Mouse on Mars
Biography
Since emerging in the early 1990s, Mouse on Mars has been on a perpetual course of reinvention, indulging in complex, heavily hybridized forms that include everything from ambient, breakbeats, and dub to rock, and post-rock. Over a dozen albums, Mouse on Mars have set about creating new musical languages - only to tear them down again with each new distortion; so much so that, since getting together in 1993, the duo of Jan St. Werner, from Köln and Andi Toma, from Düsseldorf have become one of the few electronic groups to stand the test of time. The pair began work in Toma's studio, sharing an enthusiasm for the early experiments of German electronics and electroacoustic music, and Krautrock outfits like Can, Neu!, and Faust. Mouse on Mars has worked in collaboration with artists in many musical fields, from Stereolab to Tyondai Braxton. Early on, they were in a band/collective called Esognomig that included Ramon Bauer, Frank Dommert, Tina Frank and Florian Hecker; they released an eponymous long player on Sonig in 1999. MoM also worked with Matthew Herbert in the DJs Collapse project that resulted in the Jawfunk 12² in 2003. They also made an album with Mark E Smith of The Fall, forming a band called Von Südenfed. In 2012, Mouse on Mars relased their tenth album - Parastrophics, released on Monkeytown, following it up with a mini-album entitled WOW later in the same year, and the SPEZMODIA E.P. in early 2014.