"Not every new bass-music record has to be a huge sea change," Nate Patrin recently wrote of Salva's Complex Housing. Perhaps dance music is regrouping after a period of deep fragmentation, or perhaps it's marking time while awaiting new technologies. In any case, Mosaik, the debut LP by Berlin's Siriusmo, is an archetypal 2011 crossover dance record. There are hair-raising Daft Punk-ian swoops on "High Together", purplish bounces and metallic swirls on "Feromonikon", voluptuous Applescal-like synth matrices on the title track, and juddering ghettotech aggression on "Bad Idea"-- and that's before things get really eclectic. But Siriusmo's music is so fun and creative that, while listening to it, the state of electronic music will likely be the furthest thing from your mind.
With a decade's worth of singles and remixes already in the can, Siriusmo is no newcomer, and it shows in his cunning as an architect of sound. "Sirimande" thuds through warping filters toward a breakdown for delicately wrought hand percussion and Spanish guitar, and then reconstitutes itself as a dance track around this new axis. The way Siriusmo clips and bends his tones helps him to reconcile such extremes into coherent songs; he has the skills to realize anything in his prodigious imagination. And for all of his technical ability, his imagination is the star here. A former keyboardist in a 1970s-style funk band, Siriusmo brings a hot and jammy sensibility to his productions. While many could rock a dance floor, the concise lengths and jocular set-pieces give you a hint as to Siriusmo's true ambition: to make a pop long-player rather than a collection of singles.
This dude is quite the showman. At the beginning of "High Together", warm-up keyboard vamps are met with sampled audience applause that gradually gives way to boos. Both responses being equally disproportionate to the little keyboard squiggles, there seems to be a joke here about electronic music taking itself too seriously; a crime of which Siriusmo cannot be accused. "Call Me" is 51 seconds of vintage boom-bap with wobbly phone-ringing samples. There are wacky vocal monologues, cartoonish sound effects, and cool voices intoning Siriusmo's name with a hint of irony. His music can feel like hotness and a loving satire of hotness simultaneously. But all this personality serves to make the record cohesive. When the electro-pop of "Einmal In Der Woche Schreien" pivots into the glassy funk of "Good Idea" with a perfectly-placed whistle, you know you're hearing something that wants to be more than the sum of its parts.
Siriusmo succeeds admirably in this goal, most of the time: The diversity is coherent and the gags elicit smiles. His almost hammy sensibility is winning, paired with his obvious awareness of its potential to bog down the sheer musicality of Mosaik. But things finally start to unravel a bit in the home stretch, as Siriusmo's zany notions start to get the better of his taste. "Peeved" gives us something like a cut-and-paste Captain Beefheart and works about as well in context as you'd imagine, which seems to set the stage for the irritatingly hyper and Mr. Oizo-like "Feed My Meatmachine". But you'll want to stick around for "Signal" and "Red Knob", which nicely wash away the unpleasant aftertaste. A couple of missteps on a 17-track album is no big deal, especially when they result from an adventurous sensibility that makes all the high points possible.
