Mouse On Mars Niun Niggung CD

And then there were three. In 1999, Mouse on Mars assimilated a third member in the person of live drummer Dodo Nkishi. So why does NIUN NIGGUNG sound even more like the output of an over-cranked digital one-man band than usual? It's as though Mars-men Jan St. Werner and Andi Toma packed their processors with candied pop hooks and sugarcoated beat offal until the computers were violently sick to their circuit-board stomachs. Perfectly strange way to make music, perhaps, but also a perfect way to make such strange music.

The well-gnawed and half-digested remains of enough brass solos, train whistles, strings, duck calls, and doorbells to stock several-dozen Bacharach scores come gushing out of NIUN NIGGUNG--along with disfigured breakbeats, voices, and parasitic piggyback computer viruses. Somehow all this sonic refuse jells as the sticky, supremely scrumptious e-pop forms of "Yippie," "Albion Rose," and "Mykologics." Six albums in, there should be no more surprises. Mouse on Mars was always e-music's Dr. Seuss, working in an invented vernacular of sprungoid squiggles and positively fluppy rhythms. Nonetheless, the hard-discoid calliope corruptions of "Diskdusk," "Booosc," and "Dispothek" and the ravaged yet ravishing "Distroia" still leave one speechless, searching futilely for words that don't exist.

Prev.Import Only;5 Bonus Trax

Recorded in 1998 and 1999.

Personnel: Scott White (violin, cello); Perry White (flute, bass clarinet); El Topo (saxophone); Harald "Sack" Ziegler (French horn); Dodo Nkishi (drums); F.X. Randomiz (sampler).

Arrangers: Jan St. Werner; Andi Toma.

Personnel: Scott White (violin, cello); Matty Arouse (fiddle, bass); Perry White (flute, bass clarinet); Topo (saxophone); Markus Dirk (bass trumpet); Harald "Sack" Ziegler (French horn); Dodo Nkishi (drums); F.X. Randomiz (samples).

Spin (1/01, p.73) - Ranked #16 in Spin's "Top 20 Albums of the Year [2000]".
Spin (3/00, pp.150-2) - 8 out of 10 - "...Dripping with mellifluous analog filigree, rear-end-guiding grooves, and a panoply of percolating flatulence [NIUN NIGGUNG] continues to argue that armchair techno needn't be such a solemn, over-intellectualized affair..."
Entertainment Weekly (2/18/00, p.87) - "...the most human-sounding of the new German electronica....their best set yet, with a dramatic range...that belies their transistorized heart." - Rating: A-
Q (11/99, p.127) - 3 stars out of 5 - "...when they give their enthusiasm for tunes and grooves free rein...you begin to see what it is that makes them so attractive to some."
Alternative Press (3/00, p.82) - 4 out of 5 - "...[their] synthetic-beat/sound collages have consistently come on as wild frondescences of the elemental and the composite....this may be their most realized work..."
Magnet (4-5/00, p.84) - "...[They] jump around Computer World's many townships....This prickly pastiche of textures and harmonic layers gives the group humanity, a ghostly, machine-like breathiness matched only by its sense of bawdy humor and relentless melodicism....Warm and delicious."
The Wire (1/00, p.67) - Included in Wire Magazine's "50 Records Of The Year ['99]"
CMJ (2/14/00, p.22) - "...an avant-garde social statement...compelled to cut loose to the sound of all that digital bubbling and analog popping..."