Mouse on Mars

Interviewed july 1997 at the American Hotel in Amsterdam

It's almost three years ago since I last spoke to Mouse on Mars, the duo from Cologne. Back then Jan St. Werner and Andy Toma were one of the few bands combining the best of two worlds, making instrumental music using electronic instruments as well as rock instruments. Now it's commonplace, everybody is doing it. The music of Mouse on Mars was hard to pinpoint, now people call it Post-Rock . Things have changed a lot in three years.

CHANGES

Mouse on Mars for instance? Jan: 'Oh no, we didn't change that much, but we have made some progress. The sound itself has changed, our songs used to be longer and we used more droning elements. Now the songs are much shorter and we try to fit in lots of little sounds.' Andi: 'But we did try very hard to change. We wanted to completely rearrange the way we sound, but that failed. We could not change the fact we sound like Mous on Mars, so we sticked to our style.' Jan: 'We did change the way we arrange our music and sounds, everything has become more rhythmic and shorter. In a way we went from the charming way to make music to the more convincing way.' Andi: 'And we changed some things in our studio, we now use harddisk recording. That makes it possible for us to edit things on digital level. It gives us more freedom to edit then back when we still used tape.' Jan: 'Now we have become a bit more strict about the beginning and ending of tracks. We pay more attention to the structure of songs.'

PIONEERS

It still hard to hard to define what kind of band Mouse on Mars is. Do they see their own work as songs or not? Jan: 'Yeah, I think we have always written songs.' Andi: 'I think we must be an electronic band making non-electronic music, or...' Jan: 'Or maybe more like a non-electronic band making electronic music. Erm.. Oh well, in one way or another there's a not in there somewhere.' Andi: 'At the moment of creation we don't think about it too much. The instruments are just tools. For us it's the cheapest way to work and that's why we do it.' Jan: 'We still use conventional instruments, but I wouldn't want to use them all the time. And we would probably get in a fight about who should play what, one playing drums, the other guitar. It wouldn't work out. Now it's much more democratic, we can complement each other on things the other doesn't think about. And this way we never have to fight about the hierarchy in the band, just about the music itself.' Do you ever argue? Jan: 'Almost never. We do disagree from time to time.' Andi: 'And that isn't such a bad thing, because then you have to convince each other.' Jan: 'But we aren't that easy to convince. Not that we feel we know more. I'm always glad if I meet somebody who has a better idea then I do.' But at the moment it looks like a lot of bands have exactly the same idea. In Germany alone there are many bands making electronic music out of a rock context: Kreidler, To Rococo Rot, Console, Funkstörung, etcetera.. Jan: 'What Funkstörung is doing I really like, I think the rest of them are okay, but we do not like to be compared.' Andi: 'At the moment it is very cool to mix electronic instruments with rock instruments, but for us it's the only way. This way of working gives us also the possibility to do a live concert. But when I see many of these other bands play I get dissapointed the way they present themselves live. I have seen Kreidler play and they try to build their music around certain fixed elements, that takes away the spontaneity in the music and thats a real shame.' Jan: 'They want to stay in control and that makes for static music.'

FORM FOLLOWS FUNCTION

Using electronic instruments is not only in fashion in Germany. In the United States it's even more commonplace. Jan: 'I hope we won't get slagged off for this, but I think we were one of the first bands in the nineties who made it cool again to use electronic instruments in rockmusic. I'm sure Tortoise was in some way influenced by us when they made that second album. We know The Sea And Cake and Tortoise really like our music. We now have a deal with their label Thrill Jockey in America.' Still, Mouse On Mars were one of the few bands that wasn't asked to do a remix for the serie of remixes Tortoise asked people to do. Jan: 'I think they didn't ask us because we are still relatively unknown in the States. We are seen as gardenshed electronics, all the others that did get to remix them are a lot more hip over there.' Andi: 'I don't think it's of any importance a band decides to use electronic instruments or not. It's just like painting. A good painter will use a pencil at one time and than goes back to oilpainting at another. It isn't about what resources you use, it's about the final product, the music.' Jan: 'People focus too much on the formulas and the designs behind the product, the form is seen as more important than the actual content. To us the form is important, without form there can be no content, but people shouldn't place all attention on it. Form follows function. I have no idea if that's true, it's a cliche, but those show up if you start to reflect on music.'

TOO STRANGE

Better not do that again. Enough bickering about the philosophical basis of content and form. The new record "Autoditacker" is just a beautiful Mouse On Mars record, a logical continuation on "Iaora Tahiti", the one before. Next to making the new one they have been busy doing all kinds of things. Jan, who lives right above the A-Musik store has started a musique concrête collective, in which he is making music by experimenting with tapeloops and samplers. At the same time Andi worked at recording and mixing one half of the Stereolab album "Dots and Loops". And together they worked at making a soundtrack to an American movie starring Tony Danza (yeah, yeah, that Italian in Who is the boss and Taxi ). Jan: 'Oh, that was a complete disaster. They weren't happy about the way it turned out in the end. Again they thought it was too weird, still I think it would have worked out with our music. Sadly we didn't like the film that much so in a way we are happy they didn't use it. We are planning to release it anyway on our own label. There's one thing to remember us of the whole thing, you can hear the director is on "Autoditacker". We asked to say something in a dictaphone and he went completely beserk, you can hear him on "Dark FX". That is probably the only good thing we kept from the whole thing." And now for one final question: When will you be popular? Jan: 'I think we could really do well with the Eskimos. Did you know that Eskimos have lots of different words for snow. Maybe there are people that have lots of words for bassdrum. Oh no, I shouldn't have asked, they already exist: Germans.' Mouse on Mars '95 A-musik Too Pure Post-rock