As music makers in an electronic sphere, the nature and practice of repetition is something Mouse on Mars have had to confront. While they've often kept a finger on the club music button through remixes and various associations with the dance community, the Mouse on Mars method has always involved finding ways to knock the loops out of joint and upset the sort of internalized expectations that come from a lifetime of music listening. The element of surprise is crucial to their aesthetic, even though the change-ups are often subtle, which means serious attention to detail is a must. If they've taken longer to record and release albums than their contemporaries, it's because of this need to micromanage. Mouse on Mars on record are fussy and exacting.
Their full-length portfolio shows a similar inability to leave well enough alone. Mouse on Mars aren't in the business of repeating themselves, and even now, eight albums deep, it's difficult to describe one Mouse on Mars full-length by comparing it to another. Certain qualities overlap and there is a distinctive "sound," but each album picks a handful of ideas and explores them to varying depths. The next one then picks up somewhere else and goes.
2001's Idiology was unique because ideas were so numerous. Each track seemed to point to a possible new direction, and it seemed as if the next album could be anything from a screamo noisefest to an electro prog opera. You'd think we would have learned by now; it turns out that the threads running through the long-awaited new album Radical Connector are not found anywhere on Idiology. This is Mouse on Mars' most conventional album, with vocals on every track (by drummer Dodo Nkishi and Sonig fellow traveler Niobe), and it's also their most predictable in structure. Each song builds an internally consistent songworld and is content with its boundaries. If you're a fan of Mouse on Mars' more experimental side (hand up here behind the keyboard) it helps to approach Radical Connector on its own terms.
Though it is indeed pop, Radical Connector has an unusual sound. Nkishi and Niobe have strong voices even untreated, but their vocals are vocoded, chopped, and phased to seem as unnatural as possible while generally avoiding robotic cliches. Several tracks with Nkishi on lead feature an intentionally thick and sludgy low end, with the bass and drums merging into a lunging, leering, lumbering beast. And though heightened danceability has been a key selling point of this record, most tracks are a half-step slow.
"Wipe That Sound", for example, is nimble on its face with excellent "oo-way oo-way" disco background vox, a command to "kick the can" (do they play that in Germany?), and a gurgling acid bassline, but there's no way the plodding tempo is going to fill a dancefloor. Same goes for "Mine Is in Yours", probably the purest song on the album, with a simple chord structure whose catchiness becomes apparent when the electronics lay out and a ringing electric guitar takes over-- unique and excellent, but not dance music by any stretch.
The best rhythms are left for Niobe. On two of her four tracks, she assumes the role of a distant and aloof diva, intoning cryptic lyrics ("When the boats go round/ Turn on back to a spiral") behind several layers of processing. "Send Me Shivers" fits the tech-house template, with a steady chug of a rhythm hypnotic and groovy enough to earn its 6 minutes. The rhythmic accents are pure Mouse on Mars playfulness, however, with two stabs every other bar sounding like pistons from a Dr. Seuss machine.
"Evoke an Object" is comparatively sleek and sexy, with a metallic sheen and a persistent glow of distortion, and though the beat goes on for almost 9 minutes and threatens to go into full-bore house several times, it always maintains a hint of off balance herky-jerkiness. "Spaceship" is an altogether different animal, a prelude of political lyrics ("The inexact inquiry/ Profitable madness/ Society/ The abstract variety") over chaotic drum hits and wind-up noises that slowly gather like a storm before erupting into deeply goofy and great funk hinging on a rapid cut-up of the song's title. Niobe proves to be as sure a fit with Mouse on Mars' current sound as Laetitia Sadier was in the late 90s.
Though reference points like Daft Punk and Prince have rightly been thrown around, Radical Connector is in fact a strange album that doesn't sound like much else. Subversion is still here, but this time it comes in the form of texture, most of which is purely electronic in origin. There is something fundamentally ugly about the sound of Radical Connector, despite its song-oriented tendencies, but it's a quality present for contrast and complexity, and not as a statement on its own. The tension resulting from opposing forces continues to fuel for Mouse on Mars' fire, even when they're experimenting in the realm of pop.
