I would be telling a big fat lie if I said that I predicted this would be Mouse On Mars' next move, despite the live show they put on during their most recent, but extremely brief North American tour giving every indication.
Mouse On Mars was back to the core duo of Jan and Andi, performing a set reminiscent of the first time I saw them live probably about ten years ago. Singer/drummer Dodo was on hiatus ("on assignment" as the newscasts always claim) and what remained was two guys bopping around on some killer modular gear, making fun beats and mangling noises into a polyrhythmic soup that even the experimental/noise geeks were digging. (Keith Whitman claims to have seen me dancing but I'll deny it under oath.)
For years the duo have been charting the more pop side of electronica, using vocals and live drumming to make song collections which had easily extractable tunes for commercial ambitions (see "Blood Comes" from Radical Connector or "Actionist Respoke" from Idiology). Varcharz, on the other hand is a lot more raw, free-flowing, and strings all nine songs together in a way that's difficult to pull apart. Stylistically, the album switches back and forth between the more abstract and the more accessible, with the opener electronic mayhem of "Chartnok" and the thrashing chunky "Düül" surrounded by the sexy groove of "Igoegowhygowego" and candy factory rhythms of "Inocular." "Skik" is built on what could easily be Atari video game music, exploited and repurposed before the alien disco known as "Hi Fienlin" muscles its way in. "Bertney" is the tuneful masterpiece however that I think will please any fan of classics like "Frosch" but the two songs that follow, "Ratphase" and "One Day, Not Today" are pretty wacked out, both on the weirder side of their spectrum.
While I love this record, in all honesty it's probably not one I'd play for one of my more mainstream co-workers to try and get them to one of their shows. For fans it's a great representation of their live sound and a good document for when they play and somebody comes up and says "hey, do you have any records that sounds like what I heard tonight?" Rather than go into lengthy explanations, they can easily hand them Varcharz now.
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