4 out of 5

Label: Thrill Jockey

Produced by: Jan St. Werner

Mouse On Mars have always been – along with many of their Thrill Jockey labelmates – one of those bands I like in principle but rarely find myself listening to.  The slick blending of dancefloor groove with krautrock and indie rock sensibilities has lent itself to some wonderfully fascinating albums, and certainly some amazing songs, always evident with the skills of composing duo Andi Toma and Jan St. Werner, but for every time I would perk up when a MoM record was played, once it was in my collection… I never quite found the mood for putting it on.

Still, the interest was enough to be curious as to what more ‘experimental’ MoM sounded like via Werner’s solo Lithops output, sniffily safe in the thought that side projects from known quantities generally came across as lesser versions of their main group or as forced attempts at sounding “different.”  And maybe the mass of static and noise that opens Mound Magnet as ‘Opposite Of Windward‘ could count as that, but moving past the shock, there’s clearly a mind at work putting these atonal pieces together, constructing and deconstructing to craft a discordant piece of bravado that latches on to just enough musicality to prevent it from becoming wearing.  This is not Mouse on Mars – and to be fair, previous Lithops works had started tilting in this direction – but it is the edge that always been present in that group’s work, minus the need to circle back to a beat.

Werner gives us a reprieve on followup ‘Cephalopod,’ the album’s shortest and most soothing track, shifting around what sounds like a guitar strum, akin to a slowed down variant of an early Squarepusher beat, before flipping back into a couple of brash, experimental washes, though each a bit more settled in mood than the frenetic opener – although I would wish for maybe a bit more of a distinct mood from each track.  Midpoint ‘Stakes Barrier’ introduces the cut-up D&B that takes over the disc’s latter half, before dropping out for a somewhat directionless, ambient final couple minutes.  But any loss of momentum is more than made up for with the final four tracks, each with catchy, IDM beat backings and a barrage of industrial clatter and deftly scattered bleeps and bloops.

Lithops is a distinct entity.  I’m not sure I would’ve paid attention without the Mouse on Mars tie-in, which is ironic given how vastly far apart the outputs are, along with the fact that I’m much more likely to want to sink in to Lithops’ chaotic cuts of noise and occasional beats than MoM’s slicker, dancier style.