Stereolab, Mouse on Mars
Of course, having the means to sample doesn’t guarantee that one has the vision to use the technology toward a greater end. But performing last week at Metro, both the British pop sextet Stereolab and German electronic style splicers Mouse on Mars demonstrated that they did, blending bits and pieces–the “dots and loops” of the title of Stereolab’s new album–into seamless new music.
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Between Stereolab’s first singles, back in 1991, and 1995’s Mars Audiac Quintet, guitarist Tim Gane and lead singer Laetitia Sadier perfected one easily dissected construction, juxtaposing the rigid motorik rhythms of the little-known German group Neu with the gentle melodies of easy-listening music and the hypnotic guitar strumming of the Velvet Underground. Along the way they spiced things up with an array of analog synthesizers, sweet string arrangements (written by onetime member and High Llamas leader Sean O’Hagan), and the beautiful, often nonsensical counterpoints and harmony lines of vocalist Mary Hansen. On last year’s sumptuous Emperor Tomato Ketchup they took a great leap forward, using more varied, flexible rhythms (which drummer Andy Ramsay was able to pull off without sounding proggy) and a vastly wider spectrum of textural color. But even on that record, the band’s MO was fairly conventional: it laid down the skeleton of a song and added overdub after overdub. On Dots and Loops, however, Stereolab tossed its old juxtapositions into a Cuisinart and then reassembled the fragments.
Mouse on Mars’s music is driven by a set of rhythms that’s tangentially connected with dance music–enough so to get them regularly lumped in with “electronica.” But though the duo makes music with computers, and though bits of popular electronic dance-music styles do waft through certain songs, the tag doesn’t hang right. For one thing, electronica is inextricably connected to constantly upgraded technology, practically guaranteeing a cycle of obsolescence. Both Mouse on Mars members willfully use late-80s equipment like E-Max 2 and Akai S100 samplers–both among the first on the market–choosing to place their trust in their own taste and ingenuity rather than their equipment. Plus, on these “archaic” instruments St. Werner and Toma have managed to create an album that’s filled not only with lots of sounds I’ve never heard before but also with real songs, with dynamic structures and hardly a repeated loop.
