The Post-Rockist

Mouse on Mars
Varcharz
[Ipecac Recordings; 2006]

The least frivolous record ever…like a hard electronic spanking.

Germans have never been regarded as the most playful or jocular people.  They have developed a reputation that is easily lampooned as ill-tempered drill sergeants mixed with androgynous perversion as seen on “Sprockets.”  One need only briefly glance at the photos I took on my trip to the Beate Uhse Erotic Museum in Berlin to see what I’m talking about.  To me, and countless other non-Deutsche, that is what we think of when we think of Germans. Varcharz isn’t going to do anything to change that perception. 

On their latest release, Mouse on Mars means business.  Serious Fucking Business.  This is quite possibly the least playful and least jocular album of the year.  Andi Toma and Jan St. Werner have put together a snarling beast of an album.  And it is good…really good.  According to the Ipecac Recordings website, Varcharz has its foundation in the same recording sessions the resulted in 2004’s Radical Connector.  This is almost impossible to believe.  Varcharz is no dance album.  Gone are the overtly pop songs and with cleverly manipulated vocals, replaced by extremely aggressive and wildly experimental electronic rock.  The attitude change between albums is even reflected in the language.  While Radical Connector boasts song titles like “Detected Beats” and “Send Me Shivers,” this violence that is Varcharz includes “skik” and “igoegowhygowego.”  Even the song titles mirror that uniquely German trait of ill-tempered perversion. 

The majority of Varcharz is a mix of experimental IDM-style electronics and the more chaotic side of post-rock.  Grainy sounds, hissing backgrounds, and jolting beats rampage along through each song, usually getting more intense as the song builds as if the different components are fighting each other.  But, the knock-blow never comes.  These songs don’t collapse into cacophony as if noise triumphed over rhythm or vice versa.  Rather, noise and rhythm interact with each other and everything in the song mutates.  Beats become tonal, melodies become syncopated and the whole songs changes complexion.  So, while the original timing or melodic phrasing endures, it only exists under a thousand tiny distortions.  Perhaps the standout example of this transformation occurs in “bertney.”  It begins with a series of frantic and impatient beats, but as you listen these staccato noises actually spell out a hummable melody.  These skittering beats continue, with the same melody, but as the song evolves, melody becomes the property of hazy squalls of noise with almost no rhythmic structure.  The whole of Varcharz is marked by these instances of distortion and variation.  The most amazing part of this feat is that Mouse on Mars is able to deliver these subtle variations in a way that isn’t subtle at all.  It’s just too extreme and intense to be subtle…or to give a fuck about subtlety.

Leave it to the Germans to create this music.  Rock and electronic music perverted to its very core.

{Visit the Mouse on Mars home page.  Or, pre-order Varcharz today.}

-Posted by E. Kula