Idiology

“Like this 49-minute album, ‘Paradical’ is over much too quickly. But desire is more interesting than satiation, which is why God invented the repeat button.” - Pitchfork (9.6) “Idiology takes the acoustic experiments of Niun Niggung even further, and it’s this combination of electronic and ‘traditional’ music -- melding keyboards and synthesizers with french horns and guitars and trumpets into a seamless whole -- that points the way through the dead-ends of most electronica.” - PopMatters “Andi Toma and Jan St. Werner continue to create soundscapes that blur the line between programming and live musicianship, and sometimes between Earth and outer space.” - The A.V. Club From their beginnings in 1992, Cologne native Jan St. Werner and Dusseldorfer Andi Toma have consistently challenged electronic music's paradigm in often surprising and always intriguing ways. Idiology is the duo's seventh album and is no exception to this rule, as Mouse on Mars surround themselves with strings, woodwinds, brass and the band's own heavily modified fleet of machines in the St. Martin's Tonstudio. Fans should once again brace themselves for the inevitable shock of the new as Germany's most irreverent audio renegades have created the perfect soundtrack for a highly sinister dance party. Kicking off with "Actionist Respoke", the album's first single, Mouse on Mars officially declare their independence from glitchtronica's shoegazing legions. Longtime collaborator Dodo Nkishi lends a uniquely warped vocal sensibility to the track which already features Mouse on Mars's darkest grooves to date. The rest of the album continues to thicken the group's sonic stew. Tracks such as "Presence" and "Catching Butterflies With Hands" have their populist intentions undermined by Werner and Toma's meddling hands, while the duo reprise their flirtation with the orchestral as heard on the opening tracks from 2000's Niun Niggung. At the other end of the spectrum, "Introduce" is a truly evil slice of twisted lympho-zoid hip-hop. Idiology takes no prisoners in its dual-pronged assault on the conventions of modern music. Only with the loungy closing number, "Fantastic Analysis" (a term Werner and Toma invented to describe their working process), do Mouse on Mars let the arrangements breathe a long sigh of relief, the calm after the storm. To enable these stylistic achievements Mouse on Mars enlist the help of partners in crime such as: Nkishi, the multi-talented Harald "Sack" Ziegler, house icon Matthew Herbert on piano, violinist Matty Arouse, in addition to fellow programming wizards Adam "Vert" Butler and F.X. Randomiz. The latter two toured with Mouse on Mars in 2000 as they successfully triumphed over audiences around the globe.

There's a stereotype that people who like to write about music eventually become jaded. After years of sawing through ...

That’ll be ‘Idiology’ as in the art of being idiosyncratic, we suppose.

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