Mouse on Mars

Interviewed spring 1995 at Paradiso, Amsterdam (Tegentonen festival)

They were without a doubt the high point of the Tegentonen festival in Paradiso, Amsterdam earlier that year. Especially for the evening the two Germans, Andi Toma and Jan St Werner were joined by an English drummer who gave the music some extra accents. Because of that, the band really didn't sound like a techno act, but more like a guitar based rockband similar to Seefeel, a Tegentonen high point of last year.

"We don't see ourselves as a techno band." Andi tells me, "The festival organisation asked us to describe our music and we said they could call it 'electro-kraut-dub-grind'. But they didn't understand that, so it became 'krautrock' in the flyer." Even that description is too limiting for Mouse on Mars' music. Andi: "We're really going in a death-kraut or grind-kraut direction. During a recent Peel session we almost sounded like Heavy Metal. We weren't very prepared, so we made some things up on the spot. Nobody seemed to mind though, John Peel broadcasted it.

Jan: "I'm glad we don't have to behave like a techno band. Thanks to Too Pure we have the freedom to do whatever we like.

Andi: "Our experience with many independent labels is that if you suddenly make something completely different, they'll tell you shocked that that wasn't really what they had in mind. But Too Pure seems to have the fullest confidence in us, as long as we know what we do. They are a great bunch of people. They came to germany to meet us.

Jan: "That was really important to them. They had to get an idea of what we are about. They are more interested in the development of ideas by people instead of a certain style by a band."

Andi and Jan earn a living with music. Next to Mouse on Mars, they seperately work with a lot of other people. For instance the German techno band Oval. But to earn more money, they sometimes make tunes for German television. "Yes, they call us a lot for those kind of things." says Jan, "We've worked for Vox, a reasonably experimental German television station. At the station we were responsible for all the sounds and tunes. Since then, we've made music for a lot of programs. The weird thing is that most of the programs seem to stop after a short while.

Andi: "They always call to ask us to make something really 'special' for the show. And if they hear the result a few weeks later, they say: 'Gosh, that sounds very special. Could you make it a bit less special?'

Jan: "The worst thing they can say is that it sounds 'unique', because then the program will seize to exist almost immediatly.

Andi: "But thanks to this extra source of income, we've enough money to buy our electronic equipment. Recently we bought a 'professional Super Robert voice'.

Jan: "We found it in a catalogue with equipment made by D.I.Y. people. If you have a sound that you don't like, put it through a 'Super Robert' and it will sound completely distorted and cool."

These and the sounds of everyday life are the kind of sounds Andi and Jan get excited about. Jan: "One day we found out we forgot to listen. If you listen to your surroundings then you'll discover music in everything. Last year we did an experiment requested by the Finnish techno label Sähkö. For one week the label had started up a non-stop experimental techno radiostation in Helsinki and we were allowed to fill an hour.

Andi: "Our contribution was a recording consisting of three levels. First we had put up microphones all around the studio. Next to that we had sampled various everyday sounds in the city. And during all that our shortwave radio picked up all sorts of strange noises. We played everything live and it fitted perfectly!

Jan: "As long as you don't set up a goal for yourself nothing can go wrong. That's what people should think about more often. If they would, there would be much less war and dissagreement in a world without plans. If you don't plan it, you take one step at a time. And you'll just see where you end up."