MOUSE ON MARS

The surprise support act of the evening was an embarrassed-looking stripper disrobing before the crowd of nonplussed electronica bods, while the blips and beats abounded. You might call it misjudging the audience, but it succeeded in shocking people out of their complacency, which is always a good thing. Besides, if naked deejaying is the coming trend, I’m all for it. It also resulted in the most chucklesome moment of the evening, as amongst the open-mouthed observers, a well-known lo-fi singer-songwriter-about-town nodding sagely, as his mate remarked “Nice tune”. At least that’s what I think he said.

Nice tunes were hardly absent from Mouse On Mars’ set, although they kicked off with an unexpectedly energetic noise-out. “It is nice to be in the birthplace of dub,” they grinned, and backed up the reference with a couple of bass-heavy, reggae-ish tracks, always injecting such squiggly variations as to prevent things becoming too comfortable. Strippers aside, the star of the night was their afro-tastic drummer with his vocoded vocals, an imposing central presence between the pair of slight Germans, one on guitar, the other on keys and samplers. While the first half of the set would have sounded a tad samey to the unitiated, M.O.M. managed to retain a feel-good funkiness, while still (hopefully) staying odd enough to satisfy the bed-sit obsessives. Altering the feel towards the end with some slow, melodic ones (which one wag commented

sounded a bit like a ‘dolphin orgy’), they even produced a ‘proper song’and strayed into some strange prog/psychedelic territory. Weird, but

entertaining – I’d say the M.O.M. boys done good.