars songs with open ears. Buy it on all formats and kinds of equipment. Says Jan, "The way we work is just so into sounds or frequencies, and tries to expand in different directions either soundwise or frequency-wise, room-wise, or whatever. It comes across differently on different speakers. It's not our main thing, but it is something that comes with the approach we have. It sounds different on a TV. It sounds different on a small ghettoblaster, or on a really good PA. We try to get it so it works for everyone, and not just the privileged. It is not just for privileged listening."
SAB - Yeah, there's always this creative explosion. You get overrun. You can't sleep.
Jan - But when this happens, you can't take yourself out. Because you would destroy it. Because you are like a part of a chain, and if you would reflect it, you would take yourself out, because you would see yourself from a different perspective.
You wouldn't just be yourself, you would see yourself, and then you would be the missing chain. Then, it wouldn't run properly, because you would be missing. But this comes at the point of production, where I think you do have to be aware. It's how you handle it, how you guide it, and how you shape it. This is a very important point as well, because you can be as creative as you want, but you can't communicate it. And it helps yourself maybe, but it does not really help anyone else. You cannot really present it. You have to find a way of presenting it, or a way of combining it into something so complex that people who are not interested in this certain spark of creativeness can find another spark. Maybe some people think our melodies are stupid, or that we are too naive. But on the other hand, they can find the production or engineering interesting. This is a time when you have to think a lot and be really aware. This is sometimes also where we make the mistake by mixing something. Sometimes, we force the track in really the wrong direction. We had some really good moments or some very good aspects and sounds, but we treated them the wrong way. Sometimes we have to go back to the track and delete, and put everything away again. Dissolve it, and then recombine it. Because sometimes what really makes a track is somewhere else than you think it is. You expect a track to be a certain track, but it is really a totally different track. But you just don't know, and you think because you did it, you have the right to force it, but maybe you didn't. You did something that is not quite you, so you can't quite force into any different kind of direction. If you do it, it will come back in a sad way, because you can't identify with it. After awhile, you see you did it the wrong way, and it does not feel good. So we try to be as open as possible, and also try to find the best way to manage it, and to encourage it, and to put enough energy into it. This is why a lot of music for me is sad music, because people might have good ideas but they don't produce them, they don't send them the right away. It is just like sketches. It sounds very poor. Or maybe they're interested in certain sounds or in a certain procedure, but they didn't have any interest in how to deal with it in the end. And I think this is poor, and music needs more responsibility. This is where most music is not complex enough. It may have a lot of sounds, but it is just a lot of sounds sounding like nothing. It's like an hysterical chicken. It's a mess. Music is very magical though. I think for me, there is hardly any music that for me doesn't have a certain quality. I think music is such a brilliant thing.
Listen to it from two feet and from twenty feet, and in different places and circumstances. Andi says, "We will sometimes do a sound that is always different, depending on what angle you watch, er listen, to the music from. That's why we can hear the tracks for a long time, and why the tracks are still changing." And Jan says, "I think this is the main idea for us. We always want the music changing, even when it is pressed on a CD. It should still have the possibility to be seen from very different angles. It should have the chance to develop with you -- not develop the same as you develop, but it should be able to be seen to be different." "A living thing," says Andi.
SAB - Yeah, I know what you mean. Everything can get interesting for awhile.
Jan - Yeah, for me, music has this abstract quality that stands above everything human people do. Music is really really abstract that is also really unhuman in a way, and I feel really good with music, because I don't feel people. I feel everything.
by Don Anderson
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