It's tough to categorize Mouse on Mars much beyond the "electronic duo" tag, mainly because their various albums and side projects have splintered off in so many directions. Even the "electronic" tag doesn't entirely fit at times-- core members Andi Toma and Jan St. Werner's respective backgrounds are as a guitarist and a drummer, and their live shows often feature the charismatic Dodo NKishi behind the trap set. St. Werner has made solo recordings under various guises before, but here he steps out under his own name for the first time, again blurring perceptions and stretching at definitions of his working method. This is the inaugural release in the Fiepblatter series for Thrill Jockey, which will focus on field recordings, improvisational works, and other elements drawn from the margins of sound.
Blaze Colour Burn is a suitably amorphous statement of intent for this proposed set of releases, principally because it's a series of fractured recordings that are as much about what's happening around the sounds as the sounds themselves. The two-part "Spiazzacorale" has been edited down from an eight-hour live performance in Italy, and is frequently punctured by audience movement, a low-lying conversational murmur, and other crowd noise. At one point it appears to collapse altogether, only for St. Werner to bring it back in a burst of brilliant color via the sound of a traditional Umbrian band. It's far from the studied work of Mouse on Mars, replacing that band's strictures with a looseness that feels freeing. The non-live material works that way too-- "Sipian Organ" acts like an industrialized take on Brian Eno's ambient works, oscillating between quiet background drones and sharp, metallic foreground noise.
The amount of space in the recording is key, sometimes causing it to resemble a performance happening far off in the distance, at other times situating everything front and center. It makes listening to Blaze Colour Burn a distinctly physical experience. In quieter moments you might strain to hear what's going on; similarly, when the extraneous crowd bustle is foregrounded, it feels like your brain needs to do some filtering to get to what's important. As such, it also poses questions about what the important elements are when listening to music, especially when non-musical forms take on a strange rhythm of their own. There are no echelons of significance here-- an audience member coughing adds just as much as the ripples of vibraphone that light up "Spiazzacorale", mainly because of the sense of place they bring.
It's surprising how much movement there is in these ruptured, abstract pieces, with St. Werner casting each track as a tiny journey to undertake. Part of its stated intent is for the listener to question their position in relation to the music, to figure out where they are situated in the listening process. It works along those lines to a certain extent, but there's also a flipside to it that has more in common with St. Werner's work in Mouse on Mars, where you get slung adrift, wandering around in gigantic structures like the 13-minute "Cloud Diachroma". Blaze Colour Burn lands somewhere in between music that makes you hyper-aware of your place in relation to it and something that removes you from thinking about yourself altogether. That split creates a subtle tension at the heart of the record, positioning it as a maze-like structure where getting lost and found become equally gratifying.
