From Tom Tonger Sent Mon, Nov 3rd 1997, 08:02
hi all, just got back from the mouse on mars gig at other music and boy did they rip shit up. first of all, I hope all of you who were wanting to go there actually got in, since there was line around the corner of 4th and lafayette half the way up the block... anyways, I came expecting what I know from the mouse's first 3 full-lengths (haven't gotten instrumentals yet) - lots of weird stuff and some relaxed beats. what we got was some weird stuff and straight-through beats ranging from minimal house a la studio 1 over hardcore to some attempts at techstep. and not to forget a healthy dose of acidic squeaks out of andi toma's 303... andi also worked an xbase 09, something new from germany that he identified as a 909 emulator. jan st. werner tweaked along on that xbase and beatmatched what I guess were most of their beats from 2 pitch-control cd players - I later saw one of the CDRs they burned for this purpose and it 4 tracks titled by their BPMs, wich ranged from about 140 to 165. no, I wasn't in the wrong venue, this was mouse on mars. occasionally he would grab a new dat out of his bag. they played I think 5 tracks, all about 10-15 minutes (this was one long gig but time flew by) and with varying rhythms in themselves. after the first 3 minimal/acid house tracks they asked us whether we wanted something slow or something fast. the response was mixed, and they started with a ambientish, dubby thing that evolved into changing patterns of manic breaks and banging hardcore. their whole set would have easily kept any dancefloor pumping for 1.5 hours. other than that, andi&jan are two extremely kool guys that really seemed to enjoy their gig, watched for crowd feedback and stayed on to sign cds, posters and answer all our questions. oh, and I incorrectly claimed the mouse to be from cologne, which is not entirely true. only andi is from cologne, jan is from duesseldorf. I know the 2 concerts w/ stereolab monday and tuesday are sold out, but if you weren't there yesterday, it's gonna be well worth a try to get tix at the show. this was the most enjoyable gig since mike p at kim's. cheers, --tom