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LP
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SONIG 094LP
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In 2007 an Italian film festival invites Mouse on Mars to score a film of their choice. The organizers claim to be able to clear the rights for any movie the band chooses. Werner Herzog's fictional documentary Fata Morgana, which merges footage of several desert explorations by Herzog and his team into one continuous association, has long been a band's favorite. The film comes with a soundtrack by Mozart, Leonard Cohen, Third Ear Band and field recordings. Andi Toma and Jan St. Werner are sent a DVD to Düsseldorf and start working. The idea is to score the film in real time so instrumentation has to be readily at hand: guitar, percussion, electronics, mouth harp, pedals, software, tapes, samplers. Once the arrangement for the three-part film is sorted Mouse on Mars bring their score to stage. Herzog Sessions is performed twice: first when the band still thought the rights had been cleared, and a second time at London's Southbank Center knowing that Herzog would have never approved a new score. Filmed in 1971, Fata Morgana is perhaps not one of Herzog's best-known works, but then Mouse on Mars have never been ones to embrace the mainstream, quietly letting their modern, experimental take on krautrock do the talking over the years, thus producing some quietly brilliant electronica that far outweighs their modest profile. The film itself is not altogether dissimilar to the wonderful, Phillip Glass-scored Koyaanisqatsi, with sweeping landscape shots and no obvious plot or narrative, though Fata is concentrated purely in one place -- in and around the Sahara Desert, switching from images of barren wasteland to desert tribes and dead, skeletal cattle. The obvious thing to do when soundtracking such powerful imagery is to vie for dreamy electronic soundscapes which can be sustained for a long period, and whilst this ambient shoegaze approach was present and correct (also carefully constructed and highly effective), Mouse on Mars added a human element to the performance, incorporating a live dimension by using and looping guitars, harmonicas, processed vocals and even a live horn player for the final section of the film. Some of the most interesting points arose when the duo suddenly switched from solemn, ambient tones to glitchy, bouncing electro (reminiscent of their more upbeat work) whilst on the same film shot -- causing the audience mood to flick from tripped-out bliss to attentive semi-wired, utterly subverting any idea of a narrative the film may have possessed.
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2LP
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SONIG 096LP
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God knows enough has been written about Workshop. This group has been around since 1985, and what they did was this: musically quite limited, they made the music they wanted to hear, but in an ingenious way. Some played the instruments skillfully and others not so much. Seven records were recorded, which, with the exception of the second LP, are still more than worth listening to today. Are they in danger of being forgotten? Yes and no. What is worth listening to here has often been banned. One must bring it out again. Make attentive. Against the forgetting. These impetuous songs -- just let them get close to you again and listen to them in a new context and forget all the smart-ass talk that was said about them. That means to put the self with all its reality entanglements in the pillory. This is of course not only pleasant. Bravo!
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LP
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SONIG 093LP
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In spring 1994, Mouse on Mars contributed an exclusive piece to Sähkö Recordings' ambient radio project, a one-week public radio program that was aired citywide in Helsinki, Finland. Andi Toma and Jan St. Werner recorded sounds in and around their studio in Düsseldorf Bilk to construct one continuous composition that spanned the course of one neighborhood walk. Midi-controlled synths, samplers, analogue effects, tape delays, effect pedals, guitars and a jew's harp were juxtaposed with recordings captured during the walk. An additional microphone that pointed out of the studio window was occasionally dubbed into the mix. The resulting collage was broadcast just a few months before the group's debut album Vulvaland came out and never aired again. 30 years into the band's existence Andi Toma and Jan St. Werner revise the duo's history by producing three LPs that would place the band's discography under a slightly different light. Bilk marks the beginning of that investigation: a free-flowing assemblage of everything that vibrates and can be caught on tape. A 30-year-old recording with subtle new edits and additions. Recorded at the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields by Andi Toma and Jan St. Werner.
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LP
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SONIG 078LP
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"The lemniscate is, fundamentally a mechanism for the infinite. A lemniscus or 'ribbon' that chases itself in a figure of eight describes the repeated and unending journey of the unbounded. Jorinde Voigt draws structures energized by real and imagined possibilities to investigate finite boundaries of systems. She frames and moderates these investigations with spatiotemporal data, information on speed, volume, and an overlaying of sequences. Her notations embrace the concept that elements of equal value co-exist in a logic and proportion of their own. In 2008, following Voigt's concepts, composers Patric Catani and Chris Imler, developed the 'lazy 8' of the infinity motif at Watermill-Center, NYC, a laboratory for performance, in the form of an acoustic 'cluster.' The looped composition formed of 16 chapters, snakes around 7 points realized using a multi-channel arrangement of 6 loudspeakers and thus describes the shape of a lemniscate through pure sound. To enable home listening, the multi-channel installation has been mixed down by the artists as a stereo version. LP in a limited edition of 260 copies."
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7"
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SONIG 023EP
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"Dü is Jan St. Werner (Mouse On Mars, Microstoria, Lithops) and F.X. Randomiz (Holosud). Their debut album Slow already gained fantastic reviews, e.g. The Wire: 'an instrumental, electronic masterpiece; a mature pre-Oval example for state-of-the-art sample skills'. Jan St. Werner produced a CD-R with noises and sounds without any digital equipment -- Randomiz digitalized and arranged those sounds and sent them back to Werner--- 6 of those edits can be found here."
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