More traditional studio equipment includes a 40-channel in-line VCA-automated Soundcraft DC2020 desk, Westlake Audio BBSM 12+ subwoofer and Yamaha NS10 monitors, a wide range of top-quality microphones and outboard gear, plus a Studer A800 Mk3 analogue 24-track and an Akai ADAM 12-track multitrack. The band's studio, St Martin Tonstudio, is based in Düsseldorf, where the equipment is impressive enough for it also to function as a commercial studio. But to create a very personal music trying to see how far we can get with all the elements we work with, all the equipment in the studio and the psychoacoustic things and the effects and synthesizers, and tape echoes." The Mouse's Lair
I think this is still our focus: not to see what genres we are connected with or which aesthetics we play around with. Instead we used these samples like all our sounds, as pure sound - they became very personal examinations of the structure of sound. It's an academic way of looking that comes across as clever, but limits you very much. But even at the time these samples were never used to pay homage or as a reference to our record collection. "In our early days we would occasionally use a sample from someone else's record, like on Vulvaland we used a few samples from other people's records, something we don't do any more. We wanted to stay away from all clichés and references to influences. Academic for us doesn't only mean complex music done by people who are formally trained, but also being very aware of your surroundings and the genres and clichés that you are influenced by. I don't mean this as some kind of anti-concept. "At the time Andi and I just wanted to work with what we had equipment-wise," St Werner recalls, "and we didn't want to be too. Photo: Rosa BarbaOther artistic choices Toma and Werner made in their early days in 1992 were more fortuitous, and laid the blueprints for MOM's musical direction and success. Jan St Werner professes to find synths boring, but he still finds room for the classic Minimoog in his studio. it still sounds nice, but when it comes to what the words mean, I get bored." Better Choices Some evil force has given us that stupid title. And now I have to say that we don't like it very much. It also sounded as little academic as possible, and people around us said things like 'Yes, that's nice, I can relate to it.' But we weren't aware that we would become. For instance, he explains that the Mouse On Mars name was chosen because "Andi and I liked it for the sound that it has and we thought it was an unobvious name for an electronic band. Given the band's tendency to hide behind enigmatic quirky humour, it's a pleasant surprise to find Jan St Werner straightforward and to the point. Hailing from Germany, MOM consist of Andi Toma and Jan St Werner, and have been making boundary-, speaker- and mind-bending albums since 1994.
What one wouldn't suspect is that Mouse On Mars are the European leaders of a genre that's often all too serious: the electronic music avant garde. It would be hard for a band called Mouse On Mars to take themselves too seriously, and a sense of humour is certainly apparent in album titles like Vulvaland, Ideology, Niun Niggung and track titles like 'Stereomission', 'Omnibuzz', 'Yippie', 'Circloid Bricklett Sprüngli' and 'Paradical'. Their experimental approach brings together analogue and digital, lo-fi and hi-fi, and real instruments and samples to create an organic-sounding whole. Over the last decade, Mouse On Mars have become one of the leading names in European electronic music.
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