When Mouse on Mars broke a six-year silence earlier this decade, they didn't waste any time reintroducing themselves to a musical landscape that looked very different than when they'd released their last collection. The final missive before the long break, 2006's Ipecac-released Varcharz, was a dissonant and aggressive way of saying "Goodbye, for now," and as it turned out, their return wasn't too much different in that respect.
Much less a comeback album than the latest reinvention from artists that have always prided themselves on new ideas, Parastrophics was louder and bolder than anything they'd done before, a giggly record stuffed with bursts of color and melodies that came as close to approaching "pop" as 2004's disarmingly conventional Radical Connector. At the time, it seemed reasonable to draw comparisons between what Andi Toma and Jan St. Werner were doing and the lush, brutally overwhelming electronic music coming out of Glasgow, but nearly two years later, there's still nothing that quite sounds like Parastrophics, proof that Toma and St. Werner were still capable of forging their own pleasingly weird path more than two decades into their careers.
The only constant in Mouse on Mars' world is change, so what was to come after Parastrophics was anyone's guess. They bookended 2012 with a mini-LP, WOW, a charming collection of nearly-formed exercises that suggested the pair were interested in exploring the world of wonky, expressively melodic bass music that current label home Monkeytown, run by dance duo Modeselektor, is known for. In the middle of last year, St. Werner dropped a record of abstract soundscapes, Blaze Colour Burn, proof that he (and, possibly, Mouse on Mars by extension) hadn't lost his taste for making music that provided for "difficult" listening a la Varcharz.
For the shock of the new that Parastrophics carried (and still carries), those familiar with Toma and St. Werner's back catalog could recognize some structural similarities—moments of lake-gliding placidity, warm synth pads, jigsaw glitch textures that only artists who came to prominence in the IDM era would wield in 2012—that made the album unmistakably the work of Mouse on Mars. This reliability is part of what made Parastrophics' tinier idiosyncrasies so endearing, and it's what makes Spezmodia, their new five-track EP, so shocking. Jettisoning most of Parastrophics' sonic jumble for something more explicitly streamlined, the release represents one of the duo's sharpest left turns in the past decade, continuing the melodic refinement that Mouse on Mars have returned to time and again while shaping their taste for aggressive textures into new, more dancefloor-ready molds.
If WOW dipped its toes into what Mouse on Mars could do with the raw materials of bass music's current landscape, Spezmodia is the point of full immersion. Familiar rhythmic structures abound—the stuttered-step figure that opens the title track, the hissy acid-juke midsection of "Bakerman Is Breaking Bad"—and the synth melodies splattered throughout carry an aggressive brightness, arriving with all the subtlety of a car driving through a storefront window. There are moments of glitch-dabbed madness that break through these deceptively dense works, but here it largely sounds like Toma and St. Werner have taken a vacuum to their off-kilter rhythms, removing the detritus that surrounds them until all that's left is a jagged, impossibly clean shell.
Spezmodia also continues Mouse on Mars' experimentation with vocals—sampled and otherwise—a concern that dates back to the days of Radical Connector. "I See Dizzy" kicks open with a blood-curdling scream that's twisted into a rhythmic respiratory voice, while the astounding title track weaves an array of vocal elisions into its upward-building structure, pushing the BPM into the red until a glistening synth melody and fat bass stabs arrive to produce the aural illusion of sounds moving fast while seemingly and simultaneously slowing down. Compared to Radical Connector's most straightforward moments, this material is brutally psychedelic and intense, and such boldness suits them quite well.
The most marvelous aspect of Mouse on Mars' resurgence is that, similar to how their music has sounded to the uninitiated over the years, it doesn't make any sense. As Mark Richardson pointed out in his review of Parastrophics, many of Mouse on Mars' contemporaries have long since bitten the dust, but the duo's constant quest for self-innovation has afforded them just the right amount of relevance, even when it seems like the convergence between their current path and trends in modern music is purely coincidental. They're still tinkering with their sound, and Spezmodia is the latest evidence that it's nearly impossible for Mouse on Mars not to make fascinating, truly exciting music.
