Mouse on Mars at The Queen Elizabeth Hall

Mouse on Mars at The Queen Elizabeth Hall

22 April, 2009
by: Domzig

Lawyers can be such a drag, eh? Thanks to their work, tonight the band I'm seeing are attempting to soundtrack a film without actually having the film thanks to some last minute legal trouble. Go figure.

OK, so in the event Mouse on Mars do play a film, but I'm not going to tell you if it's the right film or not. For fear of  dropping everyone in it  I'm going to talk about the film and the music  separately as I don't want angry Germans after me.

For those who haven't seen Fata Morgana, then basically believe me when I say it's a Stuckist's worst nightmare. Broken into three parts it begins with beautiful, sweeping shots of the desert before going on to document the people living fractured, wretched lives across the Sahara desert. Herzog himself likens the film to a 'documentary shot by extraterrestrials from the Andromeda Nebula, and left behind' and I like to think it is the sort of thing the Conquistadors would have made to show King Phillip if they had video cameras. It is very strange, very creepy and very metaphorical – in fact I get a headache just thinking about it.

The film itself doesn't really have a soundtrack of sorts - the only narration being a recitation of a Mayan creation  myth, so it was always going to be a tall order to fit music into sweeping and understated shots of dead camels without it seeming bolted on or a bit overbearing. Herzog always seems to have an affinity with progressive krautrock acts (Popol Vohl in fact produced the soundtrack for his film Aguirre, Wrath of God) so it seems logical for latter day experimentalists Mouse on Mars to step up to the plate.

Standing behind what seems to be Kraftwerk's bedroom worth of synths, desks and sequencers and armed with harmonicas and guitars, the pair start off our journey in the same way as Herzog does with sweeping electronic melodies that echo around the hall like some distant muttering before building slowly into a echoing pulse that reminds me of Neu! in one of their spacier freak-outs.

It doesn't last however, and soon the score plunges into a much darker place. A twitching, metallic and wholly inhuman beat starts to make an appearance and the whole tone of the music takes on a more industrial and cold feel that, despite being sort of danceable at times, remains detached and haunting.

By the time Mouse on Mars move into the third movement you can tell we're not in a nice place anymore. Although the driving beat has subsided, the sounds remain coarse and pretty challenging. It gets a little lighter when a French horn player emerges to lay down some warm melodies, but ends in much the same way as the film by creating shapes that are – for the want of a better word – bleak.

As we leave, my mate bemoans the sound quality, remarking that the rasping feedback made it quite heavy-going at times. I have to agree with him on that, although I think it was purely intentional, for, as Fata Morgana shows the desert to be a harsh place where life is nasty, brutish and short, so must the soundtrack, right?

Ether runs until the 24th of April at the South Bank Centre. You can also win a limited edition compliation in our competition.

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Domzig