- Mouse on Mars have always sat at the more highbrow end of the spectrum, with artistically fertile projects including an unlikely pairing with Mark E. Smith, soundtracking Herzog's Fata Morgana and an arts directorship at the Amsterdam Institute for Electronic Music. One of the most overt examples of this in their career occurred just recently, a three-part composition performed on their laptops alongside MusikFabrik, one of the world's leading avant-garde and new music ensembles. Composed electronically by the duo using orchestral samples and subsequently scored by conductor de Ridder and composer Stefan Streich for the twenty or so strings, brass, woodwind and percussion, it brings electronic music in line with contemporary and classical to an extent that's rarely seen.
Starting the evening, Stockhausen's "Gesang der Junglinge," a 1956 recording that is often described as the first masterpiece of electronic music, was played in surround sound. A child's voice reciting biblical verse in German was spliced with harsh squiggles and powerful impulses of electronic sound, resulting in a dissonant collage where the individual elements recoiled from the ones around them by the choice of ballistics and tonal qualities. With the stage empty, the crowd was unsure whether to clap—there were giggles when somebody finally did—but whether you'd consider this music or not, it was at the least a deep and tightly studied example of sound design.
Markus Popp, a sometime collaborator with Jan St. Werner of MoM, had a sound that was more aligned with modern computer production. As the remaining member of Oval, his sound reflected their pioneering work in glitch. When he came out, he tweaked crashing drum breaks together with harsh elastic plucks, resulting in melodies that shone with so much melancholy and feeling it was remarkable.
A large part of the music throughout the evening pushed the rhythmic possibilities of tonal instrumentation. The tightly engineered sound in the concert hall was upfront and unmuffled, with a character that suited this well. (It's unusual to hear electronic music in venues that are this well designed for sound.) "Paeanumnion," Mouse on Mars' piece, was particularly complex, but was immediately recognisable as the duo, with lush, quirky melodies, fuzzy synth lines, and a rapid assortment of sounds bounding around each other. The conductor was arresting to watch, with expressive body movements reflecting the daydream, aggressiveness or wonk in the music, and kept the ensemble in line flawlessly with the head-spinning rhythms. The instrumentation was suitably innovative, too, with one passage involving the group playing out those rhythms by means of whipping their bows past the mikes, and another involving a conch.
At times it came across as the duo with a washing orchestral accompaniment. At others, they were playing as another instrument in the ensemble. Different features from across 20th century music were incorporated in quite a conspicuous way, including Philip Glass-esque minimalism, ambient and even a section of distorted techno which dissolved into resonant clicks and pops. Nevertheless, the music had the kind of layer, detail and elaborateness that was extremely impressive to hear, let alone watch being played.